Pope Francis appoints Cardinal Turkson as new chancellor of Pontifical Academy of Sciences

Pope Francis has on Monday appointed Cardinal Peter Turkson as the new chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

The Ghanaian cardinal succeeds the 79-yr-previous Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, who has led the two establishments given that 1998.

The pope acknowledged Cardinal Turkson’s resignation as prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Improvement very last December.

Cardinal Turkson served as the archbishop of Cape Coast, Ghana, just before he was named to Rome in 2009 to be president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The 73-calendar year-old cardinal, who speaks 6 languages, became the first president of the Dicastery for Selling Integral Human Growth in 2016 just after his pontifical council was merged into the new physique alongside with three other people.

The rumours of his resignation appeared a couple months right after Pope Francis requested an inspection of the dicastery, led by Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, that was adopted by staff changes.

Cardinal Turkson’s departure left the Vatican with out no African leaders between the heads of its ​dicasteries for the 1st time considering the fact that 1977.

In current several years, Bishop Sorondo’s long tenure at the pontifical academies has been marked by controversy.

In 2018, he praised China’s world-wide leadership, indicating that “at this instant, these who most effective notice the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.”

In 2020, he defended his choice to administer the Eucharist to Argentina’s president, even with Alberto Fernández’s work to legalise abortion in his place.

In the similar yr, he also defended the regular existence of economist Jeffrey Sachs, an advocate for contraception and “reproductive justice,” at Vatican conferences.

The Buenos Aires-born bishop will celebrate his 80th birthday on Sept. 8.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences traces its roots to the Accademia dei Lincei, one of the world’s initial completely scientific academies, founded in Rome in 1603. The limited-lived academy’s associates included the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei.

Bl. Pius IX re-founded the academy as the Pontifical Academy of the New Lynxes in 1847. Pius XI gave it its present-day title in 1936.

The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences was established in 1994 by Pope John Paul II. Its site claims that its intention is “promoting the review and development of the social sciences, mostly economics, sociology, legislation and political science, thus featuring the Church those people components which she can use in the development of her social doctrine.”

The two pontifical academies are based mostly at the Casina Pio IV in the Vatican Gardens.