Fear and Trembling Before His New Office: +Scola Kicked out of Milan Seminary

Cardinal Angelo Scola was dismissed as a student of the Milan Seminary. Now he returns as an Archbishop to his home Diocese.

(kreuz.net) The new Archbishop of MIlan, Angelo Cardinal Scola (69, is experiencing "fear and trembling" in the face of his new assignment.

This was according to the Director of the Venetian Caritas, Msgr Dino Pistolato yesterday for the Milan newspaper 'Il Giornale'.

A Dismissed Seminarian

Msgr Pistolato believes that the arrival of Cardinal Scola in Milan will also awaken resistance in the Old Liberal Diocesan leadership.

These forced the present Cardinal to move to another Diocese when he was a young Seminarian.

The Clergyman recalled the Old Liberal Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Cardinal Colombo († 1992).

This one refused in the late sixties to ordain the young Angelo Scola to the priesthood because he was earlier a member of the Catholic student group, 'Communion and Liberation'.

Today's Cardinal was thrown out of the Seminary.

He withdrew to the southern Italian Diocese of Teramo, where in July 1970, he was ordained a priest.

"You will never come to Milan"

Cardinal Scola was already discussed as a candidate for the Milan Archdiocese in the year of 2002.

Actually, the decisive Old Liberal Milanese Archbishop Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini was categorically against this appointment.

"You will never come to Milan" -- he is said to have told the former Patriarch of Venice.

The Archdiocese of Milan has been in the hands of the Old Liberals for decades.

Resistance in Milan

The neo-Conservative Cardinal sounds correspondingly meek in his first speech to the faithful of Milan:

"I need you all, your help, but above all your sympathy" -- he grimaced.

Msgr Pistolato commented that Cardinal Scola in Milan -- differently than in the relatively small Archdiocese of Venice -- will be dependent upon an enormous apparatus as Archbishop of Milan:

"In Milan even the best Archbishops can't govern alone --- there are three thousand priests alone."

Msgr Pistolato believes that the Cardinal undertook nothing to be named to Milan: "He hoped that the Pope would choose someone else."

But finally he accepted the Pope's decision obediently.

Link to kreuz.net...

Here's another assessment of +Scola from Lispers in the Loggia.

Catholic Snooze Service, here...

And the Register, here.

Zenit, here...