The foundation stone was blessed by Achile Cardinal Silvestrini (Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches), and laid by Rt.
When the earliest speculation as to who would succeed John Paul II began in the middle 1990s, Silvestrini was a popular choice among liberal observers because he was seen as a man in the more moderate style of Paul VI rather than John Paul's hardline style.
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Educated in Rome, Silvestrini became a priest in 1946 and after several years continuing his education in Rome via studies of theology, law and Church history, began a very long career in the Vatican Secretariat of State.
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In 1999 Silvestrini was the papal representative to the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan.
After turning eighty, Cardinals Cheli and Silvestrini came to be seen as the bluntest critics of the rule on over-age cardinals, with Cheli on Silvestrini's 80th birthday (five years after himself turning eighty) saying to The Observer in December 2003: "It is a great deprivation for cardinals. Perhaps different limits can be used in future. Perhaps those whose minds have gone should not vote. We all know who they are. And some of them are in their seventies."