Thursday, March 03, 2011

91% of Living Catholic Bishops can be traced back to...

Scipione Rebiba

I was looking through catholic-hierarchy.org and I started with my own archbishop and found out his episcopal consecrator was consecrated by Pope John Paul II. I kept going back through the episcopal lineage of Pope John Paul II until ultimately I hit upon Cardinal Scipione Rebiba, but there was no way to go any further. I then did a google/wikipedia search and found out that Pope Benedict XVI could trace his episcopal lineage back to this same Cardinal. I realized that JPII did not consecrate B16, so I got curious.

I searched for Scipione Rebiba, and apparently 91% of living Catholic Bishops can trace their episcopacy back to him. But my question is who consecrated Rebiba?

Many believe he was consecrated by Pope Paul IV, but supporting documentation does not exist. This is very unfortunate. I have not done much research on this, but it would be an interesting topic to look into more deeply.

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