06 October 2024 , 20:43
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Prelates to receive red hats at December consistory in largest intake of electors during pontiff’s 11-year tenure
Pope Francis has named 21 new cardinals, significantly increasing the size of the college of cardinals and extending his mark on the group of prelates who will one day elect his successor.
They include a man who will be the oldest cardinal – Monsignor Angelo Acerbi, a 99-year-old retired Vatican diplomat who was once held hostage for six weeks in Colombia by leftist guerrillas – and the youngest: Bishop Mykola Bychok, the 44-year-old head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church in Melbourne, Australia, who was named in a nod to the war in Ukraine.
The new cardinals will receive their red hats at a ceremony, known as a consistory, on 8 December, a feast day that officially commences the Christmas season in Rome. It will be the pope’s 10th consistory to name new princes of the church and the biggest entry of voting-age cardinals into the college in his 11-year pontificate. Acerbi is the only one of the new intake who is over 80 and hence too old to vote for a new pope.
Usually the college has a limit of 120 voting-age cardinals but popes often exceed the cap temporarily as existing cardinals age out. As of 28 September, there were 122 cardinal-electors; that means the new additions will bring the number to 142.
Among those named by Francis, who in 2013 became the first Latin American pope, were the heads of several major dioceses and archdioceses in South America. They are Vicente Bokalic Iglic, the archbishop of Santiago del Estero in Argentina; Jaime Spengler, the archbishop of Porto Alegre in Brazil; Fernando Natalio Chomalí Garib, the archbishop of Santiago, Chile; Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera, the archbishop of Guayaquil in Ecuador; and Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio, the archbishop of Lima, Peru.
In contrast, only one new cardinal from North America was named: the archbishop of Toronto, Francis Leo.
Francis appointed Dominique Joseph Mathieu, the archbishop of Tehran, Iran; and Paskalis Bruno Syukur, the bishop of Bogor, Indonesia. They belong to the Franciscan religious order and are two of four new Franciscan cardinals.
In addition to Syukur, Asia will have two more cardinals in Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, the archbishop of Tokyo; and Pablo Virgilio Siongco David, the bishop of Caloocan in the Philippines.
Africa will have two new cardinals: Ignace Bessi Dogbo, the archbishop of Abidjan in Ivory Coast, and Jean-Paul Vesco, the archbishop of Algiers.
“Francis has again continued to extend the reach of the college of cardinals,” said Prof Christopher Bellitto, a church historian at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. “Like his predecessors, but even more so, he’s making sure that Catholic leaders from the church’s edges have a voice at the big table.”
Even before Sunday’s announcement, Francis had named the vast majority of the voting-age cardinals who will one day vote in a conclave. According to Vatican statistics, 92 of the cardinals under 80 had previously been named by Francis, compared with 24 named by Pope Benedict XVI and six by Saint John Paul II.
Added to their ranks on Sundaywere two Vatican officials with positions that do not usually carry with them a cardinal’s rank: the official in charge of the migration section of the Vatican development office, the Rev Fabio Baggio, and the official who organises the pope’s foreign travels, the Rev George Jacob Koovakad.
In acknowledgment of the synod debating the future of the church at the Vatican this month, Francis also named the Rev Timothy Radcliffe, a British theologian who is one of the spiritual advisers for the meeting.
Bellitto said it was “nonsense” to read the appointment of the new cardinals as Francis attempting to stack the deck. “Every school superintendent, president, and prime minister picks people in their image to help their vision,” he said in an email.
The appointment of Bychok gives Ukraine its only cardinal, sending a subtle political message as Russia’s war grinds on. Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, Andrii Yurash, praised the nomination, even though Francis chose the head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic church in Australia over the Kyiv-based head, Sviatoslav Shevchuk.