[I am moving this particular story back to the top of the posts as the NLM is doing some follow-up on this story. The selection of the prefect for this office has profound implications as regards the sacred liturgy.
We will be watching this story very closely in the coming hours and days -- Shawn]
Andrea Tornielli, vaticanista of Il Giornale, reports that Archbishop Angelo Amato SDB, current Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, might succeed Cardinal Arinze as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. His successor as Secretray of the Holy Office would be Msgr. Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University and Auxiliary Bishop of Rome.
This is the article in my translation:
Amato to become “Minister” for Liturgy, Fisichella to the Holy Office
Change of guard in sight at the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Vatican "ministry for liturgy": the Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze (he has completed his 75th year last november) could soon leave and there could arrive at his post - the conditional is obligatory - the Salesian Archbishop Angelo Amato, 70 years old next June, currently Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This last office would thus become free for Msgr Rino Fisichella, esteemed rector of the Lateran University. For some time it has been known that Amato, who took the post which Bertone left in 2003, was a candidate for a cardinalatial office. But his arrival at Worship would be a surprise, given that until today his name had been "made" for the dicastery of the [Causes of the] Saints or for Catholic Education. Many, in fact, held that the "natural" candidate for the succession of Arinze would be current Secretary of the Congregation, the Ceylonese Archbishop Malcom Ranjith Patabendige Don, who had already been in the Roman Curia as number two of Cardinal Sepe at Propaganda Fide, had then been sent to Indonesia as Apostolic Nuncio, and had then again been recalled to Rome by Benedict XVI who had wanted to name him to Divine Worsip, a key dicastery in the vision of Pope Ratzinger. Ranjith has never made a secret of his ideas: about the motu proprio which liberalized the Tridentine Mass, about the dialogue with the Lefebvrians, about the fight against liturgical abuses. It is also true that according to curial praxis only in rare cases the number two becomes Prefect of the same dicastery and that Ranjith has only just completed his 60th year. If this hypothesis proves true, Fisichella could be the successor of Amato as number two at the ex-Holy Office. A crucial and important rôle.
