Pope names 21 new cardinals, significantly increasing the pool who will
one day elect his successor
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[October 07, 2024]
By NICOLE WINFIELD
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis named 21 new cardinals Sunday, significantly
increasing the size of the College of Cardinals and further cementing
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 — the
44-year-old head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Melbourne,
Australia, Bishop Mykola Bychok, named in a nod to the ongoing war in
Ukraine.
The new cardinals will get their red hats at a ceremony, known as a
consistory, on Dec. 8, an important feast day on its own that officially
kicks off the Christmas season in Rome. It will be Francis' 10th
consistory to create new princes of the church and the biggest infusion
of voting-age cardinals into the college in Francis' 11-year
pontificate. Acerbi is the only one of the new intake who is over 80 and
hence too old to vote for new pope.
Usually the college has a limit of 120 on voting-age cardinals but popes
often exceed the cap temporarily to keep the body robust as existing
cardinals age out. As of Sept. 28, there were 122 cardinal-electors;
that means the new infusion brings their numbers up to 142.
Among those named by history’s first Latin American pope were the heads
of several major dioceses and archdioceses in South America. They are
the archbishop of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Vicente Bokalic Iglic;
the archbishop of Porto Alegre, Brazil, Jaime Spengler; the archbishop
of Santiago, Chile, Fernando Natalio Chomali Garib; the archbishop of
Guayaquil, Ecuador, Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera; and the archbishop of
Lima, Peru, Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio.
That stands in sharp contrast to the lone new cardinal from North
America: the archbishop of Toronto, Francis Leo.
Showing the universality of the church around the world, Francis also
tapped the archbishop of Tehran, Iran, Monsignor Dominique Joseph
Mathieu, and the bishop of Bogor, Indonesia, Monsignor Paskalis Bruno
Syukor. They both belong to the Franciscan religious order and are two
of the four new Franciscan cardinals.
In addition to Syukor, Asia gets two more cardinals in Monsignor
Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, the archbishop of Tokyo; and Monsignor Pablo
Virgilio Sinogco David, the bishop of Kalookan, Philippines.
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Pope Francis appears at his studio window for the traditional noon
blessing of faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square at
The Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Aside from Asia the other region where the church is growing is
Africa, which got two new cardinals: the archbishop of Abidjan,
Ivory Coast, Monsignor Ignace Bessi Dogbo, and the bishop of
Algiers, Algeria, Monsignor Jean-Paul Vesco.
“Francis has again continued to extend the reach of the college of
cardinals,” said 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 already named the
vast majority of the voting-age cardinals who will one day vote in a
conclave. According to Vatican statistics, before Sunday, 92 of the
cardinals under 80 had been named by Francis, compared with 24 named
by Pope Benedict XVI and six by St. John Paul II.
Added to their ranks on Sunday were two Vatican officials who hold
positions that don’t usually carry with them a cardinal’s rank: the
official in charge of the migrants section of the Vatican
development office, the Rev. Fabio Baggio, and the official who
organizes the pope’s foreign travels, the Rev. George Jacob Koovakad.
In a nod to the current synod underway at the Vatican this month
debating the future of the church, Francis also tapped 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 new cardinals as Francis
doing something unique to try 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 nomination of Bychok gave Ukraine its only cardinal and sent 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, His Beatitude
Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
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