Cardinal Seeks to Bar Transfer of Bishops

Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, dean of the College of Cardinals and prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Bishops, has urged a change in church law to curb what he called “arrivism and careerism” among Roman Catholic bishops.

The views of Gantin, 77, a native of the West African nation of Benin, carry great weight in the Vatican, although he has retired from active service. He called for a revision of canon law to return to rules that essentially barred a bishop from transferring out of his diocese.

Vatican sources said the proposal, which Gantin made in an interview published in the current issue of the monthly magazine 30 Days in the Church and the World, was certain to stir debate.

“A bishop, once named to a determined see, generally speaking and in principle, must remain there forever,” Gantin said. “The bishop cannot say, ‘I will be here for two or three years and then I will be promoted.’ ”

Only for “serious, very serious reasons” should church authorities decide “that the bishop should go, so to speak, from one family to another,” the cardinal said.

Gantin said he was shocked during his 16 years as head of the Congregation for Bishops that many bishops asked for “promotions” on the grounds that they had demonstrated their “talent, capacity and gifts.”

He called this a display of “arrivism and careerism” unfitting for a prelate.