DiNardo, Gomez to lead USCCB

[UrbScotty]

To no one's surprise, the first ballot of this Tuesday's election produced the next President of the United States (Bishops) – keeping with the body's half-century custom, the incumbent VP, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, was given the chief's chair with an easy 55 percent of the vote.

Once the traditional formality wrapped up, the selection of DiNardo's deputy indeed produced a choice between the respective lead contenders from the "messenger" and "manager" schools, with the premier option among the former – Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles – taking the post in a 131-84 result over one of the top masters of Mothership process, New Orleans' Archbishop Gregory Aymond.

With the outcome, the incoming executive team already enjoys a solid relationship, DiNardo and Gomez having spent five years together as the twin archbishops of Texas. Given the fresh charge for solidarity with immigrants shared by Pope Francis and the Stateside bench, however, the collision course between the church's stance and that of the impending Trump administration makes the choice of a Mexican-born migrant, as well as the first Hispanic ever raised into the USCCB's topmost leadership – and with it, Gomez's positioning as the body's first Latino chief come 2019 – an all the more potent signal. (To be sure, from the outset of last weekend's committee meetings, the LA prelate's searing homily in defense of the undocumented at a sudden prayer service for healing in the secular campaign's wake was seen to have made a profound impact among this electorate.)

Considering DiNardo's longstanding all-in role helping to guide the Texas' bishops decades-old focus on immigration issues as the state's top prelate, the body's movement to put Gomez at his side on the national stage indeed represents a doubling-down on the premier fault-line between the US' largest religious body and January's reality of a Republican White House and Congress.

http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2016/11/houston-and-hollywood-with-new-top-team.html