His Eminence Walter Cardinal Kasper (born March 5, 1933) is a Cardinal Deacon and President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in the Roman Catholic Church.
Born in Heidenheim , Germany, Kasper was ordained to the priesthood in 1957 and earned a doctorate from the Theological Faculty of Tübingen. He worked for three years as an assistant to Leo Scheffczyk and Hans Küng, and later taught dogmatic theology, rising to become dean of the theological facutly in Münster and then in Tübingen.
Appointed Bishop of Rottenburg -Stuttgart in 1989, in 1994, he was named co-chair of the International Commission for Lutheran/Catholic Dialogue. In 1999, Kasper was appointed Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity , and then, in 2001, its president.
Kasper was proclaimed Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 21 February 2001, with the title Cardinal Deacon of Ognissanti in Via Appia Nuova.
He was one of the cardinals considered papabile at the 2005 Papal conclave to elect a successor to John Paul II. He has a reputation as a gifted scholar and as a man of peace, and was considered a compromise between the Italian and Latin American factions. He is more reformist and less hardline than Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as Pope Benedict XVI.
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