Could We See Our Future New Pope Elevated to Cardinal Next Week? Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi

It has been a huge ole busy week in Rome this week. The Middle East Synod taking as it should the headlines. Now it appears this Sunday that the Pope will name his new Cardinals. It appears it will notbe American heavy which means the in 2012 it will have to be. John Allen has a good post on this at Sweeps week in Rome.

This caught my eye though:

...............There are also two Italians in dioceses traditionally led by cardinals likely to be tapped: Archbishops Paolo Romeo in Palermo and Giuseppe Betori in Florence.
During the last five years, there has already been considerable talk about the “re-Italianization” of the Roman Curia under Benedict XVI, fueling what some see as an excessively parochial outlook at senior levels. The preponderance of Italians in the coming consistory probably won’t do a great deal to change those perceptions.

Among the new crop of cardinals, the lone slam-dunk new papabile would seem to be Ravasi.
A native of Italy’s Lombardy region, Ravasi’s father was an anti-fascist tax collector who deserted the army and was missing from his family for 18 months. Ravasi has always been drawn to the life of the mind, and originally wanted to be a Greek and Latin teacher. After deciding to enter the seminary instead, he studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and worked on archeological projects in the Middle East.

Back in Italy, Ravasi moved in clerical circles in Milan, collaborating with his fellow thinker-prelate Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, though Ravasi was seen as a more “Ratzingerian” figure than the more liberal Martini, a Jesuit. After a brief glitch in his appointment to the episcopacy in 2005, related to an article he wrote on Easter which some regarded as heterodox, Ravasi was appointed to head the Pontifical Council for Culture in 2007.
I’ve described Ravasi as a man “with the mind of Ratzinger and the heart of Roncalli,” meaning that he combines the intellectual acumen and clarity of Benedict XVI with the warm pastoral touch and openness to the world of John XXIII. As a result, he tends to be one of those rare figures with strong appeal across the ideological and theological divides in the church.
He’s also a polyglot, comfortable in all the major European languages (including English), and a widely traveled figure who knows the situation facing the church in different parts of the world.
Given all that, it’s not hard to see why many people believe Ravasi, who turns 68 next Monday, will become a front-runner in the informal papal sweepstakes immediately upon claiming his red hat next month.