Off to Rome with high hopes
Friends of Delco's Archbishop John Foley sense he will become a cardinal.
Dozens of friends and family of Archbishop John Foley are signing up for a late-November "pilgrimage" to Rome.
Officially, it is so they can watch the popular Delaware County native say Mass on Nov. 26 at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore - among the oldest and most-revered churches in Roman Catholicism. But the real reason, they say, is that they believe the archbishop will be made a cardinal around that day.
Foley "hasn't told me directly" that he's being made a cardinal next month, his longtime friend Robert Sims of Wayne said yesterday.
"But is he getting winks and nods? Yes. Are other cardinals inviting him to dinner? Yes."
Yesterday afternoon, Sims said, Foley told him in a phone call from Rome that he would say 5 p.m. Mass at Santa Maggiore on the last Monday of November.
"I've already made my reservations, and my children are going," said Sims, president of Sims Financial Services in Wayne. He said members of Foley's family were going, as well.
"We already have about 100 people, including about 40 priests of the archdiocese, going from the 23d to the 28th" of November, Joe Affatato, manager of the Atkinson, Mullen & Rosso travel agency in Newtown Square, said yesterday.
Affatato said the archdiocese had coordinated the trip with his agency but had asked that it not officially link it to a consistory - a Vatican ceremony in which a pope formally creates cardinals.
"We think the hat ceremony will take place on the 25th and the ring ceremony on the 26th," Affatato said. "But we won't know until around Oct. 15," when Pope Benedict XVI is expected to announce a list of new cardinals.
Affatato said Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia, was among those headed to Rome after Thanksgiving for the pilgrimage. But Donna Farrell, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said she could not confirm that because Rigali's November schedule had not been posted.
"Nothing has been confirmed by the Vatican," Farrell said, adding that it "certainly would be very joyful for the church of Philadelphia, especially during its bicentennial year."
Foley, who turns 72 on Nov. 11, was born in Darby and was ordained a priest of the Philadelphia archdiocese in 1962. In 1984, Pope John Paul II named him president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communication.
He served as the council's president until June, when Benedict named him pro-grand master of the international Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, a papal knighthood that originated in the crusades of the 12th century.
Since the order was revived in the early 19th century, its prefects have all been popes or cardinals, which has led to broad speculation in Rome and at home that Foley will soon get the red hat of a cardinal.
Foley could not be reached yesterday in Rome.
Since his election as pope in April 2005, Benedict has not called for a consistory of the College of Cardinals, nor has he announced that he intends to name Foley a cardinal.
But with the College of Cardinals now 17 shy of the 120 members considered standard for electing a pope, Vatican observers say Benedict is about due to fill vacancies. Cardinals serve as papal electors until they turn 80.
Other American clergy also mentioned as possible new cardinals are Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., and Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of Baltimore.
With 11 American cardinals already serving as papal electors, however, some observers speculate Benedict might wait a few more years before naming more.
