VATICAN CITY (AP) — The new Vatican No. 2 was a no-show at the ceremony to take over the reins of the Vatican administration, after being hospitalized for urgent surgery.
Pope Francis told the assembled guests at Tuesday’s handover ceremony that Archbishop Pietro Parolin had had to undergo minor but urgent surgery while he was visiting his family in Italy’s Veneto region. The Vatican says it would be several weeks before he actually starts working.
Parolin missed out on the ceremonial changing of the guard from the retiring Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was blamed for many of the gaffes and problems of the papacy of Benedict XVI.
Francis nevertheless welcomed Parolin “in absentia” as he thanked Bertone for his service.
THIS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE
The changing of the guard is underway at the Vatican.
Pope Francis bid farewell Tuesday to the Vatican’s No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was blamed for many of the gaffes and problems of the papacy of Benedict XVI. And at a ceremony inside the Apostolic Palace, Francis welcomed his new chief collaborator, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, a career diplomat who was sent from the Holy See to Venezuela during Bertone’s tenure.
The handover represented a tangible sign of change for the Vatican following Bertone’s scandal-marred term, which climaxed with the 2012 theft of Benedict’s papers by his butler. But many other problems of Benedict’s reign — from his rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying bishop to the Vatican’s response to the 2010 sex abuse scandal — have been pinned on Bertone.
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