Pope appoints Ghanian cardinal to head Vatican’s Justice and Peace Council

(October 26, 2009) Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday appointed African Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana to head the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The 61-year old archbishop of Cape Coast and Ghana’s first cardinal served as relator-general of the 3-week Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Africa which the Pope formally closed on Sunday. Born in 1948 in Wassaw Nsuta, Ghana, Cardinal Turkson is the fourth of 10 children. Regarded as one of Africa’s top Biblical scholars, he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Cape Coast in 1975, and later earned a doctorate in sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. From 1981-1987 he was a professor of sacred Scripture and vice rector of St. Peter's Major Seminary of Ghana, and a professor at the University of Cape Coast. He was appointed archbishop of Cape Coast in 1992 at the age of 44. He was made cardinal in 2003. Cardinal Turkson succeeds retiring Italian Cardinal Renato Martino as head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Cardinal Martino, who will turn 77 in November, had been serving as president of the council since 2002. From 2006 to Feb. 28, 2009, he had also been president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant Workers. From 1986-2002 he served as the permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in New York.