NOTABLES - People who make the news, not necessarily Church-related

Romney suspends presidential campaign:
'I cannot let my campaign be part of
aiding a surrender to terror'
By John King
CNN


Feb. 7 - Mitt Romney suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday, saying if he continued it would "forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Sen. Clinton or Obama to win."

"In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. This is not an easy decision. I hate to lose," the former Massachusetts governor said.

"If this were only about me, I'd go on. But it's never been only about me. I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, in this time of war I feel I have to now stand aside for our party and for our country."



Romney made the announcement Thursday afternoon at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

With Romney out, Sen. John McCain is locked in as the front-runner in the GOP race.

Romney had won 286 delegates in through the Super Tuesday contests, compared with McCain's 697.

The crowd booed when Romney mentioned McCain, saying, "I disagree with Sen. McCain on a number of issues."

"But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and I agree with him on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror worldwide," he said.

Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama saw Romney as a vulnerable candidate that they would rather run against instead of McCain, CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley said.

"They were looking at Mitt Romney as pretty doable in the political sense saying, 'This is a guy that has a record that we can really run with' and they ran with it in the Republican Party as you know, saying that he used to be pro-choice, now he's anti-abortion. He has changed his position on stem cells he has changed his position on gay unions, that sort of thing," she said.

As recently as Wednesday, Romney met with aides to discuss strategy to stay in the race through March 4.

Although he outspent his rivals, Romney received just 175 delegates on Super Tuesday, compared with at least 504 for McCain and 141 for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, according to CNN estimates.

Romney came in first in Massachusetts, Alaska, Minnesota, Colorado and Utah on Super Tuesday. In the early voting contests, he won Nevada, Maine, Michigan and Wyoming.

After his win in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, Huckabee became Romney's chief rival for the party's conservative vote.

Huckabee on Tuesday won Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and West Virginia.

"Primaries are a killing field," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. "They take losing candidates and get their bodies off the field."

Suspending a campaign has a different meaning depending on the party.

On the Republican side, decisions on how to allocate delegates is left to the state parties.

On the Democratic side, a candidate who "suspends" is technically still a candidate, so he or she keeps both district and statewide delegates won through primaries and caucuses. Superdelegates are always free to support any candidate at any time, whether the candidate drops out, suspends or stays in.

National party rules say that a candidate who "drops out" keeps any district-level delegates he or she has won so far but loses any statewide delegates he or she has won.

The 60-year-old former investment banker had touted his management credentials throughout the campaign, citing his experience in Massachusetts and his turnaround of the scandal-plagued 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

But despite pouring millions of his own fortune into the campaign, he struggled after Huckabee upset him in the Iowa caucuses and McCain came from behind to beat him in the New Hampshire primary.

Grand Master dies

THE DEATH IS ANNOUNCED OF HMEH 78TH PRINCE AND GRAND MASTER FRA' ANDREW BERTIE

The death is announced of HMEH 78th Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta, Frà Andrew Willoughby Ninian Bertie, in Rome on 7 February 2008. The Grand Commander of the Order of Malta, Baillif Frà Giacomo dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, has been sworn in as Lieutenant ad interim of the Order, and remains acting head of the Sovereign Order until a new Grand Master is elected.

Andrew Willoughby Ninian Bertie was the first Englishman to be elected to the post of Grand Master in the Order’s 900-year history. Born 15 May 1929, he was educated at Ampleforth College, Christ Church Oxford and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. After military service in the Scots Guards, he worked as a financial journalist in the City of London, before taking up the senior post in Modern Languages (French and Spanish) at Worth School, Sussex. Admitted to the Order in 1956, he took solemn religious vows in 1981 and served on the Sovereign Council (the government of the Order) for the following seven years before being elected Grand Master on 8th April 1988.

His Highness Fra’ Andrew Bertie, who spoke five languages fluently, oversaw many changes in the Order of Malta, instituting a modern approach to the Order’s humanitarian programmes, increasing the membership and extending the possibilities of aid to the poor and the needy in far-flung regions. He augmented from 49 to 100 the number of the Order’s bilateral diplomatic mission, whose delicate mission it is also to offer assistance to afflicted countries in times of natural disasters or armed conflicts. He set up international conferences where members were invited to contribute to the Order’s humanitarian strategies and encouraged a greater commitment to the spiritual side of the Order’s stated mission to help the sick and the poor and to provide an example of living according to Christian principles. In addition, he modernised the internal structure and administration of the Order.

A man of quiet reflection and wide interests, although of a certain British reserve, Frà Andrew was much loved by all who worked with him on his many projects. He greatly enjoyed the company of the young, and his former students were often among his visitors to the Magistral Palace in Rome. He always much enjoyed meeting and talking with all those involved in the good works of the Order, many of whom he met on his travels around the world to visit the Order’s charitable activities and consult with the national associations involved. When possible, he spent his holidays at his home in Malta, where he was very involved in organising and teaching judo courses for children as well as tending his farm, whose four different varieties of oranges were a constant source of pride in good weather and anxiety in bad.

That His Most Eminent Highness was held in high regard is evidenced by the many honours bestowed on him:
he was made an honorary citizen of Rapallo (1992), of Veroli (1993), Lourdes (1999), Magione (2002), Birgu (2003) and Santa Severina (2003). In Bolivia in 2002 he was created Huesped Ilustre (La Paz, El Alto and Santa Cruz).

Path to Peace Award 2005, Matteo Ricci Award 2006

Honorary doctorates: Medicine and surgery, University of Bologna (1992); Jurisprudence, University of Malta (1993), Humanities, University of Santo Domingo (1995), Universidad Catolica Boliviana San Pablo, Bolivia (2002); Laws, St. John’s University, Minnesota (2003).

His Highness was also bestowed: Collar of the Order Piano (Holy See), Collar of the Italian Republic, Grand Cross of the Legion d’Honneur, and was holder of more than 50 decorations from other countries.

Source: orderofmalta.org

====================================================================

LATE P.S.
I found this good anecdotal recollection of Prince Bertie from the CNS News Hub:

GRAND MASTER R.I.P.
By John Thavis
Feb. 8, 2008


Prince Bertie beside his portrait at the Rome headquarters of the Order. (2002 CNS File Photo)

The grand master of the Knights of Malta, Fra Andrew Willoughby Ninian Bertie, died in Rome on Thursday. His passing means that Rome will host a new election — the Knights call it a conclave — sometime soon.

For those who met him, Bertie seemed one of a kind. Like all the Knights’ grand masters, he could trace back at least 200 years a noble bloodline on both sides of his family. But he didn’t lord it over anyone; he spent some of his afternoons helping out at Rome clinics, emptying bedpans and doing other volunteer tasks.

When Bertie was elected in 1988, Greg Erlandson — now publisher of Our Sunday Visitor — covered the event for the CNS Rome bureau. Greg’s lead described Bertie as a “58-year-old blue-blooded celibate judo expert,” which was somehow fitting. The man could not be easily categorized.

In 2002, I did a piece on the Knights and their headquarters in downtown Rome. The building had a prime location on Via Condotti but the décor inside was definitely faded grandeur.

I later figured out that instead of spending money to refurbish their own offices, they had financed a state-of-the-art public clinic in the lower part of the building.

Bertie was modest and affable, with a dry wit. I began my interview by asking him how one addresses a grand master, and I’ll never forget his almost apologetic answer: “I suppose the easiest is, ‘Your Highness.’”

At that time, Bertie was annoyed — in the way one might be annoyed by flies at a picnic — by the counterfeit orders that were springing up on the Internet, with names and symbols similar to the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta. Some were selling memberships and titles.

“They’re an absolute pain,” he said.

The Knights — the real ones — have since upgraded their own U.S. and international Web sites, and they’re a good place to check for news about the upcoming choice of a new grand master.

Greek Church turns page
with moderate leader
by Helene Colliopoulou


In the Section Update yesterday, I mentioned that Osservatore Romano carried an item about the new Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church but I did not have the time to post a story about it. Better late than never.


ATHENS, Feb. 7 (AFP) - The Orthodox Church of Greece turned a page on Thursday by electing a 70-year-old moderate archbishop seen as a possible healer of historical tensions with the Catholic Church.


The new Primate (center) leaves Athens Cathedral after his election Thursday.

Archbishop Ieronimos, formerly the bishop of Thebes in central Greece, also has a record of good relations with the Ecumenical Patriarch, the spiritual head of all Orthodox Christians.

"This is a new beginning in the life of the Church," said Bishop Anthimos of Salonika who ran against Ieronimos, outside the Athens Cathedral where the election was held.

As the election result was announced the cathedral's bells pealed and scores of faithful gathered outside broke into cheers, before accompanying Ieronimos and his retinue in a tightly-packed procession to his new office.

"I hope that his election will... contribute to improving relations," Father Michel Roussos, head of the Jesuit mission in Greece told AFP, noting that Ieronimos once taught literature at the Leontios Catholic school in Athens.

The last archbishop, Christodoulos, who died on January 28, had already made a major contribution in this direction, inviting the late pope John Paul II to Athens in 2001 and in 2006 becoming the first head of the Church of Greece to visit the Vatican.

But he was also a firebrand nationalist who attracted criticism for meddling in politics, for calling homosexuality a "defect" and for saying he discerned "divine wrath" behind the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Unlike the outspoken Christodoulos, Archbishop Ieronimos is low-key and is expected to restore relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate that were strained by a dispute over the management of certain dioceses in Greece.

Ieronimos also opposed as "extremism" the mass rallies called by Christodoulos in 2000 against the state's decision to delete the compulsory mention of religion from Greek citizens' ID cards.

The mayor of Thebes in central Greece, where Ieronimos had been bishop since 1981, said the new archbishop was known for his democratic values.

"His election is a guarantee of good relations with the people and the Patriarch," mayor Nikolaos Svigos told Flash Radio.

The Church of Greece, which is constitutionally not separated from the state, has extensive influence in society and politics in a country where around 90 percent of the population are baptised into the Orthodox faith.

Ieronimos -- who had also been a candidate in 1998 but finished second to Christodoulos -- received 45 out of 74 votes from participating bishops after a second round of voting at Athens' Cathedral.

In his oath of office, Ieronimos pledged to uphold "holy tradition and the laws of the state."

Born Ioannis Liapis in the central town of Oinofita in 1938, he studied archaeology and theology at the University of Athens and also holds degrees from the universities of Graz and Munich. [Which means he will be able to converse with Pope Benedict XVI in German!]

Ieronimos's principal rival was 68-year-old bishop Efstathios of Sparta, a traditionalist who espouses the last archbishop's views in favour of maintaining a strong Church influence in Greek society.

Bishops Anthimos of Salonika and Ignatios of Dimitriada also tabled candidacies.

Greek archbishops are elected for life and usually die in office.

Christodoulos died from liver cancer aged 69 and was given a full state funeral with great pomp, attended by thousands of people from all over Greece and broadcast live on television.

Sharia law row:
Archbishop of Canterbury
faces demands to quit
Evening Standard (UK)
Feb. 10, 2008


I failed to report this story when it first started last week, but this brings it up to date.





The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, primate of the Anglican Church, was facing demands to quit last night as the row over sharia law intensified.

Lord George Carey, Dr Williams' predecessor, criticised his comments on sharia law and said that accepting the Islamic code would be a disaster for Britain.

Other leading bishops publicly contradicted Dr Rowan Williams's call for Islamic law to be brought into the British legal system.

With the Church of England plunged into crisis, senior figures were said to be discussing the archbishop's future.

One member of the church's "Cabinet", the Archbishop's Council, was reported as saying: "There have been a lot of calls for him to resign. I don't suppose he will take any notice, but, yes, he should resign."

Officials at Lambeth Palace told the BBC Dr Williams was in a "state of shock" and "completely overwhelmed" by the scale of the row.

It was said that he could not believe the fury of the reaction. The most damaging attack came from the Pakistan-born Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali.

He said it would be "simply impossible" to bring sharia law into British law "without fundamentally affecting its integrity".

Sharia "would be in tension with the English legal tradition on questions like monogamy, provisions for divorce, the rights of women, custody of children, laws of inheritance and of evidence.

"This is not to mention the relation of freedom of belief and of expression to provisions for blasphemy and apostasy."

The church's second most senior leader, Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, refused to discuss the matter. But he has said sharia law "would never happen" in Britain.

Politicians joined the chorus of condemnation, with Downing Street saying British law should be based on British values. Tory and LibDem leaders also voiced strong criticism.

Even prominent Muslims were rounding on Dr Williams. Shahid Malik, Labour MP for Dewsbury, said: "I haven't experienced any clamour or fervent desire for sharia law in this country.

"If there are people who prefer sharia law there are always countries where they could go and live."

Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, rejected the idea that British law forces Muslims to choose between their religion and their society.

He said: "This will alienate people from other communities because they will think it is what Muslims want - and it is not."

The Muslim Council of Britain came to Dr Williams's aid, however, describing his comments in a lecture to lawyers and a BBC interview as "thoughtful".

But Oxford University Islamic scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan admitted: "These kinds of statements just feed the fears of fellow citizens. I really think we, as Muslims, need to come up with something that we abide by the common law and within these latitudes there are possibilities for us to be faithful to Islamic principles."

The archbishop is likely to come under heavy fire next week at a meeting of the Church's General Synod.

Liberal and feminist critics have been appalled by the thought of sharia law while evangelical opponents believe Dr Williams has failed to defend Christianity.

The archbishop was already battling intractable difficulties within the church over gay rights, a row which began nearly five years ago and has brought him criticism from all sides. Later this year he has to face a conference of hundreds of bishops from around the world which threatens further bitter division.

Dr Williams's opponents on the conservative evangelical wing - who resent his liberal beliefs on issues such as gay rights - were suggesting last night that the archbishop is finished.

The Reverend Paul Dawson of the Reform group of around 500 clergy said: "We are very sad that he does not seem to be able to articulate a clear Christian vision for Britain. It is true to say that there is a lot of dissatisfaction."

Dr Williams defended himself in a Lambeth Palace statement saying he had been trying to "tease out" the issue.

The archbishop had said it could help build a better and more cohesive society if Muslims were able to choose to have marital disputes or financial matters, for example, dealt with in a sharia court. The adoption of some elements of sharia law "seems unavoidable".

But the statement insisted: "The archbishop made no proposals for sharia, and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law."

Even fellow bishops, however, think this is precisely what Dr Williams did say.

Bishop of Southwark Tom Butler, a liberal who would normally be expected to defend Dr Williams, said the archbishop had been entering a minefield and added: "It will take a great deal of thought and work before I think it is a good idea."

He was more blunt in a circular to clergy in his diocese, saying he had yet to be convinced of the feasibility of incorporating any non-Christian religious law into the English legal system.

Future Cardinal Zen
benefited from almsgiving


Another delayed post.



HONG KONG, FEB. 5, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Joseph Zen's pastoral letter for Lent uniquely echoes Benedict XVI's call for Lenten almsgiving: He recounts how an almsgiver saved his own family from hunger.

The bishop of Hong Kong's Feb. 1 letter details an experience young Joseph Zen had as a child.

"It was when Shanghai had been invaded," the cardinal recalled. "My father had had a stroke and was ill. There were seven in our family, and five of us were school age -- all had to be fed. One cold winter day, it was snowing outside, so we were all in bed to keep warm. We were hungry and could only think: ‘Will we have rice to eat today?'"

“My father looked at the clock and called me to get up. [...] Mother said, ‘It is snowing. The soles of your plastic shoes are broken. If you get wet you will catch cold. Stay at home to pray.'"

"But Father said, ‘You go to Mass everyday. Do not miss it today. May God give us our daily bread.’ Of course, Father won the day,” the 76-year-old Shanghai-born cardinal remembered. “I gritted my teeth and raced to church and served Mass as usual. When I was ready to race back home, an elderly man came running after me. It was Zhou Chi Yao whom everybody knew."

Cardinal Zen explained that his father and Zhou usually attended Mass daily: “Though they greeted each other briefly with a nod of the head, they became good brothers in the Lord."

The elderly man said to young Joseph Zen: "My little friend, are you not the son of Zen En Giou?"

"Yes," replied the boy.

"Thank God I ran into you," said Zhou. "How is your father? He has not been to Church for a long time."

Cardinal Zen recalled in the Lenten letter, “I told him about our family situation. [...] He took me to his home and took out a stack of money, counted it, wrapped it up and handed it to me. He said, ‘Take good care and bring this to your father.'"

With this money, Cardinal Zen explained, the family had enough money to buy food for several months.

“Zhou's left hand did not know what his right hand was doing," the cardinal wrote, alluding to Christ's exhortation in the Gospel. The bishop of Hong Kong thus urged Catholics to follow the example set by the elderly Zhou.

"We should not worry about our lack of financial means," the cardinal further encouraged. "We can be at peace if we do what we can. Jesus openly praised the widow for giving two tiny coins.”

Wise man from Japan
now the 'black pope'
By KEVIN RAFFERTY
Special to The Japan Times


HONG KONG< Feb. 10 — An American Maryknoll priest in Hong Kong preached that the greatest blessings in life come when you least expect them, a rain shower on a hot day, a friend unexpectedly turning up, remission in a crippling illness, an inspiring idea just when your brain seemed to have turned into blancmange.

In Rome last month, something similar occurred. Leaders of the Society of Jesus, often regarded as the intellectual shock troops of the Roman Catholic Church, met to choose their new head, the 30th in the 468-year history of the society. Heavy storm clouds were gathering, with Pope Benedict XVI giving the Jesuits stern warnings not to stray from the official church line.

The gossipy Italian press suggested Jesuits from Europe, India, even Australia, for the new father general, nicknamed "the black pope." But on the second ballot the 217 voters chose someone who had escaped mention outside the Jesuit community.

They selected Father Adolfo Nicolas, a 71-year-old Spaniard who went to Japan as a young man 46 years ago and never left Asia except for going to Rome for further theological studies.

His choice is potentially of historic significance. Nicolas takes over as Pope Benedict is getting into his stride in his task of bringing erring priests and people back into line, with the zeal of someone who was the Vatican's theological watchdog before becoming pope.

In the last few months the Vatican issued a warning against the writings of a Vietnamese-born U.S.-based theologian whose writings have tried to bridge the gap between Catholicism and Asian religions. It also refused to accept a divorced man as Argentina's ambassador.

Pope Benedict weighed in with specific warnings to the Jesuits, and wrote to Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the outgoing Dutch father general, who at 80 asked to retire, even though the job is for life. The pPope urged the Jesuits to accept "total adhesion to Catholic doctrine."

He singled out "those neuralgic points which today are strongly attacked by secular culture, as for example the relationship between Christ and religions; some aspects of the theology of liberation; and various points of sexual morality, especially as regards the indissolubility of marriage and the pastoral care of homosexual persons."

Just in case that was not clear enough, Cardinal Franc Rode, who delivered the homily at the opening mass of the Jesuit congregation, expressed "sadness and anxiety" regarding aspects of Jesuit life and urged them to "think with the Church."

The cardinal told the National Catholic Reporter that he showed his text in advance to "superior authority," a reference to the Pope.

The Jesuits are important. They take a special vow of obedience to the Pope. Their training typically lasts for double the normal six years of ordinary priests, and they are active on frontline Church tasks.

The letters "SJ" that appear after a Jesuit's name are evocative. A joke records that leaders of Catholic religious organizations were squabbling in Rome over which was the most important, influential and close to God. They decided to pray for a sign. Eventually a piece of paper fluttered down from the top of the building where they were praying. It declared simply in Latin: "All Catholic religious organizations are equal." It was signed, "God SJ."

The nickname for the Jesuit father general of "black pope" only partly refers to the fact that he dresses in simple priestly black, as opposed to the white the pope habitually wears; it also reflects Jesuit power and influence.

But recently Jesuits have also been suffering the ills of Catholicism at large, notably declining numbers, from a high of 36,000 in the 1960s to slightly fewer than 20,000 today.

Enter Adolfo Nicolas as the new leader. The first amazing thing about his election was the happiness that greeted the news, sheer joy from Rome to Japan and the Philippines.

An elector from Europe asked, "Have we elected a saint?" Another described him as "the wise man from the East." A Hong Kong woman working with the Jesuits in Cambodia exclaimed, "There is hope for the Jesuits!"

In the Philippines, where Nicolas had worked from 2004 as moderator of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania, Bishop Francisco Claver said he was at supper with priesthood students and, "When we got the news, everyone cheered like we were winning a basketball game."

From Japan, where Nicolas spent most of his priestly life, a nun, Sister Filo Hirota praised Nicolas as "almost perfect, a very fine theologian, very human, with a wonderful sense of humor, prophetic in his vision, but he knows how to dialogue." She added that he does a very fine impression of Charlie Chaplin.

How very different from the pope, almost a difference between black and white. It is hard to see the austere, stern pope gaining such applause or being called affectionately "Father Nico," as many call the new Jesuit general. [What world is this hournalist living on?!!!!]

Nicolas is no lightweight. Indeed, in a prophetic paper prepared for the Asian Catholic bishops in 1990, he showed he was a man ahead of his time. He lamented secularization and feared the assault on wisdom from "bias, nonsense and the infinite varieties of selfish or group interests."

He also called for "A new justice for all humans regardless of age, race, gender, physical, financial or social capabilities, also a new justice for the Earth and all its living creatures and their habitats. This translates into a new justice for the coming generations of Asian peoples who will want to encounter the living God and his marvelous creation in the glorious beauty he so laboriously elaborated through billions of years: and not to be abandoned to a boring search for him through the devastated and exploited wastelands we are multiplying at present." This plea came almost a generation before it became fashionable to be green.

The real importance of Nicolas is that although raised in Europe, his formative years as a man and a Catholic priest were in Japan, which has few Catholics but much experience in religious thinking. Where the pope seems increasingly concentrated on obedience to the Church and toeing the line, Nicolas stresses the importance of listening and learning.

In his first encounter with the press, where no questions were allowed, he gave a flavor of himself. He chided journalists for trying to say he was 50 percent each of the previous generals Pedro Arrupe and Kolvenbach, saying, "I would not be surprised if someone said I am 10 percent Elvis Presley. This is false. I am in process, in fieri, until I become what God wants of me, as with all of us."

He also took issue with the search for conflict between the Jesuits and the pope. But he produced a daring, even challenging, comparison: "The Society of Jesus has always been in communion with the Holy Father and we are happy to be so. Between spouses there are always difficulties; if any of you who are married say there are not, I would not believe you. Only people who love each other can hurt each other."

Nicolas said that Japan "has changed me and helped me to understand others, to accept what is different and try to understand why it is different, in what lies the difference and how I can learn from that difference."

Japan, he added, "has taught me to smile at the difficulties, at human imperfection, the human reality. In Spain I was a little intolerant, thinking in terms of order, of commands, because I thought of religion as fidelity to religious practices, and in Japan I learned that true religiosity is more profound, that one must go to the heart of things, to the depths of our humanity, whether we are speaking of God or of ourselves and human life. Human life is this way, we people are this way; imperfections are so natural that it is necessary to accept them from the very beginning."

Put his way, Nicolas seems more truly Catholic — in its original meaning of "universal." His election could offer a marriage of black and white made in heaven. But it remains uncertain whether the wholly Roman pope will tolerate such diversity on Earth.

Kevin Rafferty was editor of The Universe, Britain's Catholic newspaper.

German Catholic Church
begins new era With unexpected chief
Deutsche Welle
2/12/2008



Robert Zollitsch, archbishop of Freiburg, unexpectedly has been named Karl Lehmann's successor as head of the German Catholic Church. He's considered a liberal and recommends making celibacy optional for priests.

After Cardinal Karl Lehmann, 71, announced his resignation in mid-January due to health problems, Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich, was considered most likely to take his place. The announcement on Tuesday, Feb. 12, that Robert Zollitsch would succeed Lehmann came as a surprise.

Sixty-nine-year-old Zollitsch, who will serve a six-year term, is known for his strong organizational skills and diplomacy. His diocese in Freiburg is the second largest of the 27 Catholic dioceses in Germany.

After officially taking office on Monday, he will be responsible for leading the bishops' meetings, representing the Bishops Conference to the government and the public, and serving as its spokesman.

Lehmann, who became cardinal in 1987, held the office longer than anyone else since World War II. Politicians and church members called his resignation the end of an era.

Like his friend and predecessor, Zollitsch has a reputation for not shying away from both touchy political topics and church disputes.

"Problems shouldn't be kept quiet, they have to be dealt with," he has said.

Zollitsch is considered a liberal and has advocated easing the Church mandate that priests remain unmarried and celibate.

He was born in 1938 to a German family in Filipovo in former Yugoslavia. They were expelled after the Second World War and fled to Germany.


From a CNA report:

Archbishop Zollitsch, who has governed the Freiburg archdiocese since 2003, described himself as an ally of Cardinal Lehmann, “theologically and personally so close that you’ll find it hard to notice a difference.”

During his tenure as chief spokesman for the German hierarchy, Cardinal Lehmann found himself in tension with the Holy See on several disputed points, such as allowing Communion for Catholics who are divorced and remarried, priestly celibacy, and the policies of church-run counseling centers regarding abortion referrals.


German Catholic bishops elect new leader

Wuerzburg, Germany, Feb. 12 (dpa) - Germany's Catholic bishops elected Robert Zollitsch, 69, archbishop of Freiburg in the south-west of the country, as their new spokesman and chairman. Zollitsch, succeeds Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who is retiring as chairman after 21 years because of heart problems, but will continue to be bishop of Mainz.

Lutheran leaders and figures from other faiths welcomed the choice, as did lay Catholic groups and Germany's two main political parties, the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats.

Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the choice, saying "Zollitsch approaches people with great openness and addresses their needs and concerns."

Germany's 25 million Catholics are organized in 27 dioceses. The chairman of the bishop's conference speaks for them in public, but has no especial doctrinal authority.

Zollitsch, who has been an archbishop since June 2003 and already oversees the church's national payroll, has been described as a liberal. He once said he would prefer priestly celibacy to be voluntary, not a rule.

He was chosen for a six-year term by his brother bishops at a meeting in Wuerzburg. His similarity in age and positions to Lehmann indicated a choice for continuity.

"We are theologically and personally so close that you'll find it hard to see a difference," Zollitsch said.

The bishops passed over another, more conservative candidate, Reinhard Marx, 54, who has been freshly enthroned as archbishop of Munich.

Lehmann said it would do Marx good to deal with the challenges of the new archdiocese first.

Marx's auxiliary bishop, Engelbert Siebler, said, "I expect Marx will be elected to the job in six years."

Observers said the choice also indicated a continued mood of independence among the 69 bishops towards Pope Benedict XVI, the German-born conservative theologian Joseph Ratzinger.

The Vatican's response may be gauged by the time it takes to award Zollitsch a cardinal's hat.

Anglican leader answers critics

London, Feb. 11, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The Archbishop of Canterbury has stirred up widespread discontent among Anglican Church leaders, and some calls for his resignation, with his remark that the use of shari'a law may be "unavoidable" in Great Britain.

Dr. Rowan Williams explained his remark in a February 11 address the Church of England synod, saying that some angry reactions had been based on an improper understanding of what he had said in a BBC interview. The Anglican primate said that "some of what has been heard is a very long way indeed from what was actually said."

The archbishop apologized for "any unclarity" and "any misleading choice of words that's helped to cause distress or misunderstanding among the public at large, and especially among my fellow Christians.'

However Dr. Williams did not renounce his statement that it would be appropriate to use shari'a law as an "accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with aspects of other kinds of religious law."

Archbishop Williams spoke to the synod after a number of influential Anglican clerics denounced his statement and several called for his resignation.

A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, said that Dr. Williams had "in my opinion overstated the case for accommodating Islamic legal codes." But Lord Carey said that his successor should not be expected to step down because of the remark.

British press sources indicated that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had contacted Dr. Williams, expressing his support but suggesting that the archbishop should issue a clarifying statement to address his critics.


And here is the view of a blogging priest from Ashford, Kent, in the United Kingdom, who read the entire speech from which Archbishop Williams's statement about sharia was lifted:



Monday, February 11, 2008
Bishop Burkha or Williams the Wise?
By JOHN BOYLE


Well, I've read the speech. And I think it is an excellent speech. It is very philosophical, and the Press have, in my humble opinion, been grossly unfair to him.

From the very beginning the Archbishop refers to the "largely secular social environment" as one in which the question of special legal provisions for religious groups become sharply focussed.

He makes no bones about the fact that "among the manifold anxieties that haunt the discussion of the place of Muslims in British society, one of the strongest, reinforced from time to time by the sensational reporting of opinion polls, is that Muslim communities in this country seek the freedom to live under sharia law."

Sometimes our fear of things can be quite irrantional. Sometimes it seems that Latin at Mass provokes a similar fear as sharia amongst some parishioners!

He also mentions the difficulties that the Catholic adoption agencies have been facing in relation to the Sexual Orientation Regulations.

I think his basic point is that society is made up of more than what makes a state. A totally secuarlised legal system places too much emphasis on individual acts and not enough on the context and cultural background of those acts. People are related to one another in all sorts of ways and it is those relationships that must be taken into account to define what is just and equitable.

A legal universalism is, therefore, unhealthy in any society, a universalism that states that the State and its legal system is supreme. Such a system, born out of the Enlightenment, becomes intolerant of the free desire of people to relate to one another in particular ways. It should be possible for different systems to exist within a State that, as it were, moderates the systems in the society to ensure that both the individual and the common good may be protected.

Dr Williams gives a number of concrete examples one of which I shall refer to.

Under sharia, there is a system of allowances for widows. This system was designed to ensure that widows got a fair settlement. However, nowadays, a widow would be disadvantaged if she places herself solely under sharia compared to what she might get under the civil dispensation.

He writes as follows: "Recognising the authority of a communal religious court to decide finally and authoritatively about such a question would ... not merely allow an additional layer of legal routes for resolving conflicts and ordering behaviour but would actually deprive members of the minority community of rights and liberties that they were entitled to enjoy as citizens; and while a legal system might properly admit structures or protocols that embody the diversity of moral reasoning in a plural society by allowing scope for a minority group to administer its affairs according to its own convictions, it can hardly admit or 'license' protocols that effectively take away the rights it acknowledges as generally valid."

And here is the answer he provides: "If any kind of plural jurisdiction is recognised, it would presumably have to be under the rubric that no 'supplementary' jurisdiction could have the power to deny access to the rights granted to other citizens or to punish its members for claiming those rights."

Any civil jurisdiction is therefore called upon to recognise that "citizenship ... is a complex phenomenon not bound up with any one level of communal belonging but involving them all."

Dr Williams describes as follows the role of secular law: QUOTE]"(it) is not the dissolution of these things (viz. overlapping identities - religous, cultural, etc) in the name of universalism but the monitoring of such affiliations to prevent the creation of mutually isolated communities in which human liberties are seen in incompatible ways and individual persons are subjected to restraints or injustices for which there is no public redress.

The rule of law is thus not the enshrining of priority for the universal/abstract dimension of social existence but the establishing of a space accessible to everyone in which it is possible to affirm and defend a commitment to human dignity as such, independence of membership in any specific human community or tradition, so that when specific communities or traditions are in danger of claiming finality for their own boundaries of practice and understanding, they are reminded that they have to come to terms with the actuality of human diversity - and that the only way of doing this is to acknowledge the category of 'human dignity as such'..."

Interview translated from
the Italian service of



After his election Monday as the new president of the German bishops conference succeeding Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Mons. Robert Zollitsch, Archbishop of Freiburg, said that during his six-year term, he would be committed to continuity with his predecessor's work and vigilant attention to ecumenical relations which are deeply felt in the German Church.



Zollitsch, 69, was interviewed by Mario Galgano of Vatican Radio's German section in Wuerzburg.

ZOLLITSCH: I had to take a deep breath after learning that I had been elected, and it was some time before it dawned on me what I must expect.

He was clear about his thoughts on the present and future of the German Church.

"I believe it is my primary task to continue the work carried on by my predecessor, Cardinal Karl Lehmann. We are very much linked from the theological and human points of view. Therefore there should be no substantial changes. It is the task of the bishops to continue along the way they have been taking so far.

"{As for ecumenism), I think it was very important what the Lutheran bishop of Baden said, that in certain parts of Germany, 'the clock of ecumenism' is ticking a different rhythm as that elsewhere. He meant it in a positive way, and it is something we must share.

"It is important for the future to reinforce our common testimony. this can be done by taking common positions with the other Christian communities in order to make our ecumenical commitment more visible and credible."

Zollitsch's election came after a runoff with Mons. Reinhold Marx, 54, the Archbishop of Munich-Freising named by Pope Benedict XVI last November. About his relationship with Mons. Marx, Zollitsch said:

"Mons. Marx and I are very united. We have spoken about strengthening our collaboration and reciprocal help. My election was a confirmation of the work I have been doing so far. Perhaps I was chosen over Mons, Marx because I am older, and that places the emphasis on continuity.

"But I must add that there are no substantial differences between us. When during the second balloting, it became clear that I would reach the majority, he was one of the very first to come forward to tell me he would follow my leadership and help."

New US ambassador to Vatican
arrives in Rome




ROME, Feb. 16 (AFP) — The new US ambassador to the Holy See, anti-abortion Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, arrived in Rome on Friday to take up her post, a mission spokeswoman said.

The United States and the Holy See have a "common vision rooted in respect for the dignity of each man, woman and child," Glendon said on her arrival, the mission's media advisor Amy Elizabeth Roth told AFP.

"Both the US and the Holy See have a long history in which faith and reason have been inseparably united in the quest to make that vision a reality," Glendon said, adding that both sought "to promote dialogue and tolerance between people of different faiths and cultures."

President George W. Bush appointed Glendon, 69, who has served on his council on bioethics, as his envoy to the Vatican in November.

She was sworn in on Thursday just before leaving the United States and was to present her credentials to Pope Benedict XVI in the coming days, Roth said.

Glendon, who has written extensively on abortion and divorce law, is the second woman to serve in the position following a stint by Lindsey Boggs in the late 1990s.

In 2004 Glendon became the first woman to serve in an advisory position in the Roman Catholic Church when she became the head of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

She resigned that position on Thursday, Roth said.

In 1995, Glendon led the Vatican delegation to the UN-sponsored international Beijing Conference on Women, where she drew fire for the Holy See's opposition to condom use as contraception or to battle the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Glendon, who has three children, said Rome "has long been like a second home to me," noting also that her eldest daughter and three of her six grandchilden live here.

She is a native of Pittsfield, Massachusetts.



Glendon:
Union of faith and reason
at core of US-Holy See relations
By Carrie Gress


ROME, FEB. 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Faith and reason are at the core of the collaboration between the United States and the Holy See to protect the rights of all people, said Mary Ann Glendon.

Glendon, who replaces out-going ambassador Francis Rooney, said this today at a press conference held at Rome's Fiumicino airport to mark her arrival as the new U.S. envoy to the Holy See.

Speaking to the press in both English and Italian, Glendon said: "I am very pleased to be here today in Rome in a city that has long been like a second home to me. And I'm especially pleased to be here to present my credentials to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.

"President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have honored me greatly with this appointment and I'm very grateful to them. As many of you are aware, for many years I've worked closely with the Holy See."

After listing some of the many posts in which she has served the Holy See in both diplomatic and academic capacities, Glendon continued: "It is my hope, my conviction that those experiences will serve me well as I now take up the responsibility of advancing the relationship between the United States and the Holy See. That relationship has at its core a common commitment to the human dignity of every man, woman and child.

"Both the Holy See and the United States have a long history in which faith and reason are inseparably united in that quest. The United States is committed to make that vision a reality through vigorously promoting human rights, religious freedom, and through striving to foster dialogue and tolerance among persons of different faiths and cultures."

"As ambassador to the Holy See," Glendon concluded, "it will be my responsibility and my privilege to work with the Holy See to advance those lofty goals."

In 2004, Pope John Paul II named Glendon president of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences, making her the first woman to head one of the major pontifical academies. Prior to her appointment, Glendon was the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University.

Film-maker Zeffirelli
to vote 'pro-life' in Italian polls


ROME, Feb. 16 (dpa) - Film director Franco Zeffirelli says he will support an anti-abortion ticket in Italy's upcoming elections as debate over changes to the country's law on the termination of pregnancy continues to inflame the pre-vote campaign.

Zeffirelli, a Roman Catholic, announced his support for conservative journalist Giuliano Ferrara's "pro-life" platform in an interview posted on a Catholic website, Petrus, on Friday.

"I admire Giuliano Ferrara ... it's true, in the past he was a Marxist, but conversion is possible for everyone," Zeffirelli said of Ferrara - a former Communist who is close to former centre-right premier Silvio Berlusconi.

On Thursday hundreds of women took to the streets in several Italian cities to defend a 1978 law which made abortion legal in the country.

The protestors, some of whom scuffled with police in Rome, were also manifesting their solidarity with a woman whose aborted fetus was confiscated by police in Naples the day before.

Police who said they were investigating possible irregularities, denied allegations they had burst into a hospital ward to interrogate the woman - identified in news reports as Silvana - just minutes after her abortion.

Abortion has featured prominently on the political agenda since Ferrara, a some-time speech-writer for former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, last week appealed to the media-mogul politician to back his anti-abortion drive.

Centre-right leader Berlusconi who currently tops opinion polls, first said he would push for the United Nations to approve a worldwide moratorium on abortion along the lines of one recently adopted by the UN on the death penalty.

However, Berlusconi later said he would not impose an anti-abortion stance on members of his People of Liberty party, prompting Ferrara to announce a separate election ticket for the April 13-14 polls.

Italy's centre-left, with the exception of several Catholics in its ranks, staunchly defends current legislation which - barring exceptions were a woman'shealth is deemedin great danger - allows pregnancies to be terminated up to three months from their start.

Unpopular at home,
Bush basks in African praise
By Barry Moody



Left phot, President and Mrs. Bush welcomed in Benin, first stop of their 5-nation African tour;
right, the President hugs pregnant lady at a Tanzania anti-malaria center.


DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Feb. 17 (Reuters) - Unpopular at home and in much of the world during the last year of his presidency, George W. Bush is basking in rare adulation on his African tour.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete poured praise on Bush in Dar es Salaam on Sunday, the second day of his five-nation African tour, each compliment applauded warmly by members of the east African country's cabinet.

Although around 2,000 Muslim demonstrators protested against Bush on the eve of his visit, many thousands more cheering, waving people lined his road from the airport on Saturday.

Banners across the route, decorated with Bush's image against a backdrop of Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro, read: "We cherish democracy. Karibu (welcome) to President and Mrs Bush."

Others read: "Thank you for helping fight malaria and HIV." Dancers at the airport and at Kikwete's state house to greet Bush on Sunday, wore skirts and shirts decorated with his face.

Back home, Bush is suffering some of the lowest approval ratings in his seven-year tenure and has been buffeted by criticism of his handling of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ailing economy.

Not surprisingly he is enjoying the different reception in Africa.

Beaming repeatedly during a press conference with Kikwete, he made a point of referring to his welcome on the streets, which he described as "very moving".

Bush opened his remarks by saying "Vipi Mambo!" before turning to U.S. journalists and adding: "For the uneducated, that's Swahili for 'Howdy Y'all'" --a typical Texas greeting.

Kikwete told Bush: "The outpouring of warmth and affection from the people of Tanzania that you have witnessed since your arrival is a genuine reflection of what we feel towards you and towards the American people."

In a reference to Bush's domestic problems, Kikwete added: "Different people may have different views about you and your administration and your legacy.

"But we in Tanzania, if we are to speak for ourselves and for Africa, we know for sure that you, Mr. President, and your administration have been good friends of our country and have been good friends of Africa."

Although many Africans, especially Muslims, share negative perceptions of Bush's foreign policy with other parts of the world, there is widespread recognition of his successful humanitarian and health initiatives on the continent.

Bush has spent more money on aid to Africa than his predecessor, Bill Clinton, and is popular for his personal programs to fight AIDS and malaria and to help hospitals and schools.

Bush has stressed new-style partnerships with Africa based on trade and investment and not purely on aid handouts.

His Millennium Challenge Corp. rewards countries that continue to satisfy criteria for democratic governance, anti-corruption and free-market economic policies.

Bush signed the largest such deal, for $698 million, with Kikwete on Sunday.

Because of the U.S. anti-malaria program, 5 percent of patients tested positive for the disease on the offshore islands of Zanzibar in 2007 compared to 40 percent three years earlier, the Tanzanian leader said.

Bush's legacy in Africa would be saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of mothers and children who would otherwise have died from malaria or AIDS and enabling millions of people to get an education, he said.

"I know you leave office in about 12 months' time. Rest assured that you will be remembered for many generations to come for the good things you've done for Tanzania and the good things you have done for Africa," Kikwete said.


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Another surprising thing is the number of pro-Bush messages in the Reuters Comments box to this article!
www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSL17797120080217?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=22...

By ANTHONY DePALMA and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
The New York Times
Published: February 20, 2008


HAVANA — Fidel Castro said Tuesday he would step down as the president of Cuba after a long illness, opening the way for his brother Raúl Castro or another member of his inner circle to become Cuba's president when Parliament chooses a new leader this weekend.

The announcement was made in a letter to the nation under Mr. Castro’s name, which was read on radio and television programs that many Cubans heard as they headed to work.

Under the Cuban Constitution, a newly chosen Parliament will choose a 31-member council of state on Sunday, which in turn will chose the next president. Though Cuban officials say the process is democratic, experts on Cuban politics say the decision on a successor remains in the hands of Fidel Castro, his brother and his inner circle, many of whom hold positions in the cabinet.

There seemed to be little if any outward reaction to the news, which many Cubans had been expecting for months. Schools remained open, garbage continued to be collected, and clusters of ordinary people waiting for buses or trucks to take them to work seemed as large and numerous as ever.

State-owned networks did not interrupt regular schedules, but read the announcement as part of the morning news, then returned to the usual mix of music and children’s broadcasting. Radio Rebelde, the radio service started by Mr. Castro in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra during the rebel uprising he led 50 years ago, broadcast popular music and a discussion of the roots of the Afro-Cuban sound, and mentioned his resignation only briefly during regularly scheduled newscasts, along with information about statements from the Venezuelan oil minister.

Despite the relative calm with which Tuesday morning’s announcement was received, the resignation signifies a monumental change on the island of some 11 million people. Mr. Castro’s decision to give up the presidency ends one of the longest tenures of a communist head of state, whose authority was among the most absolute.

In late July 2006, Mr. Castro, who is 81, handed over power temporarily to his brother, Raúl Castro, 76, and a few younger cabinet ministers, after he underwent emergency abdominal surgery. Despite many operations, he has never fully recovered, but has remained active in running government affairs from behind the scenes.

Now, just days before the National Assembly is to meet to select a new head of state, Mr. Castro has resigned permanently, and signaled his willingness to let a younger generation assume power, a proposition he first stated late last year. In the open letter to the Cuban people, he said his failing health made it impossible to return as president.

“I will not aspire to neither will I accept — I repeat I will not aspire to neither will I accept — the position of president of the Council of State and commander in chief,” he wrote in the letter, which was posted on the Web site of the state-run Granma newspaper in the early hours of Tuesday.

He added, “It would betray my conscience to occupy a responsibility that requires mobility and the total commitment that I am not in the physical condition to offer.”

President Bush, traveling in Rwanda on a tour of African nations, greeted the news by saying that the resignation should be the beginning of a democratic transition in Cuba leading to free elections. “The United States will help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty,” he said.

Mr. Bush called for Cuba to release political prisoners and to begin building “institutions necessary for democracy that eventually will lead to free and fair elections.”

But the announcement puts Raúl Castro in the position to be anointed as the Cuban head of state when the National Assembly meets on Sunday, prolonging the power structure that has run the country since Mr. Castro became ill.

Mr. Castro’s announcement left unclear the roles that other high-level government ministers — including Vice President Carlos Lage Dávila, and Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque — would play in the new government.

Mr. Castro also made it clear he was not fading into the sunset, but pledged to continue to be a force in Cuban politics through his writings, just as he had over the last year and a half. “I am not saying goodbye to you,” he wrote. “I only wish to fight as a soldier of ideas.”

That statement raised the possibility that little would change after Sunday’s vote, that Cuba would continue to be ruled in essence by two presidents, with Raúl Castro on stage while Fidel Castro lurked in the wings. At times over the last year and a half, the current government has seemed paralyzed when the two men disagree. In Washington, John D. Negroponte, deputy secretary of state, said it was unlikely that the United States would lift its trade embargo on Cuba, Reuters reported.

Mr. Castro has sent several signals in recent months that it was time for a younger generation to take the helm. For example, he said in December, “My primary duty is not to weld myself to offices, much less obstruct the path of younger people.”

In Tuesday’s letter, he expressed confidence that the country would be in good hands with a government composed of elements of “the old guard” and “others who were very young when the first stage of the revolution began.”

Mr. Castro said he had declined to step down earlier to avoid dealing a blow to the Cuban government before the people were ready for a traumatic change “in the middle of the battle” with the United States over control of the country’s future.

“To prepare the people for my absence, psychologically and politically, was my first obligation after so many years of struggle,” he said.

That strategy appeared to have been successful. After decades in which Mr. Castro seemed omnipresent, making endless speeches and appearing at rallies and ceremonies all over the island, he has not been seen in public since July 2006. No details of his illness or condition have ever been released. Many Cubans long ago accepted the fact that he must be seriously ill and would never be able to return to power.

“We are all born and we all die, and even if we wished that the commandante could be with us forever, it could not be,” said Eliana López, a state worker in the city of Matanzas who has lived nearly all of her 55 years with Mr. Castro as president. She said that his resignation was inevitable, as would be the total assumption of power by Raúl Castro. But she said she was convinced that although the change itself was monumental, the society built over the last 50 years would not undergo a drastic transformation.

“Under Raúl we will continue developing the same system that we’ve had over all these years,” Ms. Lopez said.

Mr. Castro seized power in January 1959 after waging a guerrilla war against the dictator Fulgencio Batista, promising to restore the Cuban Constitution and hold elections.

But he soon turned his back on those democratic ideals, embraced a totalitarian brand of communism and allied the island with the Soviet Union. He played a role in taking the world to the brink of nuclear war in the fall of 1962, when he allowed Russia to build missile-launching sites just 90 miles off the American shores. He weathered an American-backed invasion in 1961 and used Cuban troops to stir up revolutions in Africa and Latin America.

Those actions earned him the permanent enmity of Washington and led the United States to impose decades of economic sanctions that Mr. Castro and his followers maintain have crippled Cuba’s economy and kept their socialist experiment from succeeding completely.

The sanctions also proved handy to Mr. Castro politically. He cast every problem that Cuba faced as part of a larger struggle against the United States and blamed the “imperialists” to the north for the island’s abject poverty. A billboard on the so-called Monumental Highway leading to Havana declares that 70 percent of the Cuban population has lived under the embargo, which Cubans refer to as the blockade.

For good or ill, Mr. Castro is one of the most influential and controversial leaders to rise in Latin America since the wars of independence in the early 19th century, not only reshaping Cuban society, but providing inspiration for leftists across Latin America and in other parts of the world.

His record has been a mix of great social achievements and dismal economic performance that has mired most Cubans in poverty. He succeeded in providing universal health care and free education through college and made inroads in rooting out racism.

But he never broke the island’s dependence on commodities like sugar, tobacco and nickel, nor did he succeed in industrializing the nation so that Cuba could compete in the world market with durable goods.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of its aid to the island, Cuba has limped along economically, relying mostly on tourism and money sent home from exiles to get hard currency.

Yet Mr. Castro’s willingness to stand up to the United States and break free of American influence, even if it meant allying Cuba with another superpower, has been an inspiration to many Latin Americans, among them the new crop of left-leaning heads of state like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

Though he never restored democracy or the Cuban Constitution as he had promised, and has ruled with absolute — and at times ruthless — power.

In the minds of many Latin Americans, he stood in stark contrast to right-wing dictators like the one he overthrew, who often put the interests of business leaders and the foreign policy goals of Washington above the interests of their poorest constituents. Whether Mr. Castro’s remaking of Cuban society will survive the current transition remains to be seen. Some experts note that Raúl Castro is more pragmatic and willing to admit mistakes than his brother. He has given signals he may try to follow the Chinese example of state-sponsored capitalism.

Others predict that, without Fidel Castro’s charismatic leadership, the government will have to make fundamental changes to the economy or face a rising tide of unrest among rank-and-file Cubans.


Anthony DePalma reported from Havana, and James C. McKinley Jr. from Mexico City. Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York.


SOURCE:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/world/americas/20cuba.html?pagewanted=2&hp

=====================================================================


Castro move sparks relief, suspicion in Miami

By Jim Loney
Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:05pm EST

MIAMI (Reuters) - In the heartland of opposition to Fidel Castro, some Miami exiles expressed relief at the Cuban leader's resignation on Tuesday but others said they doubted it would end his overwhelming influence on their homeland.

The news that the 81-year-old Castro would not seek a new term as president after nearly a half century in power sparked no immediate celebrations in the streets of Little Havana, the neighborhood west of downtown Miami that is home to many of the area's 650,000-strong exile community.

"It's very good that Fidel resigns. But if Fidel dies, it's better," said physical therapist Juan Acosta, 58, as he stopped for a newspaper on Calle Ocho, Little Havana's main street.

"The system there is almost over. You are seeing the end," said Acosta, who left behind his mother and sister when he left the island in 1980. "The dictatorship is over."

A subtropical U.S. city just 200 miles north of the Caribbean island, Miami has been dominated by Cuban exiles for as long as Castro has held power.

Among the thousands who fled the island after Castro's 1959 revolution were Cubans whose property and businesses were nationalized, survivors of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and many who say they were jailed and tortured or lost loved ones to government executioners.

Miami became a hotbed of exile politics where virulently anti-communist militants plotted against Castro and those who failed to oppose him found themselves targeted by hate campaigns and, occasionally, car bombs or Molotov cocktails.

But as some of Castro's most ardent foes died and younger generations of Cuban-Americans, born in Florida, became the majority, the exile community mellowed.

'WON'T BE OUT OF THE WAY'

On Tuesday, motorists honked horns, a pink placard called for "Freedom for Cuba" and just a few demonstrators waved red, white and blue Cuban flags outside the popular Versailles restaurant, where exiles chatted about the news over their morning coffee.

"I'd be more relieved to see him tortured and killed. He won't be out of the way," said Alfredo Hidalgo-Gato, a U.S.-born son of Cuban parents who left Cuba in 1959. "It's just a political move. He won't be out of the way until the day he dies."

"It's to put somebody in place before he dies," he said. "Whatever he does, it's for his benefit, not ours. Not for the liberty of Cuba, not for the exiles and not for his people."

The Cuban-American National Foundation, a leading anti-Castro organization, said Castro's resignation "opens a new chapter in the history of the revolution and the history of the Cuban people."

"After 50 years there is no more one-man rule in Cuba because his successors cannot maintain the same power and the same position that he attained during the last 50 years," CANF president Francisco "Pepe" Hernandez said.

Castro, 81, said he would not return as head of state. He has not appeared in public since undergoing stomach surgery nearly 19 months ago.

The streets of Little Havana erupted in noisy celebrations when Castro announced in July 2006 that he was handing over power temporarily to his brother, Raul. The reaction was more subdued on Tuesday as exiles already accustomed to Castro's absence from the spotlight wondered what comes next.

Orlando Goncalez, 80, came to Florida 44 years ago and on Tuesday remembered those lost to the revolution as he sat on a folding chair on a street corner, selling Cuban flags.

"A lot of my friends were executed. For nothing," he said. "But the end of the nightmare is near. No one knows when, but soon."


SOURCE: www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1924134520080219...


=====================================================================

This was Reuters's first report on Castro's retirement:


Fidel Castro retires
after 49 years in power

HAVANA, Feb. 19 (Reuters) - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro stepped down on Tuesday 49 years after taking power in an armed revolution, closing the book on a Cold War career that turned him into a leftist icon and a tyrant to his foes.

Castro, 81, who has not appeared in public since undergoing stomach surgery almost 19 months ago, said he would not seek a new term as president or leader of Cuba's armed forces when the National Assembly meets on Sunday.

His retirement raised expectations for change on the communist island, but Cuba experts said limited economic reforms were more likely than swift political change.

"To my dear compatriots, who gave me the immense honor in recent days of electing me a member of parliament ... I communicate to you that I will not aspire to or accept -- I repeat not aspire to or accept -- the positions of president of the Council of State and commander-in-chief," Castro said in a statement published in the Communist Party's Granma newspaper.

President George W. Bush, who has tightened the decades-old economic embargo against Castro's government, said his retirement ought to begin a democratic transition.

"Eventually this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections. And I mean free and I mean fair," Bush said in Rwanda during a tour of Africa.

Cuba's National Assembly, a rubber-stamp legislature, is expected to nominate Castro's brother and designated successor Raul Castro as president. The 76-year-old defense minister has been running the country since emergency intestinal surgery forced his older brother to delegate power on July 31, 2006.

Raul Castro has promoted more open debate about the failings of Cuba's command economy, but he is unlikely to make bold political changes to the one-party state. Fidel Castro will remain influential as first secretary of the ruling Communist Party.

"This is a crucial moment. Cuba wants change, the people want change," said Oswaldo Paya, Cuba's best-known dissident.

Cubans on the quiet streets of Havana were not surprised by Castro's retirement, first announced on Granma's Web site in the middle of the night.

"Everyone knew for a while that he would not come back. The people got used to his absence," said Roberto, a self-employed Cuban who did not want to be fully named.

"I don't know what to say. I just want to leave. This system cannot continue," said Alexis, a garbage collector.

In Miami, the heartland of exiled opposition to the Castro brothers, reaction was subdued.

"It's very good that Fidel resigns. But if Fidel dies, it's better," said Juan Acosta, a Cuban who left the Caribbean island in 1980, as he stopped to buy a newspaper on Calle Ocho, the main street in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

European governments said Castro's retirement could open the door to democratic change.

"Fidel Castro's resignation is the end of an era that started with freedom and ended with oppression," said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

The charismatic Castro led the bearded and cigar-chomping guerrillas who swept down from the mountains of eastern Cuba to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

He then turned Cuba into a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and became the world's longest-serving head of state, barring monarchs.

Castro survived a CIA-backed invasion of Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, as well as assassination attempts, the continuing U.S. trade embargo, and an economic crisis in the 1990s after the collapse of Soviet bloc communism.

He played a key role in taking the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when he let Moscow put ballistic missiles in Cuba, leading to a 13-day stand-off between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Famous for his long speeches delivered in green military fatigues, Castro is admired in the Third World for standing up to the United States but considered by his opponents a dictator who suppressed freedom.

Supporters point to Cuba's advances in health and education for all its citizens. Critics, led by the United States and the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who live abroad, say he turned the island into a police state and wrecked its economy.

Castro was close to death in 2006 and has looked gaunt and frail in the few videotapes of him broadcast since his surgery, but Cuba's leadership has showed no sign of collapse.

"Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process," Castro said in Tuesday's statement, adding that he would continue to write his newspaper columns.

"This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas ... It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard."

Frank Mora, a political scientist at the National War College in Washington, said Castro's successors will likely be forced to head down paths that he would disapprove of.

"He will not go into some sunset nor will he become that crazy uncle in the attic, but they are pushing him up those stairs," Mora said.

(Additional reporting by Rosa Tania Valdes in Havana, Deborah Charles in Rwanda, and Michael Christie in Miami; Editing by Kieran Murray)

Castro's rule marked by stormy relations
with Catholic Church
By Agostino Bono
Catholic News Service



Castro screenshot from a TV interview he gave in June 2007.


WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (CNS) - During nearly 50 years of rule, Fidel Castro had an often-stormy relationship with the Cuban Catholic Church.

The Jesuit-educated Castro was equally comfortable defusing the Cuban church as an institutional force during the early years of his revolution in the 1960s as he was bantering casually with Pope John Paul II during the papal visit to Cuba in 1998.

The 81-year-old Cuban leader announced Feb. 19 that he was retiring as head of the island nation. He had temporarily ceded power to his younger brother, Raul Castro, in July 2006, after undergoing surgery because of intestinal bleeding -- but he never returned to office, ending more than 49 years of continuous rule.

He came to power on the Caribbean island Jan. 1, 1959, at 32 years of age after leading a successful guerrilla rebellion against unpopular dictator Fulgencio Batista.

After Batista came to power in 1952, Castro, a young lawyer, started organizing a rebel force.

Initially, his successful rebellion had ample support among Catholics. He cultivated the support by saying his revolution was motivated by Christian principles. In a press interview with a Catholic priest shortly after taking power, Castro noted that six priests were chaplains to his rebel forces.

But things quickly changed. In 1961, he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and made Cuba the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere, moving it into the Cold War camp of the Soviet Union.

His government began institutionally dismantling the church, nationalizing 350 Catholic schools and expelling 136 priests. Church activity was restricted to religious services on church property. Social action projects were prohibited. Church programs were monitored, and Cubans were discouraged from attending worship services with churchgoers discriminated against when seeking state and university employment.

Castro's view of the church further soured in the mid-1960s during Operation Pedro Pan, in which U.S. church officials helped resettle 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children sent to the U.S. by parents wanting them to escape Castro's rule.

Despite the crackdown on the church, Castro never broke diplomatic relations with the Vatican and continued for decades to get from Vatican, Cuban and U.S. church officials statements criticizing the crippling U.S. economic boycott of Cuba, which he constantly cited as the reason for Cuba's economic woes.

Because of this church support there also were some positive notes in church-state relations.

During a 2006 U.S. visit, Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino of Havana said that starting in the 1980s "there was an evolution on the part of the government," increasing church-state communication, and "the tension began to diminish."

The result was that limits on the church no longer involved the ability to worship but involved the continued inability to have Catholic schools or teach religion in public schools, said the cardinal.

But Castro also knew how to play foreign church factions against the Cuban hierarchy to make it look as if only local Catholics opposed his rule.

In the 1970s Castro tapped into Latin American theologians' interest in Marxism and their political interest in socialism as an alternative to the capitalism practiced in the region. He cultivated support among non-Cuban Catholic intellectuals and priests dissatisfied with the region's growing gap between the rich and the poor, inviting them to visit his island as a counterpoint to criticisms by Cuban and Vatican church officials.

In 2003 he sidestepped the Cuban bishops and directly negotiated with the Vatican to allow a group of Brigittine Sisters entry into Havana at a time when the Cuban bishops had a long list of foreign priests and nuns wanting entry visas.

In the early 1990s, serious talks began about the possibilities of a papal visit to Cuba in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

After a 1996 Castro visit with Pope John Paul at the Vatican, plans finally developed for the Jan. 21-25, 1998, papal trip, interpreted as a sign of improved church-state relations based on a willingness by the government to give the church more breathing space in the post-Cold War era.

Castro met the pope several times during the Cuban visit, allowed church officials to mobilize Catholics to attend papal events and permitted papal activities to be televised and reported in the state-controlled media.



CASTRO'S MEMOIRS:
NO REGRETS
By Carol J. Williams
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer


MIAMI, fEB. 20 -- No one familiar with Fidel Castro's oratory and ego is surprised that his autobiography runs more than 600 pages and concedes neither error nor excess during his nearly 50 years ruling Cuba.

What has surprised analysts has been his conciliatory approach to some of his erstwhile adversaries, including Presidents Kennedy, Clinton and Carter, the latter of whom he termed "a man of honor, an ethical man."

As Castro steps down from the presidency, Fidel Castro: My Life, provides a panoramic view of the 81-year-old leader's years in power. The book, first published in Spain in 2006, was edited by Castro in his sickbed for release in the U.S. last month.

Throughout the book, Castro touts what he considers prime accomplishments of his revolution: universal literacy, free higher education, one of the world's lowest infant-mortality rates and a healthcare network that treats all Cubans for free and provides relief in the Third World and to victims of natural disasters from Pakistan to Haiti.

What does Castro regret in five turbulent decades that included the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, the Mariel boatlift and the fall of communism across much of the world? Nothing, he says -- not the dissidents jailed for demanding elections, the rivals executed nor the thousands of lives lost in the Cuban military's "internationalist" deployments.

"I have not one iota of regret about what we've done in our country and the way we've organized our society," Castro told coauthor Ignacio Ramonet during more than 100 hours of interviews over three years, ending in December 2005.

Castro insists throughout the discourse that the communist nature of Cuba's revolution is "irrevocable." But he also warns that Cubans can kill off his life's work if they continue to follow the siren cries of capitalism and self-enrichment.

"This revolution can destroy itself. We, we can destroy it, and we would be to blame," he says.

Bellicose and swashbuckling, with his trademark fatigues and scruffy beard, Castro frequently outmaneuvered his powerful neighbor and archenemy over the second half of the 20th century.

Though a succession of U.S. presidents and hard-line Cuban exiles in Miami regarded him as a dictator who trampled on the rights of his people, Castro stood as a symbol for many Latin American leaders who envied his defiance of the powerful norteamericanos.

His reach, and appeal, spanned the globe. He aided revolutionaries from Nicaragua to Angola, supported leftists such as Chile's Salvador Allende and Grenada's Maurice Bishop, fomented unrest against conservatives in Venezuela and Argentina, and kept allies in power in Mozambique.

Born in a village in eastern Cuba on Aug. 13, 1926, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was the son of a prosperous Spanish immigrant and the servant he had taken as a mistress. He was sent to a Jesuit-run boys academy in the capital, and then studied law at the University of Havana.

Castro excelled at both basketball and baseball, but he also began plotting revolution as a student. Resentful of U.S. backing of corrupt leaders and ownership of exploitative factories and plantations, he joined the Orthodox Party, which embraced the legacy of Jose Marti.

He ran as an Orthodox Party candidate for parliament in 1952, but the vote was canceled when Gen. Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government and imposed a right-wing dictatorship.

Castro organized a revolutionary movement. An attack in 1953 on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba failed miserably, and several dozen of his followers were killed. Castro and many others were captured. Freed two years later in an amnesty for political prisoners, he fled to Mexico.

Castro, Ernesto "Che" Guevara and 80 followers headed back to Cuba in late 1956 to launch the revolution that led to their seizure of power on New Year's Day 1959.

Initially acclaimed on the international stage, Castro charmed journalists and socialites in New York and Washington that April.

Countless biographers, interviewers and political scientists say his lifelong confrontation with his northern neighbor didn't have to happen. In their view, Batista supporters whose homes and businesses had been seized by Castro encouraged Washington to reject him, pushing him into the arms of the Soviet Union.

President Eisenhower slapped a trade embargo on Cuba in October 1960 and severed diplomatic relations three months later. The $1.8 billion worth of U.S.-owned property nationalized after the revolution remains uncompensated and a barrier to trade and diplomatic relations.

On the eve of the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro proclaimed himself a Marxist-Leninist. Beholden to Moscow and fearful of another U.S. attack, Castro permitted the Soviet Union to install medium-range missiles in his country in 1962, and found himself caught in the middle of a high-stakes Cold War showdown that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Through the next decades, Castro aided leftist movements around the world. But despite improvements in living standards at home, Cuba could not keep up with the economic development of the West. He resorted to repression when the early successes of his revolution and popular enthusiasm for it faded.

Exiles who were able to visit Cuba beginning in the late 1970s provided evidence of their prosperity. Cubans began hijacking small aircraft, commandeering boats and besieging embassies for asylum.

In 1980, Castro allowed anyone who wanted to leave to travel from the port city of Mariel. About 125,000 took him up on the offer -- including some prisoners and mental patients whom Castro freed.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended Moscow's subsidies to Havana and forced Castro to grudgingly permit some economic liberalization. Castro later tried to roll back those reforms, but remittances from relatives abroad quickly became a mainstay of the Cuban economy.

And a brief opening to the United States early this decade closed as well. In 2003, Castro jailed 75 dissidents. Some were previously released, and Spain said last week that it had negotiated freedom for seven more.

Forced by a serious intestinal illness to cede power to his brother, Raul, in the summer of 2006, Castro has been out of the limelight for most of the last 18 months. It was in that time that he pored over the text of his autobiography.

In the book, he denounces the corruption that has become widespread in his country, as workers moved by greed, envy or hunger steal from their offices or factories.

Castro laments the encroachment of the U.S. dollar into his island's economy. The opening of hard-currency stores to bring those dollars into the state coffers created a class divide between people with dollars and those earning only unconvertible pesos.

"I'll have the glory of dying without a penny of convertible currency," Castro boasts, denying claims that he has squirreled away billions abroad. He said his salary has been $30 a month for decades.

Castro also denounces what he sees as selfish consumerism rampant in the United States, asking readers to imagine the pollution and depletion of fossil fuels that would result if all the world had the per capita car ownership of his nemesis to the north.

With so many Cubans eager to earn more, Castro may be out of touch with his people. Few Cubans appear to disparage the availability of imported goods, only their inability to buy them.

But Peter Kornbluh, head of the Cuba documentation project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, also was struck by Castro's "charitable descriptions of more than one president."

Kennedy, under whose presidency the Bay of Pigs invasion was launched and the Cuban missile crisis resolved, was "one of the United States' most brilliant personalities," Castro said.

Carter was "one of the country's most honest presidents," he said. Carter, president during the 1980 Mariel immigration crisis, was allowed to visit Cuba in 2002.

Asked by Ramonet in the book if he found Clinton more constructive than the Republican leaders who came before and after him, Castro said that he did, and that Clinton "wasn't particularly demanding."

Castro's ideological heroes, he asserts, were his fallen revolutionary comrade Guevara, South Africa's Nelson Mandela and China's Jiang Zemin. A prolific reader, Castro also pays homage to authors Ernest Hemingway and Miguel de Cervantes, creator of his favorite character, Don Quixote.

He describes those who oppose him as "lumpen" instruments of Washington, and the hundreds of thousands who have fled as selfish.

Despite his vitriolic sentiments toward President Bush and South Florida's staunchly anti-Communist Cuban exiles, Castro expresses often his affection for the U.S. populace.

"Never has the revolution blamed the American people" for the caustic state of Cuban-U.S. relations, he said.

But he concludes his self-assessment with a characteristic prediction that he will prevail, even if from the grave.

"Our enemies should not delude themselves; I die tomorrow and my influence may actually increase," he says. "I may be carried around like El Cid -- even after he was dead his men carried him around on his horse, winning battles."

This is one of those peripheral stories that I did not get to post in a timely manner.



Kobia has met with Pope Benedict yearly since 2006 and participated annually in the January 25 Ecumenical Vespers to mark the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Photo from this year's Vespers.


Departing world churches' head defends record
By Robert Evans

GENEVA, Feb. 21 (Reuters) - The departing head of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Samuel Kobia of Kenya, on Wednesday issued a strong defence of his four-year record in the job after criticism of his performance from a senior German bishop.

Delegates to the WCC's policy-setting Central Committee, who on Monday accepted his decision not to seek a second term, gave Kobia a standing ovation for a farewell speech in which he vowed to remain true to ecumenism -- unity across Christian churches.

"My commitment to the WCC and to the ecumenical movement remains total," declared Kobia, 60, who will remain as general secretary until his mandate runs out at the end of this year.

Kobia's surprise decision, which he said was for personal reasons, came in the wake of critical comments from Bishop Martin Hein of Kassel in an interview with a Protestant news service, and revelations that a doctorate he held was invalid.

The one-time Methodist pastor from a rural Kenyan parish had already defended his management record at a news conference during the Central Committee's week-long gathering. He also said he had been shocked to learn the U.S. university which issued his doctorate was not authorised to grant degrees.

In an unusual move, Kobia on Wednesday issued Central Committee delegates with a confidential self-assessment of his work over the first four years of his mandate.

In the document, Kobia said he had travelled widely -- one of the points raised by Bishop Hein -- to "share and interpret the vision and content of our programmes" with member churches.

He acknowledged that the body had tried to do too much with limited resources, but said there had also been "major achievements" in improving the 60-year-old WCC's finances after a serious crisis from 2000 to mid-2003.

Kobia's leadership was never raised publicly during the long Central Committee deliberations on a wide range of issues affecting the WCC, which groups 349 Protestant and Orthodox church bodies representing some 560 million believers.

Committee members, who total 148 from around the globe, remained tight-lipped after the gathering ended, declining to comment on why Kobia decided against seeking a second term.

The Rev Kobia, a Methodist minister whose US doctorate was revealed last week to have been issued by an unaccredited institution, earlier told the committee he would not stand for a second term for "private reasons."

WCC watchers in Geneva's diplomatic community said that although the German criticism carried weight because Germany's Protestant churches provide around one third of WCC finances, it was almost certainly not enough alone to make him step down.

The WCC has decided to appoint a search committee for a new general secretary to be elected at its next meeting in September 2009, the WCC said in a statement.


The following background stories come from the blog maintained by Reuters's religion editor and correspondents:


Kobia says will not seek second WCC term
By Tom Heneghan, religious editor

February 18th, 2008
The Rev. Samuel Kobia has informed the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee that he won’t seek a second five-year term after all.

The WCC has just put out a statement that “buries the lead,” as we say, by starting off saying it has appointed a search committee for a new head, to be elected in September. It then says Kobia had informed the Central Committee of his decision, citing personal reasons for not running again. His term ends in December.

“The central committee received this news with regret but accepts the decision of the general secretary. We want to respect his decision and privacy,” WCC Central Committee moderator Rev. Dr. Walter Altmann said Monday night, according to the statement.

“We want to express the deep gratitude of the World Council of Churches for the dedicated services he has given to the council since becoming general secretary in January 2004.”



Just before the announcement, the blog ran this, also by Heneghan:


Is Kobia on his way out at the WCC?

February 18th, 2008
Only a few days ago, Samuel Kobia from Kenya was running unopposed for a second five-year term as general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) at its Central Committee meeting now being held in Geneva. The story seemed pretty ho-hum.

Then the German Protestant news agency epd revealed he had a “digital doctorate” from a unaccredited diploma mill in the U.S. Now he’s in danger of losing his job running the WCC, the global Christian grouping of 349 churches (mostly Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox) that represent more than 560 million believers around the world.

Our correspondent in Geneva Robert Evans reports he may be on his way out. The rumour making the rounds is that we may hear as early as Tuesday that he will not be there much longer.

All because of a phony Ph.D? No, there’s a lot more where that story came from. The epd also ran a scathing interview with Lutheran Bishop Martin Hein of Kassel, the top German on the WCC Central Committee, in the run-up to the meeting. He made it abundantly clear that the German Protestants, who contribute one-third of the WCC budget, had lost patience with Kobia. Here’s a taste of what he said:

“The WCC takes stands on everything. The World Council of Churches does not have to be a little United Nations.”

Hein noted the WCC played an active role during the Cold War and the apartheid era in South Africa but added: “The real difficulty is that both those political challenges are now gone.”

He criticsed Kobia for taking decisions without much consultation and traveling around too much: “I’m sometimes amazed how often the secretary general is on the road.”

“In the long term, one-third of the costs of the WCC cannot come exclusively from Germany,” Hein said, adding he thought other churches in the Global North, including the Orthodox churches, could give more.

Kobia, 60, told a news conference last week that he saw visiting outlying faith communities around the world as part of his mandate. Responding to another complaint voiced by Hein, he said the WCC had cut back on some of its many programmes.

Kobia would be the first head of the WCC to serve only one term if he steps down. The first general secretary, Willem A. Visser ‘t Hooft of the Netherlands, served from 1948 to 1966. Kobia’s immediate predecessor, Konrad Raiser from Germany, served from 1993 to 2003.

Raul Castro takes helm in Cuba
By Anthony Boadle



HAVANA, Feb. 24 (Reuters) - Raul Castro took over from his brother Fidel Castro as Cuban president on Sunday, ending the rule of the bearded rebel who defied the United States for five decades but vowing to continue his communist revolution.

A former hardliner feared for his ruthlessness but who has adopted a more moderate tone in recent years, Raul Castro, 76, nodded and smiled as legislators applauded his selection by the rubber-stamp National Assembly.

He is expected to pursue limited economic reforms to tackle food shortages and poor living standards but in a sign that abrupt or major change is unlikely, Communist Party ideologue Jose Ramon Machado Ventura was named to the No. 2 job of first vice president.

In his first speech as president, Raul Castro said he would continue to consult his older brother on important issues.

"The mandate of this legislature is clear ... to continue strengthening the revolution at a historic moment," he said.


Castro photographed by Brazilian President Lula
when he visited him last Jan. 15.

Fidel Castro, 81, stepped down Tuesday due to ill health, ending his long rule of the West's last communist state.

He overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in a 1959 revolution at the height of the Cold War and then survived assassination attempts, a CIA-backed invasion, the Soviet Union's collapse and a U.S. economic embargo to rule for almost half a century.

He won support at home by providing health and education services for all Cubans but he also jailed his opponents and critics accuse him of imposing a dictatorship.

Raul Castro said he was accepting the presidency on the condition that his brother continued to be the "commander in chief of the revolution" -- a title created for him during his guerrilla uprising. "Fidel is Fidel. Fidel is irreplaceable."

Raul Castro lacks the oratorical flair of his brother, but he has encouraged ordinary Cubans in the last 19 months to air concerns over the economy, raising hopes of modest reforms.

The U.S. government has dubbed Raul Castro "Fidel Lite" and dismisses the leadership change as the handing of power from one dictator to another.

"If you look at the nature of the people in charge, this is the Old Guard, it's the hard line and there is no reason for us to feel a sense of optimism for the Cuban people," U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told Reuters on Sunday.

CHANGE FOR SURVIVAL

The appointment of Machado, a member of Raul Castro's inner circle, suggested that change would be subtle.

"This is about signaling continuity externally and internally," said Julia Sweig, an expert on Cuba at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington, although she said Cuba's leaders are well aware they need to address food shortages and other problems.

Jose Oro, a former director of Cuba's Mining and Geology Department who fled to the United States in 1991, said Raul Castro might seek "a kind of arrangement" with Washington to open the door to more trade and tourism now that Cold War rivalries have eased.

"He knows that Cuba is a fifth rate issue (in the United States)," Oro said. "Today the Oscar awards are more important than his election as president in Cuba."

In the ramshackle streets of old Havana, some residents huddled around radios on Sunday but others, more concerned with coping with day-to-day economic challenges than with politics, went about their daily business, shopping for fruit and vegetables or playing dominoes on the sidewalk.

"With Raul, people hope the economy will improve. It won't happen quickly but maybe within 10 years the economy could stabilize," said Jorge, 42, an electrician who asked not to be fully identified.

Cuban exiles in Miami, the heartland of opposition to the Castro brothers, were not surprised at the appointments.

"It's once more depriving the Cuban people of choosing their destiny," said Ninoska Perez of the Cuban Liberty Council, a hardline anti-Castro group.

Raul Castro has led Cuba since July 2006 when his brother provisionally handed over power after intestinal surgery.

A leftist icon in his army fatigues, cap and beard but oppressor of his people to his enemies, Fidel Castro has been reduced by illness to a shuffling old man.

He has not been seen in public since his surgery, but will continue to wield influence as head of the Communist Party and by writing articles in "the battle of ideas".

Cuba's main benefactor, President Hugo Chavez of oil exporter Venezuela, pledged to continue supporting Cuba, dismissing speculation he does not get on with Raul Castro.

"The international campaign has already begun to make people believe that Raul and I are not close, that things will now change. Nothing will change," said Chavez, who has pursued his own socialist revolution and become an outspoken U.S. foe.



Cuban bishops give
'vote of confidence'
to Raul Castro


Havana, Feb. 25 (dpa) - The Cuban Catholic Bishops' Conference (COCC) on Monday gave a "vote of confidence" to new President Raul Castro, who they said has promised to implement changes for the "welfare of the Cuban people."

"At this time our prayer goes up to the Lord and to Our Lady of Charity, our Mother, the patron saint of Cuba, for them to have the light from above to carry out with determination those transcendental measures that we know must be progressive, but which can start to satisfy from now the longings and interests expressed by Cubans," the COCC said in a statement.

Raul Castro was elected the country's new leader on Sunday, replacing his brother Fidel Castro who ruled Cuba for nearly 50 years.

The Catholic bishops recalled that they have at various times in the recent past prayed that peace would not be disturbed on the Caribbean island.

"Today we want to thank God because that peace made it possible, at a certain time, that the highest authorities in the country invited workers, students and the people at large to debate the most urgent problems of all sorts that affect our people," the

God creeps into France
By Keith Spicer
The Ottawa Citizen
Monday, February 25, 2008

I was going to post this in CULTURE & POLITICS... since it is an article about a possible sea-change in France, but President Sarkozy,as the article goes on to show, bears a large part of the responsibility for any such change...


President Sarkozy at an agricultural fair outside Paris today.



PARIS - Germans, expressing ecstasy, purr that they are "as happy as God in France."

But - Mein Gott! - France passed a law in 1905 kicking God out of France. Well, of public life. That includes state schools, government and political discourse, with only a few anomalies: many official holidays reflect the Catholic calendar; and, while believers pay clergy, the state pays for upkeep of church buildings pre-dating 1905.

The 1905 law separating church and state introduced the French particularity of laïcité. This is too narrowly translatable as "secularism." It means much more: the state must avoid any link, reference or deference to religion.

Laïcité has seeped into Frenchmen's marrow. Even fervent Catholics uphold it. No French president - Charles de Gaulle, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing or Jacques Chirac, for example - ever invoked God in a speech. If attending a funeral in Notre-Dame Cathedral, officially a national monument, they would not take communion.

Chirac fought to banish any reference to Christianity in the preamble to the European constitution. He banned Muslim veils and other ostentatious religious symbols in state schools.

All presidents honour Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders. But curiously, they also regularly meet the Grand Master of the main, vigilantly laïque Masonic Lodge, the politically influential Grand Orient de France. Such meetings are close to a state ritual of agnosticism - of confirming freedom not to believe as well as to believe.

Now, dramatically and on several fronts, President Nicolas Sarkozy has got religion - including "morality." He's not exactly known as a passionate church-goer - a grenouille de bénitier ('frog in a baptismal font').


President Sarkozy and his new wife, Carla Bruni, shown in the Elysee Palace today, during a meeting with the family
of Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician who has been held hsotage by Colombian guerrillas.

A self-described "cultural Catholic," he has now been married three times and, claims ex-wife Cécilia, is a champion skirt-chaser. Money also sticks to him. When he won the presidency, he quickly increased his presidential salary by 140 per cent. And investigators pursuing him in a housing scandal from his mayoral days in suburban Neuilly somehow found more pressing priorities.

But in a book barely noticed four years ago, and in recent spectacular speeches to Catholic, Muslim and Jewish audiences, Sarkozy has dragged God back into public debate. In his 2004 book called (translated from French) Republic, Religions, Hope, he revealed an affinity for issues of faith remarkable for a French politician steeped in laïcité.

He showed fascination with religion when he was interior minister, a job embracing government dealings with organized religion and forbidden, brain-washing "sects." He united scattered Muslim groups into a single interlocutor for the state.

Since then, he has hyped faith-related morality and values at every turn. During last year's presidential campaign, he praised "Christian values" embedded in Europe's and France's identities. His opposition to Turkey someday joining the European Union seems rooted in Islam's alleged "foreignness" to the continent's Judeo-Christian values.

When he slyly says: "If Turkey were part of Europe, somebody would have noticed," he's not just talking geography.

In Rome last December, Sarkozy thrilled Pope Benedict XVI by praising Europe's Christian roots and values: "In transmitting and learning the difference between Good and Evil," he lyricized, "the (state) schoolteacher can never replace the priest or pastor."

In Riyadh last month, he extolled to devout Saudi hosts "the transcendent God who is in the thoughts and hearts of every person" - another astounding phrase for a president legally bound to secularism.

In Paris last week, he told a Jewish audience faith-based morality reflected "a transcendence all the more credible that it is declining in (our) radical society." He added that 20th-century wars happened not because of too much God, but because of the "absence of God" (wait, wasn't Hitler an altar-boy and Stalin a seminarian?)

Why Sarkozy's new push for God? Where will it lead?

Several Sarkozy associates - especially chief of staff Emmanuelle Mignon, a committed Catholic - are known as strong pro-religion advocates. Madame Mignon is pressing hard for a revision of the totemic 1905 laïcité law.

Like Sarkozy, she promotes "positive secularism" - one that "does not consider religions as a danger, but as an asset."

Sarkozy - a pragmatist, not a mystic - won't present this "asset" as a way of sneaking God back into a godless society. He will tie it to national identity and unity. But few in this aggressively secular country will buy that. Legends of priest-ridden 19th-century France still buttress 1905 - making it, so to speak, gospel.

Sarkozy, an immigrant's son obsessed with belonging, will press on with his cultural-religious "symbols of memory." But instead of lighting candles, he may be playing with matches in a gas factory. Like many of his impetuous initiatives bereft of public consultation, reuniting God and State risks reigniting a long-buried civil war between democrats and theocrats.

French secularists warn that Sarkozy's planned 'heresy' with the 1905 law hasn't a prayer of succeeding. Francophile Germans notwithstanding, might not God be happier wherever He is?

Former Citizen editor Keith Spicer lives and writes in Paris.

Cardinal attacked for forcing hospital
to obey ethics code
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
The Independent (UK)
Saturday, 23 February 2008


Medical organisations have rounded on a Roman Catholic hospital which has been thrown into disarray after the Archbishop of Westminster ordered its board to resign in a dispute over the provision of advice on abortion and contraception.



The British Medical Association yesterday criticised Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, after the Cardinal dramatically increased the pressure on the private Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, of which he is patron, to implement a new code of ethics.

The BMA said doctors at the hospital were in effectbeing required to follow two codes of ethics – that proposed by the hospital and the statutory code enforced by the General Medical Council, which specifies that doctors may not let their own beliefs interfere with the care of patients.

Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the BMA, said: "It really does put doctors in a very difficult position. We don't believe they can follow two codes of ethics."

Dr Nathanson added that while a patient would not expect to go to a Catholic hospital for an abortion, if she were pregnant and her foetus turned out to have severe abnormalities and she wanted to consider an abortion "she would have the right to information and help".

A spokeswoman for the General Medical Council said doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion were not required to refer patients for the operation but they were obliged to provide them with information to enable them to obtain treatment.

"They must treat patients with respect whatever their life choices are. We are quite clear about our guidance. I am not sure how they [the hospital] would balance that," she said.

The 150-bed hospital in St John's Wood provides private treatment to its well-heeled north London clientele, including the celebrities Kate Moss and Cate Blanchett, the profits from which are used to fund its charitable hospice caring for 600 patients a year.

The Cardinal ordered the hospital to draw up a code of practice to reflect Catholic teaching on matters such as abortion, contraception and gender reassignment operations in mid-2006, after a boardroom dispute over the admission of a local NHS GP practice on to the hospital's premises.

The plan had distressed staunch Catholics on the board, who argued that the provision of services such as abortion and contraception would undermine the religious ethos of the hospital.

Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's solution was to produce a code as a way of solving the dispute and maintaining the institution as a Catholic hospital. But it was opposed by the hospital's Medical Advisory Committee and its introduction last December triggered the resignations of at least four directors, including Lord Fitzalan Howard and a GP, Dr Martin Scurr, followed a week later by the chairman, Lord Bridgeman.

Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, former chief of the Army, was appointed chairman last week and will hold his first board meeting on Monday.

A spokesman for the Cardinal's office confirmed that the Cardinal had asked the members of the old board to resign "in light of the recent difficulties" and to "enable the new chairman to begin his office with the freedom to go about ensuring the future well-being of this Catholic hospital."

Try a Little Tenderness
DECLARATIONS (Column)
By PEGGY NOONAN
Wall Street Journal)
February 22, 2008




Barack Obama's biggest draw is not his eloquence. When you watch an Obama speech, you lean forward and listen and think, That's good. He's compelling, I like the way he speaks. And afterward all the commentators call him "impossibly eloquent" and say "he gave me thrills and chills."

But, in fact, when you go on the Internet and get a transcript of the speech and print it out and read it--that is, when you remove Mr. Obama from the words and take them on their own--you see the speech wasn't all that interesting, and was in fact high-class boilerplate. (This was not true of John F. Kennedy's speeches, for instance, which could be read seriously as part of the literature of modern American politics, or Martin Luther King's work, which was powerful absent his voice.)

Mr. Obama is magnetic, interacts with the audience, leads a refrain: "Yes, we can." It's good, and compared with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, neither of whom seems really to enjoy giving speeches, it comes across as better than it is. But is it eloquence? No. Eloquence is deep thought expressed in clear words. With Mr. Obama the deep thought part is missing. What is present are sentiments.

Our country can be greater, it holds unachieved promise, our leaders have not led us well. "We struggle with our doubts, our fears, our cynicism." Fair enough and true enough, but he doesn't dig down to explain how to become a greater nation, what specific path to take--more power to the state, for instance, or more power to the individual. He doesn't unpack his thoughts, as they say. He asserts and keeps on walking.

So his draw is not literal eloquence but a reputation for eloquence that may, in time, become the real thing.

But his big draw is this. In a country that has throughout most of our lifetimes been tormented by, buffeted by, the question of race, a country that has endured real pain and paid in blood and treasure to work its way through and out of the mess, that for all that struggle we yielded this: a brilliant and accomplished young black man with a consensus temperament, a thoughtful and peaceful person who wishes to lead. That is his draw: "We made that." "It ended well."

People would love to be able to support that guy.

His job, in a way, is to let them, in part by not being just another operative, plaything or grievance-monger of the left-liberal establishment and left-liberal thinking. By standing, in fact, for real change.

Right now Mr. Obama is in an awkward moment. Each day he tries to nail down his party's leftist base, and take it from Mrs. Clinton. At the same time his victories have led the country as a whole to start seeing him as the probable Democratic nominee.

They're looking at him in a new way, and wondering: Is he standard, old time and party line, or is he something new? Is he just a turning of the page, or is he the beginning of a new and helpful chapter?

Mr. Obama did not really have a good week, in spite of winning a primary and a caucus, and both resoundingly. I don't refer to charges that he'd plagiarized words from a Deval Patrick speech. He borrowed an argument that was in itself obvious--words matter--and used words in the public sphere.

In any case Mrs. Clinton has lifted so many phrases and approaches from Mr. Obama, and other candidates, that her accusation was like the neighborhood kleptomaniac running through the street crying, "Thief! Thief!"

His problem was, is, his wife's words, not his, the speech in which she said that for the first time in her adult life she is proud of her country, because Obama is winning. She later repeated it, then tried to explain it, saying of course she loves her country. But damage was done. Why? Because her statement focused attention on what I suspect are some basic and elementary questions that were starting to bubble out there anyway.

* * *

Here are a few of them.

Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it? Did anyone at their Ivy League universities school them in why one should love America? Do they confuse patriotism with nationalism, or nativism? Are they more inspired by abstractions like "international justice" than by old visions of America as the city on a hill, which is how John Winthrop saw it, and Ronald Reagan and JFK spoke of it?

Have they been, throughout their adulthood, so pampered and praised--so raised in the liberal cocoon--that they are essentially unaware of what and how normal Americans think? And are they, in this, like those cosseted yuppies, the Clintons?

Why is all this actually not a distraction but a real issue? Because Americans have common sense and are bottom line. They think like this. If the president and his first lady are not loyal first to America and its interests, who will be? The president of France? But it's his job to love France, and protect its interests. If America's leaders don't love America tenderly, who will?

And there is a context. So many Americans right now fear they are losing their country, that the old America is slipping away and being replaced by something worse, something formless and hollowed out.

They can see we are giving up our sovereignty, that our leaders will not control our borders, that we don't teach the young the old-fashioned love of America, that the government has taken to itself such power, and made things so complex, and at the end of the day when they count up sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax they are paying a lot of money to lose the place they loved.

And if you feel you're losing America, you really don't want a couple in the White House whose rope of affection to the country seems lightly held, casual, provisional. America is backing Barack at the moment, so America is good. When it becomes angry with President Barack, will that mean America is bad?

* * *

Michelle Obama seems keenly aware of her struggles, of what it took to rise so high as a black woman in a white country. Fair enough.

But I have wondered if it is hard for young African-Americans of her generation, having been drilled in America's sad racial history, having been told about it every day of their lives, to fully apprehend the struggles of others.

I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think "Man, she got it all." Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful, and from a working-class family with two functioning parents who made sure she got to school.

That's the great divide in modern America, whether or not you had a functioning family, and she apparently came from the privileged part of that divide. A lot of white working-class Americans didn't come up with those things. Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.

Does Mrs. Obama know this? I don't know. If she does, love and gratitude for the place that tries to give everyone an equal shot would seem to be in order.


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In the interests of full disclosure, one might say, I have not for one minute found anything that has attracted me to Senator Obama. When America 'discovered' him with the speech he gave at the last Democratic presidential convention, I truly failed to see what the fuss was about. Not because of anything he said or how he said it, but with the same radically visceral instinct that I felt when I first became aware of Bill Clinton (at his first nominating convention- when I was instantly put off by the even more patent phoniness, as I saw it, of his wife), I couldn't see the 'charm that everyone seemed to be raving about. Not that physically he did not look charming - he does!

But with the Clintons (husband and wife) and Obama, my gut feeling screamed 'FAKE! FAKE! FAKE!' Everything in the Clintons' conjugal and individual record since then, and in Obama's since the 2004 Democratic convention - including their great successes - has only reinforced my gut feeling and my reason. Nothing has changed my mind, even as try to follow what they say and do, to be fair to them.

Lest someone say it has to do with race, first of all, I'm a brown-skinned 100 percent Asian, so that's not a question here. Besides, my far-and-away favorite movie star/celebrity in the current generation is the multifaceted Will Smith, for instance (even if he is an Obama supporter now).

And well, politically, I am glad John McCain has emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee, even if Mitt Romney was the candidate whose campaign positions I found most 'congenial' to my way of thinking. I pray the American people will see fit to elect McCain, because I think the virtues and values that kept him intact during his years in a North Vietnamese prison are the virtues and values an American President should have. And that is the kind of experience that Senator Obama cannot - and should not - demean.

William F. Buckley,
Leading Conservative,
Dies at 82
By Nancy Moran




Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) - William F. Buckley Jr., the syndicated columnist and intellectual whose studied mannerisms, verbal flourishes and polemics energized the American conservative movement for a half-century, has died. He was 82.

Buckley died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut, according to the National Review Online. His son, Christopher, told the New York Times that Buckley had suffered from diabetes and emphysema, although the exact cause of death was not known. Buckley was found at his desk and might have been working on a column, his son said.

``If he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it: at home, still devoted to the war of ideas,'' said Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of the Web site.

His wife, New York socialite Patricia, died in April 2007.

Buckley harnessed a belief in individual liberty, limited government and the defeat of communism into an organized voice of the right in the National Review, the biweekly opinion magazine he founded in 1955. He was also host of the Emmy Award-winning television program ``Firing Line'' for 33 years.

``I think it's a different country and world because of what he accomplished,'' William Rusher, publisher of National Review from 1957 to 1988, said in a phone interview today.

Yale Buckley entered the political arena with the 1951 publication of God and Man at Yale, his first and best-known book. A rebuke of his alma mater for straying from its Christian roots, the book attacked the faculty as bent on secularism, collectivism and Keynesian economics over individualism and free-market capitalism.

His libertarian ideals were shared by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who went on to win the Republican nomination for president over Nelson Rockefeller in 1964 but lost the election to incumbent Lyndon Johnson. A year later, Buckley ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York on the Conservative Party ticket.

Much of what Buckley advocated came to pass with the election of Republican Ronald Reagan to two terms as U.S. president, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Republican Party's retaking of Congress in 1994.

Reagan, on the National Review's 30th anniversary, called Buckley a ``clipboard-bearing Galahad, ready to take on any challengers in the critical battle of point and counterpoint. And, with grace and humor and passion, to raise a standard to which patriots and lovers of freedom could repair.''

At the White House today, President George W. Bush called Buckley ``one of the finest writers and thinkers'' in the U.S.

``He brought conservative thought into the political mainstream and helped lay the intellectual foundation for America's victory in the Cold War and for the conservative movement that continues to this day,'' Bush said in a statement. ``He will be remembered for his principled thought and beautiful writing as well as his personal warmth, wit and generous spirit.''

While Buckley drew a legion of followers, he remained independent of the movement he helped create. He favored legalizing illicit drugs at a time when the U.S. had declared a 'War on Drugs', and in a Feb. 24, 2006, column called for President Bush to acknowledge defeat in the war in Iraq.

In the 1970s, he sided with President Jimmy Carter on his plan to hand the Panama Canal back to Panama. He also lamented opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and, in a further criticism of the second President Bush, warned of the foreign-policy entanglements of so-called neoconservatives:

``The neoconservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country.''

Born into a wealthy Irish-Catholic family, Buckley acquired an erudite ease with both the spoken and written word. His use of unusual words, coupled with a New England prep-school drawl, came across as haughty to some, while an outward charm and urbane civility underlay his style of pointed public debate.

His column, ``On the Right,'' was syndicated nationally in 1962 and appeared in some 300 newspapers. In 1966, he began ``Firing Line,'' pitting liberals against conservatives, in which he played both host and interlocutor.

When U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy repeatedly refused to appear on the show, Buckley quipped: ``Why does baloney reject the grinder?''

``Firing Line'' guests included Goldwater, author Norman Mailer, former President George H.W. Bush and liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

In his last article posted on the National Review Web site, dated Feb. 2, Buckley indulged in two favorite pastimes: jabbing Democrats and dissecting the use of the English language.

``Presidential candidates no longer even try to sound like the Lincoln-Douglas debates, yet it is not bad occasionally to subject them to such analysis, to learn what it is that is not being said,'' Buckley wrote, reviewing the Jan. 31 debate between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

``The two performers in the debate struck the observant conservative as intelligent, resourceful and absolutely uninterested in the vector of political force,'' he wrote.

Fluent in French and Spanish, Buckley's taste for the finer things in life extended to classical music and the wine he collected for his Stamford cellar. His greatest passion, sailing, was reflected in his ownership of five boats, four transoceanic trips and multiple races from Newport, Rhode Island, to Bermuda.

Buckley published more than 40 books, including McCarthy and His Enemies in 1954 and 11 spy novels featuring a James Bond-like protagonist, Blackford Oakes, partly inspired by his own service with the Central Intelligence Agency.

He professed a ``cognate aversion to boredom,'' and learned to fly a plane, descended in a submarine to survey the Titanic's remains and took annual ski trips to Gstaad, Switzerland, and Alta, Utah, where he hit the slopes with Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman.

William Frank Buckley Jr. was born on Nov. 24, 1925, in New York, the sixth of 10 children. His father, a lawyer and oil baron, moved the family to Sharon, Connecticut, in 1923 after being expelled from Mexico City for his support of a revolution against President Alvaro Obregon.

He lived in a large, white-columned home called ``Great Elm'' and spent leisurely summers riding horses and competing in sailing races. With five pianos and one organ in the house, the children grew into ``music addicts,'' Buckley wrote in his 2004 memoir, Miles Gone By.

After early schooling in France and England, Buckley was sent in 1938 to St. John's, Beaumont, a Jesuit-run boarding school in Old Windsor, near London. He later wrote that the experience there fostered ``a deep and permanent involvement in Catholic Christianity.''

Buckley entered Yale in 1946 as a second lieutenant after serving two years stateside in the Army infantry. He became chairman of the Yale Daily News, joined the secretive Skull & Bones society and was a star debater. He studied political science, history and economics and graduated with honors.

While at Yale he tutored Spanish, landing him a full-time job as an assistant professor after graduating in 1950. In July of that year, he married Vancouver native Patricia Taylor.

Buckley served in the CIA in Mexico for nine months in 1951 before becoming an associate editor at the right-wing American Mercury magazine.

His opposition to unions, international organizations such as the United Nations and the blurred partisan lines of Eisenhower-era ``progressivism'' helped to spawn the National Review four years later.

``It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it,'' read the publisher's statement in the first issue on Nov. 19, 1955.

Buckley served as editor-in-chief of the Review for more than three decades, increasing readership from 18,000 in 1956 to 137,000 in 1990, when he stepped down.

He surrounded himself with like-minded writers and editors, including Russell Kirk and James Burnham, as well as Yale mentor Willmoore Kendall and his sister Priscilla, who was managing editor from 1959 to 1985.

Known for nurturing writing talent regardless of political leaning, Buckley counted among his proteges conservative columnists David Brooks and George Will, liberal writer Garry Wills and early contributors to the magazine Joan Didion and Arlene Croce.

While his detractors came largely from the left, and included author Gore Vidal, Buckley was also criticized by supporters of ``Objectivist'' conservative Ayn Rand and the ultra-right John Birch Society.

Rand, an atheist, was driven out of the conservative movement after her fictional Atlas Shrugged received a scathing review by Whittaker Chambers, a former communist and a contributor to the magazine. John Birch Society President John McManus, in his 2002 book William F. Buckley Jr., Pied Piper for the Establishment, said Buckley's focus on defeating communism made him interventionist and pro-government.

During one of his most notable debates on ABC at the 1968 Democratic National Convention with Vidal, Buckley responded to being called a ``crypto-Nazi'' by saying, ``Now, listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face. And you'll stay plastered.''

A year later, both Buckley and Vidal wrote essays for Esquire magazine assailing each other. Vidal's lawsuit over Buckley's ``On Experiencing Gore Vidal'' was thrown out of court. Buckley's suit over Vidal's ``A Distasteful Encounter With William F. Buckley Jr.'' was settled in 1972 with an apology from the magazine and the payment of his legal costs.

When Buckley ran for New York mayor in 1965, his main goal was to derail the candidacy of liberal Republican John Lindsay even if it meant sending votes to Democrat Abraham Beame.

He wrote his own position papers to address a city plagued by the highest urban unemployment in the country, subway crime and a $256 million budget deficit. His proposals included adding to police ranks, ending school integration and relocating welfare recipients outside the city.

Buckley's presence in the campaign was largely symbolic, reflected in his tongue-in-cheek approach to press conferences and public debates. When asked what he'd do if he won, Buckley gamely replied, ``Demand a recount.''

Buckley contributed articles to most major American literary and news publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker and the New York Times, and was the recipient of 31 honorary degrees.

He served as a delegate to the UN in 1973 and in 1991 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the first President Bush. For most of his career, he averaged 70 public-speaking engagements a year.

In the late 1980s and early '90s, Buckley played solo harpsichord with six different ensembles, including the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and Yale Symphony Orchestra.

He continued writing columns for the National Review after handing over his stock to a board of trustees in 2004.

In a March 2006 interview with Charlie Rose, Buckley warned that the conservative movement was suffering from a ``certain sleepiness'' in the absence of a threat such as communism and the Soviet Union. Terrorism, he said, while affecting the ``whole corpus of America,'' was not an enemy that divided Democrats and Republicans.

He also is survived by his grandchildren, Caitlin and Conor, and his brother, James, a former U.S. senator from New York.