Pope calls late Belgian cardinal 'untiring artisan of communion'

Published: 2005-01-14

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Belgian Cardinal Jan Schotte, who died Jan. 10 at the age of 76, was an "untiring artisan of communion," both within the Catholic Church and in the world, Pope John Paul II said. The pope presided over Cardinal Schotte's Jan. 14 funeral in St. Peter's Basilica and personally greeted a dozen members of the cardinal's family after the Mass. The cardinal's wooden coffin, placed before the altar with a simple cross and an open Bible on it, was later buried in the chapel of the Vatican canons in Rome's Verano Cemetery. "He was a man of peace," the pope said in his homily at the funeral. "He made the value of peace one of the defining points of his long and intense service to the universal church and, particularly, to the Holy See."

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