Scandal Spectacle: The 10 Most Corrupt and Compromised Cardinals Voting For the New Pope

http://www.alternet.org/belief/scandal-spectacle-10-most-corrupt-and-compromised-cardinals-voting-new-pope


Cardinals on balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica after electing Joseph Ratzinger to succeed John Paul II as pope on April 19, 2005.
Photo Credit: Rostislav Glinsky / Shutterstock.com

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1. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York. For flash and visibility, the archbishop’s post in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral offers a level of media-conferred power second only to that commanded by the pope himself. (Pope John Paul II famously dubbed the New York post as “archbishop of the capital of the world.”) In the wake of Benedict’s abdication, Dolan fast became the subject of talk, perhaps generated by his own noise machine, that he was a contender for the church’s top spot.

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2. Cardinal Roger Mahony, former Archbishop of Los Angeles. Upon receiving the shocking news of Pope Benedict’s resignation, I speculated that recent revelations in the sexual abuse scandal involving the cardinal archbishop of the City of Angels might have something to do with the timing of the unusual papal retirement.


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3. Cardinal William Levada, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. When Ratzinger won election to the papacy, the man he chose to replace himself in his old job of top Vatican enforcer was Levada, the former archbishop of Portland, Oregon and former archbishop of San Francisco.


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4. Cardinal Angelo Sodono, Dean of the College of Cardinals. In an unprecedented speech on Easter Sunday 2010 that opened the Vatican’s religious services for the day, Sodano blamed the church’s pedophilia scandal on people with “visions of the family and of life that run contrary to the Gospel,” according to the Associated Press.