News in Christian-Jewish Relations: March 2001
Vatican announces new president of Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews
Pope John Paul II has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, included in which is the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. He also named Cassidy's deputy, newly elevated German Cardinal Walter Kasper, to succeed him as the Vatican's leader of ecumenical dialogue.
Cassidy, 76, has been in ill health, and his retirement was expected. An Australian, Cassidy served in the key posts of envoy to Holland and South Africa during a long career as a Vatican diplomat before the pope chose him to succeed Cardinal Johannes Willebrands in ecumenical dialogue in 1989. John Paul made him a cardinal in 1991.
Like Cassidy and Willebrands before him, Kasper, who marked his 68th birthday on Monday (March 5), is considered a progressive prelate with a flexible outlook, open to reform. He has played a leading role in Catholic-Lutheran dialogue. Born in the town of Brenz in the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Kasper studied philosophy and theology at Tubingen and Munich and was ordained a priest at the age of 24. After receiving a doctorate in theology at Tubingen, he served as assistant to two noted professors on the university's Faculty of Theology -- Leo Scheffczyk and Hans Kung. Kasper and Scheffczyk, now 81, received the red biretta of a cardinal together at the Consistory celebrated by the pope on Feb. 21 while Kung, an outspoken liberal, has been barred from teaching theology in Catholic schools in recent years because of his differences with the Vatican on doctrinal issues. Kasper taught dogmatic theology at the universities of Munster and Tubingen and was dean of Tubingen's Faculty of Theology before the pope made him bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart in 1989. Named a consultor to what was then the Secretariat for Christian Unity in 1979, Kasper became co-president of the International Commission for Catholic-Lutheran Dialogue in 1994 and secretary of the Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity in 1998.