c. 2006 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday (June 29) bestowed a woolen mantle, known as a “pallium,” on three recently appointed archbishops from the United States to symbolize their new authority.

During a solemn Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, Archbishops Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., George Niederauer of San Francisco and Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, knelt before the pontiff to receive their pallium. They were joined by 24 other prelates from four different continents.

“It’s overwhelming,” Wuerl said after the ceremony. “You’re kneeling and holding his hand, and you realize that (he) is the living flesh-and-blood link to St. Peter.”

In accordance with church tradition, the ceremony took place on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul _ the founders of Roman Catholic ministry. The palliums themselves are blessed by the pope on the feast of St. Agnes and worn as a symbol of the pastoral relationship each archbishop maintains with his local flock.

Archbishops hold limited oversight over other bishops in regional provinces. San Francisco’s Niederauer, for example, oversees nine dioceses in Northern California, Nevada, Utah and Hawaii, but has no direct authority over them.

In his homily, Benedict returned to some of the imagery he used prior to his election to describe the struggles of his church to resist the currents of contemporary trends and thinking.

“Once again the little boat of the church is tossed about by the winds of ideologies,” he said, describing the vessel as waterlogged and “condemned to sink.”

The comments echoed many of the challenges facing the newly appointed prelates.

Niederauer, 70, was appointed to San Francisco in December, inheriting an archdiocese in which church doctrine has run afoul of popular opinion, especially on gay issues.

Wuerl, 65, may have garnered a reputation as a teacher more interested in church doctrine than national politics while presiding over the diocese of Pittsburgh.

In Washington _ where he was installed just one week ago (June 22), he will become the church’s unofficial liaison to the federal government, and will inherit Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s task of responding to Catholic politicians who publicly disagree with church teaching on abortion, gay rights, the death penalty and the Iraq war.

Wuerl is also in line to become a cardinal with a vote to elect the next pope.

Also in attendance at Thursday’s Mass was a delegation representing the Orthodox leader Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, or modern-day Istanbul, in Turkey.

Meeting with the Orthodox delegation after the Mass, Benedict described ongoing dialogue between the two churches as a “journey that leads us step by step to eliminate all dissonance from the choir of the one church of Christ.”

In late November, Benedict plans to visit Bartholomew in Istanbul during his trip to predominantly Muslim Turkey.

Benedict is viewed with skepticism in Turkey for comments he made as a cardinal that questioned the country’s push to join the European Union, asserting that Turkey’s Islamic identity put it at odds with Europe’s Christian past.

Benedict struck a different note on Thursday calling Turkey “a country of ancient and rich culture, a noble country where many holy fathers of our ecclesial, theological and spiritual tradition spent their lives.”

KRE/JL END MEICHTRY

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