Cardinal Timothy Dolan may have some fans in his native New York, but it doesn’t seem likely that he will be tapped to replace outgoing Pope Benedict XVI, who announced his surprising abdication earlier today. According to David Gibson, a longtime chronicler of the Catholic Church whose work includes a biography of Pope Benedict, Cardinal Dolan’s problem is simple: American citizenship.
“The United States still has this cultural, military and political footprint in the world,” he told Politicker this afternoon. “We’re Bigfoot, and to add the papacy to that American portfolio would potentially cause a good deal of resentment elsewhere in the world, where, frankly, there are a lot more Catholics.”
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