VATICAN CITY - Genoa's cardinal, who is often mentioned as a top candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II, has been chosen by the pontiff to head the Milan archdiocese, a prestigious and highly visible posting.
The Vatican said Thursday that John Paul named Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi to replace Cardinal Maria Martini, who is retiring because of age. Martini, 75, has been serving in Milan, Italy's financial and business capital, since in 1979.
Tettamanzi, 68, is considered a moderate and a rising figure in the Italian Church. He has been picked out by many observers as a strong candidate when the next election for pope.
Many Vatican watchers have theorized that after more than two decades of a non-Italian as pope, there will be a strong push among the voting cardinals to give back the papacy to Italians, who had held sway for centuries and who still dominate the Vatican's bureaucracy.
Tettamanzi's Church career was highly visible from the start. He was ordained a priest in 1957 by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, who would go on to become Pope Paul VI.
Tettamanzi was raised to bishop's rank in 1989, posted in Milan, and he was elevated to cardinal's rank by the pope in 1998, three years after being posted in Genoa, a largely blue collar port city.
A long-time professor of theology, including moral theology, Tettamanzi was praised in the Vatican's appointment announcement for the "clarity and depth" of his thought in his theological teaching and for his loyalty to Church teaching.
Martini, whose veiled calls for change in the Church had endeared him to the minority of liberals among fellow cardinals, is a thoughtful man who, rather uncharacteristically for high-ranking churchmen, is quite straightforward in speaking with the media. He was widely seen as having the qualities to be a pope.
But earlier this year, he acknowledged he had health problems, and has said he hopes to move to Jerusalem to dedicate himself to prayer after his retirement from Milan.