A new archbishop for Sao Paulo

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Catholics in São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, on Sunday welcomed a new archbishop, Odilo Pedro Scherer. Dom Odilo, as he is known, will soon be hosting Pope Benedict XVI on his first visit to the Western Hemisphere as pope.

The pontiff is scheduled to arrive to São Paulo May 9 for a four-day stop in the world’s most populous Catholic country. The pontiff is to meet with Brazilian youth, political and church leaders and canonize a Brazilian Franciscan, Blessed Antonio Galvão. The Brazilian media this week reported the advance arrival of a pair of ``pope-mobiles’’ to ferry the pontiff about.

Banners proclaiming that Brazil was to be ``blessed’’ by the papal visit were hoisted inside the neo-gothic cathedral where Archbishop Scherer, 57, assumed his new duties. Police were out in force in the adjacent plaza, a litter-strewn and dodgy island of green amid São Paulo’s gray downtown.

The new archbishop replaced Cardinal Claudio Hummes, who now heads the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, and was himself a papal candidate before Benedict XVI was named.

Like Hummes, Scherer is the descendant of German settlers in southern Brazil whose offspring hold considerable influence in the Brazilian church.

Posted byPatrick J. McDonnell and Marcel Soares in Sao Paulo.