Red hat

As was widely speculated, the Vatican appointed a deeply conservative Latino archbishop to serve beside Cardinal Roger Mahony and to replace him when Mahony turns 75 next February.

Cardinals retire from active leadership when they reach 75.

Mahony's shadow for the next yearis is Archbishop José Gomez, who has served as the head of the San Antonio, Texas, diocese since February 2005. He is a native of Monterrey, Mexico (giving Mahony the distinction of being the only Los Angeles-born leader of the city's Catholic community in Los Angeles history).

Gomez's appointment will lead to his selection as cardinal within a year or two after Mahony's retirement. (The red galero with tassels is the symbol of a cardinal.)

Gomez's resumé is a perfect fit for Los Angeles from the Vatican's perspective. His is relatively young (58). His orthodoxy - in belief and practice - is rock solid. He is familiar with the media (a skill he shares with Mahony). As a member of the US Conference of Bishops, he has supported the right positions at the right time. He has the right mentors in Rome. He is attached to the "New Evangelization" movement strongly backed by Pope Benedict. He is, of course, Latino.

And he is a full member (a "numerary") of Opus Dei, having been made a priest of the organization's prelature in 1978. (Opus Dei is not a religious order, per se, like the Jesuits, but operates as a worldwide independent diocese - a "personal prelature" of the pope. More than 80 percent of the 100,000 members of Opus Dei are lay people.)

Gomez will be the only American bishop to come from within Opus Dei.

Gomez's selection is, in the most meaningful ways, a disavowal of Mahony's tenure as cardinal archbishop of Los Angeles. Of course Gomez will pick up where Mahony has left off in advocacy for immigrants and the undocumented. But he will steer the diocese away from Mahony's accommodating way with diversity in this most diverse of cities. Mahony has a thoroughly "Americanized" sense of Catholicism (which is not the same as being liberal or conservative).

Mahony led the local church out of its last ethnic enclaves and into the suburbs. Gomez's Catholicism has a different compass, potentially without any goal of making his Catholicism fully part of the American experience.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user Br. Lawrence Lew, O.P. It was used under a Creative Commons license.