When the new Archbishop of Milan stood up to give his first speech to his new diocese last Friday he wore a crumpled jacket over a faded clerical shirt. He said that he had proof of his “inadequacy” as leader of Europe’s largest diocese. Consider the names of his predecessors, he said, “illustrious like Angelo, Dionigi, Carlo Maria, Giovanni, Giovanni Battista, etc. But Mario – what kind of name is that?”
It’s true that few thought that Mario Enrico Delpini would succeed Cardinal Angelo Scola in Milan. Most expected another ecclesiastical heavyweight. According Church-watcher Rocco Palmo, five of Delpini’s nine predecessors in the past century have been either beatified, elected to the papacy, or both. In recent decades, archbishops of Milan have been intellectual titans, notably Carlo Maria Martini, the Jesuit biblical scholar, and Scola.
