‘The fourth-ranking cardinal in the Vatican and the African with the best chance of succeeding Pope John Paul II began his stellar church career as a child of poor pagan parents in a mud-brick bungalow in the forests of southern Nigeria.

As the current pope clings to life in a Roman hospital, Cardinal Francis Arinze, the 72 year-old Prefect of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, is seen by many as a credible candidate to replace him and become the first African to rule the Holy See since the death of Gelasius I in 496 AD.

And if the college of cardinals sitting in the Cistine chapel does decide that the Holy Spirit has chosen Arinze to lead the Church, the tiny Nigerian farming village of Eziowelle might well become a place of pilgrimage for the world’s hundreds of millions of Catholics.’

Read more at Nigerian cardinal could succeed Pope John Paul II

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