Cardinal Lustiger retires as Paris archbishop

By: Associated Press | Monday, February 14, 2005 2:03 PM PST ∞

VATICAN CITY -- Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a confidant of Pope John Paul II and a Jewish convert to Catholicism who lost his mother at Auschwitz, has retired as archbishop of Paris at age 78, the Vatican announced Friday.

The pope appointed Archbishop Andre Vingt-Trois of Tours as Lustiger's successor in the French capital.

The Vatican said the pope accepted Lustiger's resignation, which was handed in due to Lustiger's age. The French prelate was already serving three years beyond the normal retirement age for bishops.

Lustiger remains a cardinal, however, and can still vote in any papal conclave until he turns 80.

He recently waded into the debate about John Paul's health and future as pope, saying that the rules of the church allow for the 84-year-old pontiff to step down.

"He can resign, and it's a question of his conscience," Lustiger said.

"The pope must do what he thinks to be the will of God to accomplish his mission," Lustiger told a French radio station this week. But Lustiger also noted that the pope's forbearance in the face of his ailments was an important symbol for Roman Catholics.

Lustiger headed the Paris Archdiocese for 24 years.

On Jan. 27, he represented John Paul at commemoration ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Between 1 million and 1.5 million prisoners -- most of them Jews -- were killed in gas chambers at the camp in Poland or died of starvation and disease.

As a teenager, Lustiger went into hiding from the Nazis in Orleans, south of Paris. There, Lustiger, who was not a practicing Jew, converted to Catholicism in 1940 at the age of 14.

While Lustiger's father brought the children to safety, his mother stayed behind in Paris to tend to the family hosiery shop. She was rounded up by the Nazi occupying forces, who sent her first to the Drancy transit camp outside Paris and then on to Auschwitz.

Before leaving Paris last month to represent the pope at the Auschwitz ceremonies, Lustiger spoke of how difficult it was for him to carry out the mission. He had visited the death camp once before, in the 1980s.

"I don't want to return, because it is a place of death and destruction," Lustiger told reporters before his trip. "If I am going, it is because the pope asked me."

Lustiger was ordained a priest in 1954. Despite his atypical background, he rose through the church hierarchy to become the public face of Catholicism in France.

Vingt-Trois, 62, was an auxiliary bishop in Paris when he was appointed to Tours in 1999.

Vingt-Trois told reporters in Paris he was "touched that the pope puts his confidence in me" and acknowledged that Lustiger would be a tough act to follow.

"Cardinal Lustiger has a personal dimension that is absolutely exceptional, because of his personal history, and because of his personality, of his talents, his qualities, his dynamism, his motivation," he said.

"I think it is very difficult to succeed Cardinal Lustiger. I do not have his personal qualities -- and I do not intend to do as if I had them."

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