Cardinal Wuerl: Confronting secularism a priority for next pope
February 26, 2013: The next Pope chosen by the Cardinals must be someone with the
requisite energy and mastery of modern communications media to promote a revival of
the faith in increasingly secular societies around the world, said Cardinal Donald
W. Wuerl of Washington, hours after his arrival in Rome on Monday.
While speaking
with Catholic News Service, the cardinal said "the secularism that is just engulfing
our culture will be weighing heavily on the hearts and minds in the conclave."
"Those
people who think they know the Gospel and it doesn't have any meaning for them, they're
the people we have to find a way to touch, to invite once again to the embrace of
Christ," he said. "That thought, that concern, that issue, is going to be something
that we'll all carry with us into the conclave", the Cardinal added.
Cardinal
Wuerl, 72, said the same idea dominated the world Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization,
which met at the Vatican in October 2012. As the synod's relator, Cardinal Wuerl synthesized
the remarks and recommendations of his fellow bishops in two speeches during the gathering,
which he now considers a "providential moment," since it brought together 52 of the
117 cardinals eligible to vote for the next pope less than five months before the
election.
On that occasion, he said, Pope Benedict XVI outlined the "work ahead
of us ... to address the needs today of the proclamation of the good news in a way
that it will be heard. "Whoever is going to hold the see of Peter, whoever is going
to sit in Peter's chair is going to have to see the issues as Blessed John Paul did,
as Benedict did, as the synod did, as I think most of the cardinals do, that is: that
we are very, very much like the early church in relation to the world around us,"
the cardinal said. "Christianity is no longer a dominant culture, secularism is the
dominant force in the world of culture. So the Holy Father is going to have to be
a person whose focus will be on that." "The task is going to require an enormous
amount of physical energy" for travel and communication, which "may be one of the
reasons" Pope Benedict chose to resign, said Cardinal Wuerl.
"More important
than the physical energy is the spiritual energy, but you do need a certain amount
of physical energy to carry out the task. So I suspect that the next pope could be
someone who would be perhaps younger than Cardinal Ratzinger was when he was elected
and became Benedict."
Pope Benedict was elected in 2005 at the age of 78. "There's
a very real sense in which you could say that the (pope's) ministry is becoming now
so big, so heavy, so all-encompassing that it might be challenging for an individual,"
the cardinal said. An important challenge for the next pope will thus be "finding
a way that the work of Peter can be carried out without the physical demands that
currently are a part of it," he said. "I believe it's eminently doable, because today
with electronic media, with the facility to speak not only to the whole world but
to individuals around the world, I think we're just seeing a whole shift in how this
Petrine ministry is going to be exercised," he added.