With Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, all eyes are on his potential successors, including one that may become the first black pope: Cardinal Peter Turkson.
The Roman Catholic Cardinal from Ghana, the current president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, is among the leading candidates to assume the title of pontiff as it is rumored the Vatican may look outside Europe for its next leader.
Turkson, 64, was born in Wassaw Nsuta in western Ghana on Oct. 11, 1948 to a Methodist mother and Catholic father. He entered the seminary as a child and moved to New York to study at St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary in Rensselaer before he was ordained as a priest in 1975.
In October 1992, Pope John Paul II named Turkson the Archbishop of Cape Coast, the former capital of Ghana. Turkson served as president of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference from 1997 to 2005 and during that time, was appointed the first-ever cardinal from Ghana.
"We love him," Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle, metropolitan archbishop of Accra, the current capital of Ghana, told the Guardian. "For Ghanaians he was our first cardinal, and to be made cardinal in his 50s was a big feather in our cap."
