Archbishop of Bombay, Cardinal Oswald Gracias named as one of the advisers to Pope Francis

Archbishop of Bombay, Cardinal Oswald Gracias named as one of the advisers to Pope Francis

mangaloretoday.com/DNA

Mumbai, April 14:  Pope Francis on Saturday made one of his first major decisions  by setting up an advisory board of cardinals from around the world to help him govern the Catholic Church and reform its troubled central administration and this group included Mumbai’s Cardinal Oswald Gracias.

 

The Pope selected a group of eight cardinals who will help him put into place changes in an administration which has been held responsible for some of the mishaps and scandals that plagued the eight-year reign of Pope Benedict XVI before he resigned in February this year.

Anger at the mostly Italian prelates who run the Curia-the central governing bodies of the Church was one of the reasons why the cardinals chose the first non-European pope for 1,300 years and quashed the chances of one of the front-runners, Milan Archbishop Angelo Scola.

Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello from Italy, Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa of Santiago, Chile, Oswald Gracias of Bombay, Reinhard Marx of Munich, Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya of Kinshasa, Sean Patrick O’Malley of Boston, George Pell of Sydney, and Oscar Andres Rodriquez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Bishop Marcello Semeraro of Albano, Italy, will serve as secretary, a Vatican statement said.

The Archdiocese in the city of Mumbai in India is known by the Vatican as the  Archdiocese of Bombay.

Who is Cardinal Oswald Gracias?

Oswald Gracias was born on December 24, 1944 and is a Goan Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the Archbishop of Bombay (Mumbai) and was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI on 14 October 2006 to the post, and was made a cardinal in 2007. In 2010, he was elected as the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

After being ordained a priest in 1970 Gracias went on to study in Rome and was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Bombay and Titular Bishop of Bladia by Pope John Paul II on in 1997. Gracias was later named Archbishop of Agra. He was appointed Archbishop of Bombay in 2006 taking over from Cardinal Ivan Dias.

In 2010, Cardinal Gracias suffered from a rare cancer and underwent surgeries and is currently said to be cancer-free though this illness affected his body making him thin. But when it comes to his role as a cardinal and priest Cardinal Gracias continues to perform all his duties.