VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope John Paul II shuffled the Vatican's administration Tuesday, giving a key post to a Nigerian cardinal often mentioned as a possible papal successor.
Cardinal Francis Arinze, who headed the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, was named prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, which reviews liturgical texts.
Arinze, 69, succeeds Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez, a 75-year-old Chilean who resigned because of his age.
As Arinze's successor in Inter-Religious Dialogue, the pope named Monsignor Michael Fitzgerald, an Englishman long involved in Vatican projects in the Muslim world. He had been the council's secretary.
In another appointment, the pope moved Archbishop Renato Martino, a 69-year-old Italian, from his post as head of the Vatican's U.N. observer mission in New York to Rome as head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He succeeds Vietnamese Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who died Sept. 20.
The Vatican said John Paul also accepted the resignation of Cardinal Agostino Cacciavillan, 75, as head of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See and named another Italian, Monsignor Attilio Nicora, to succeed him.