Peter Cardinal Poreku Dery 1918-2008
Louis Epstein
according to the Vatican website which reproduces the Pope's telegrams
of condolence.(I suppose telegrams sound more impressive than emails
but technologically-genealogically they're very akin,no?)
Actually his father's surname was Poreku and "Dery" is a name he
was given because his family considered him a reincarnation of a
brother who died in infancy,and he has also been called Cardinal Dery.
After a childhood slaughtering animals for his animist-priest uncle,
he was baptized a Catholic in 1933;a 1987 biography (put out by
the well-known subsidy publisher Vantage Press) was called "From
assistant fetish priest to archbishop:Studies in honor of Archbishop
Dery".
In 1951 he was ordained a priest by the bishop of Tamale,a Ghanaian
diocese he would later head from 1974 (as archbishop from its elevation
in 1977 to his retirement in 1994).In 1960 he was chosen to be first
bishop of Wa,and consecrated by Pope John XXIII,assisted by Fulton Sheen.
Three other Africans consecrated in that ceremony became Cardinals before
he did,but the red hat was his at last in Benedict XVI's first consistory
(he was among the handful of those named cardinals after passing the age
of 80 and thus ineligible to vote in the event of a conclave).He was the
Cardinal-deacon of Santa Elena fuori Porta Prenestina.
He had attended the Second Vatican Council,and perhaps harking back to
his "assistant fetish priest" days he translated the Mass into a local
language (Dagare) and had it sung to local melodies on local instruments.
-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.