Legacy Matters

"Never forget the little faraway village from which you came"

The highest ranking African prelate Cardinal Bernardin Gantin died last week in Paris at 86.  His body was taken back to his native Benin where he was given A Hero's Sendoff.  Rocco Palmo tells the story.

Earlier, a Memorial Mass was held at St. Peter's where Pope Benedict gave the homily.

A railway worker's son, Benedict said that "his personality, human and priestly, made for a magnificent synthesis of the qualities of the African soul with those of the Christian spirit, of the culture and identity of Africa and the values of the Gospel." Despite being, at age 38, the first native-born African archbishop and the continent's first son to assume a top role in the Roman Curia, the Pope said that Gantin never let the accolades get to his head, adding that the "secret" to his humility likely lay in "the wise words that his mother repeated when he became a cardinal... 'Never forget the little faraway village from which you came.'"