Last High-Ranking African in Vatican Curia Tenders Resignation to Pope Francis

ROME, Italy — Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, the last remaining African cardinal to head up a Vatican dicastery, announced Sunday he has tendered his resignation to Pope Francis.

Writing on Twitter, Cardinal Turkson — who runs the office for Promoting Integral Human Development — noted that in the Vatican a mandate lasts five years, at which point one “surrenders” his post for the pope to decide whether or not to “renew/extend mandate or reassign.”

Turkson’s mandate was renewed in 2016 and thus he now awaits “new action of Pope,” the cardinal wrote.

In February of this year, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah from his post as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, leaving Cardinal Turkson as the lone African prelate in such a position.

Cardinal Sarah, a conservative, had been a vocal supporter of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to make the traditional Latin Mass available to anyone who wished to celebrate it, and Francis wasted no time in accepting his resignation once it was offered.

Just five months after Sarah’s departure, Francis rolled back Benedict’s inclusive move by banning the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass in Catholic parishes.

As veteran Vatican journalist John L. Allen, Jr. noted Sunday, if Pope Francis accepts Turkson’s resignation, “there would no longer be an African serving as the head of a major Vatican office” and the most senior African “would become Archbishop Protase Rugambwa of Tanzania, the number two official at the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.”

“Facing such as ‘Africa gap,’ Francis would face pressure to name someone from the continent to a leadership post,” Allen wrote. “Put simply, it’s just not good optics for Africa to be the zone of the greatest growth and missionary zeal for Catholicism in the early 21st century but left completely unrepresented at the most senior levels of the Vatican.”

Follow @tdwilliamsrome