Pontiff promotes cardinal who tells couples to cuddle
By Simon Caldwell and Carol Glatz
13 June 2008

The pope has promoted an Italian cardinal who recommends that married couples keep themselves attractive to their spouses and spend more time cuddling each other.

Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, the Archbishop of Florence, has been named by Pope Benedict XVI as the new president of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

The Pope has been impressed with the 71-year-old prelate's statements on the family which have made him almost a household name in Italy. In January Cardinal Antonelli issued a "decalogue for the family" in which he gave 10 tips for a lasting and fruitful marriage and a happy home. Italians were shocked to see they included advise to both husbands and wives never to stop making themselves attractive to each other.

He also said couples should find the time to cuddle each other and to pursue common interests. "Make yourselves lovable by grooming yourselves and paying close attention to your personal appearance," the cardinal said.

"Above all, show respect and tenderness towards the other through words of appreciation and of gratitude, smiles and glances, caresses, gestures of affection and appropriate gifts." The advice came in one of three letters to Catholics in Florence that the cardinal has written on the subject of the family this year alone.

Cardinal Antonelli fills a post left vacant by the death of Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who had headed the council for nearly 18 years and had a reputation as a firebrand, famously telling the BBC that condoms were so unreliable as a means of birth control that packets should carry health warnings.

His elevation makes him immediately papabile - a potential successor to the Pope - although he is still an outsider. He was only made a cardinal in 2003 by Pope John Paul II.

Cardinal Antonelli, who is also an art historian, responded to his promotion by saying he was grateful for the Pope's trust in him.

He said he felt the weight of his new role and the 'great responsibility for the decisive importance the family has for the Church and for society'.

Speaking to Vatican Radio, he said that family life was "seriously threatened and in crisis". He said the biggest challenges facing the family were to its unity and stability.

The cardinal said that in Italy there was the added problem of an increasingly low birth rate among married couples.

Strong, solid families need "true love, intense love as a gift of oneself", he said, adding that these involved sometimes suppressing "spontaneous inclinations" for instant pleasures.

He said European culture and society had already become unsupportive of families in general.

Cardinal Antonelli is well known among Italy's cardinals and bishops after serving as general secretary of the Italian bishops' conference from 1995 to 2001. He is a member of the pontifical councils for Social Communications and for the Laity and has put special emphasis on the role of lay people in the Church.

Born in Todi, Cardinal Antonelli entered the minor seminary in his hometown and finished his high school studies at the regional minor seminary in Assisi. Sent to Rome's major seminary, he studied philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Lateran University and was ordained in 1960. He was named Bishop of Gubbio in 1982 and Archbishop of Perugia-Citta della Pieve in 1988. In 1995, he moved to Rome when Pope John Paul II named him general secretary of the Italian bishops' conference. He was named Archbishop of Florence in 2001 and was elevated in 2003 to the College of Cardinals.