On Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI began facing his final hours of as the sitting religious leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Earlier that morning Pope Benedict XVI met with more than 100 cardinals who must now choose his replacement. His decision to stand down – the first pope to do so in six centuries – has thrown the Roman Catholic Church into a whirl of activity. This morning, the CNN contributor Father Edward Beck joins “Starting Point” to talk about his resignation.
Regarding Pope Benedict XVI’s successor, Beck says, “there’s a lot of talk that the Catholic Church is in the developing world, in Africa and Asia, so I want to go out a limb and I want to throw someone out from the developing nation of the Philippines, Cardinal Tagle.”
In November of last year at age 55, Tagle became the world’s second youngest cardinal. Beck says Tagle also interesting because “he is so humble.”
“When he was bishop in… the Philippines, he would ride his bicycle. He would encounter all the people on the streets. He would invite the poor in his residence to eat,” Father Beck says.