Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, delivers Pope John Paul II's message at the Millennium World Peace Summit in this August 29, 2000 file photo at the United Nations. (Photo: AP)

EZIOWELLE, Nigeria (AFP) - The fourth-ranking cardinal in the Vatican and the African with the best chance of succeeding Pope John Paul II began his stellar church career as a child of poor pagan parents in a mud-brick bungalow in the forests of southern Nigeria.

As the current pope clings to life in a Roman hospital, Cardinal Francis Arinze, the 72 year-old Prefect of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, is seen by many as a credible candidate to replace him and become the first African to rule the Holy See since the death of Gelasius I in 496 AD.

And if the college of cardinals sitting in the Cistine chapel does decide that the Holy Spirit has chosen Arinze to lead the Church, the tiny Nigerian farming village of Eziowelle might well become a place of pilgrimage for the world's hundreds of millions of Catholics.

Pilgrims would be best advised to come in the early months of the year, however, as by the end of April when the rains return the track is all but impassible, explained the village priest Father Philip Chinedu Nwafor as he drove his battered old Mercedes Benz into town.

"The state government has promised to repair the road," he said, as schoolchildren and villagers called out "Father" as he passed along the bumpy track the way to the heart of Eziowelle's 6,000-strong community - the Saint Edward Roman Catholic Church.

It might be a while before the road is repaired - Anambra State is in such crisis that lawmakers meet among the ruins of a state assembly building burned down last year by political thugs - but Eziowelle has something else to be proud of as the world begins to wonder about the papal succession.

"His name will work magic for us. We cannot say when this will be, but we are hopeful that Arinze's name will soon begin to bring the good things of life to the village," declared Celestina Emecheta, who at 68 was born four years after Eziowelle's most famous son.

The house where he was born is still standing, despite being a somewhat ramshackle bungalow of mud-brick and rusting corrugated iron, painted in faded chocolate brown and framed on one side by a mango and a pawpaw tree.
A newer family home in concrete stands close by, but Arinze's fame has not brought riches to his relatives, as is demonstrated by the simple heap of dark red laterite soil marking the grave of the cardinal's mother.

"He does not want an elaborate grave for his parents and this grave, as it is, is an ample demonstration of his simplicity and humility, qualities for which he is known," said Father Philip as he showed a reporter around the village.

Once a year, in August, Cardinal Arinze leaves the marble halls of the Vatican, where for two decades he has been a senior officer of the Church, and returns to Eziowelle to stay in the parsonage and celebrate mass in the humble surroundings of Saint Edward's church.

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