Pope and African Bishops to Cardinal Kasper: “Can you hear us now?”

Presented for your consideration: Pope Francis has named Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea (which, for the Eurocentric, is an African country) as Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship. Listen up.

Deacon Greg Kandra has the story at The Deacon’s Bench, via The Vatican Insider:

The Vatican has an African cardinal leading a Vatican Congregation once again. Nigerian cardinal Francis Arrinze was Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments from 2002 to 2008, while Cardinal Bernardin Gantin from Benin headed the Congregation for Bishops from 1984 to 1998.

“The Lord has given me a gift I do not deserve and it is also a call to love the Lord even more on the occasion of the Consistory; it is also a call to love the Lord more and to die for Him, for the Gospel, for the salvation of the world… I would like to thank the Holy Father for deciding to grant me this honour. However, I also see this call as having come from God; it is a call to me to lead a more priestly and Christian life. I think today’s world needs God’s people, people who live their lives in such a way that they represent God’s physical presence in the world.”

This comes quite soon after Cardinal Walter Kasper’s infamous off-the-cuff remark, post-Synod, dismissing as irrelevant the insights and experiences of bishops from the continent which, in all the world these days, most constitutes Christendom. In the joy of growth and the witness of persecution, no place on earth speaks louder.

With regard to African bishops, Cardinal Kasper shrugged, “they should not tell us [the West] too much what we have to do.”

Unless, that is, Pope Francis makes an African THE BOSS OF YOU.

BOOM.