The Episcopal Conference of Lacio (Italy) issued a favorable opinion for the opening of the cause of beatification of Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, the first African who led the dictatorium for the bishops in the Vatican.
This organism, chaired by Cardinal Baldassare Reina, Vicar General of the Pope for the Diocese of Rome, met a few days ago to discuss this and other issues, according to refers ACI PrintItalian agency of Ewtn News.
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“It is immense joy for us to see that the beatification process begins, and the news has generated a lot of enthusiasm here,” he told the French newspaper The cross Fr. Anicet Gnanvi, Communications Director of the Episcopal Conference of Benín.
“Cardinal Gantin was an extraordinary figure that left his mark both in Benin and in the world, where he is still remembered as a great pastor, humble, faithful and that embodied virtues such as justice, peace and fraternity.”
Who was Cardinal Bernardin Gantin?
Cardinal Bernardin Gantin was born in 1922 in Toffo, Benin (Africa). He was ordained a priest, for the Diocese of Ouidah in 1951; and since 1953 he studied at the Pontifical Universities Urbanian and Lateranense. In the latter he graduated in theology and canon law.
In 1960 he was appointed Archbishop of Cotonou. As president of the Episcopal Conference of Benin, he participated in the three sessions of the Second Vatican Council and in the First World Assembly of the Bishops Synod in 1967.
In 1971 he was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples. In 1976 he became president of the Pontifical Council Justice and Peace. He was created Cardinal by Pope St. Paul VI in 1977.
In 1984, Pope San Juan Pablo II appointed him Prefect of the Congregation – today Dicastery – for the Bishops, the first and only African until now, who has held that position. In 1988 he signed the excommunication decree of the French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the four bishops he ordered without authorization from the Pontiff.
That same year, Cardinal Gantin was appointed president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. In 1993 he was elected Dean of the Cardinals College
In 2002 and with 80 years, when he stopped being a cardinal, he resigned from the position of Dean and returned to his homeland. He died in Paris in 2008 and was buried in Ouidah (Benin).
On May 23, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI presided over the Cardinal Gantin Exequias Mass In the Basilica of San Pedro, where he recalled that the purple “was the first African ecclesiastical who held positions of great responsibility in the Roman curia, and always made them with his typical humble and simple style.”
Cardinal Gantin said Benedict XVI in his homily, “he was impregnated with love to Christ; A love that made him kind and available to listening and dialogue with everyone; A love that propel him to always seek, as he used to repeat, the essentials of life. ”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.