Popular Cardinal at forefront of making faith intelligible

02 Mar 2013

By The Record

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, walks on a street on Feb. 13 close to St. Peter’s Square in Rome. PHOTO: CNS/Max Rossi, Reuters

A prominent voice at the Vatican in the run-up to the papal election, Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi is a biblical scholar who can quote just as easily from Sufi poets, Dante and Danish philosophers as he can from sacred Scripture.

The 70-year-old president of the Pontifical Council for Culture has been leading the Church’s efforts to develop a nonconfrontational dialogue with nonbelievers, trying to make Christianity intelligible to the moderns and build a reason-based consensus on key moral issues.

He had the ear of Pope Benedict XVI and many cardinals when he led the meditations during a weeklong Lenten retreat at the Vatican the week before the pope resigned.

It wasn’t the first time Pope Benedict showed favour on the Scripture expert by choosing him for the Lenten reflections; he also chose the cardinal to compose the commentary and prayers of the Good Friday Way of the Cross service in Rome’s Colosseum in 2007.

Since he became council president in 2007, Cardinal Ravasi has transformed the way a Vatican office works.

He bolstered the visibility and accountability of his staff by assigning a department to each council official, making them individually responsible for each of the council’s many endeavors such as art and faith, science and faith, economics, and sport and culture.- CNS