(From combined sources)
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis announced September 1 that he will create 13 new cardinals, from every part of the world, in a consistory October 5. Among them are 10 who are eligible to vote in a future conclave, according to a Catholic News Agency report by Hannah Brockhaus.
As these newly named cardinals come from North America, Central America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, Pope Francis said September 1 that “their origin expresses the missionary vocation of the Church, which continues to proclaim the merciful love of God to all people on Earth.”
Among those to be elevated to cardinal is Canadian Jesuit Fr. Michael Czerny, the head of the Migrants and Refugees section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Two other red hat recipients also work inside the Vatican. They are: Spanish Archbishop Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, prefect of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; and Portuguese Archbishop José Tolentino Mendonca, librarian of the Holy Roman Church.
From Africa are Archbishop Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Archbishop Cristobal Lopez Romero of Rabat in Morocco.
There is Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo of Jakarta in Indonesia and Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. North America is represented only by Archbishop Juan de la Caridad Garcia Rodriguez of Havana, Cuba.
Archbishops Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg and Matteo Zuppi of Bologna represent Europe.
Pope Francis will also elevate three bishops over the age of 80, who are therefore ineligible to vote in a conclave, but who, he said, “have distinguished themselves for their service to the Church.”
They are: Archbishop Michael Louis Fitzgerald, emeritus of Nepte in Tunisia and a former president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius, emeritus of Kaunas in Lithuania, who was arrested and persecuted under the Soviet regime; and Bishop Eugenio Dal Corso, emeritus of Benguela in Angola, where he was a missionary.
As it stands now, the College of Cardinals has 215 members, 118 of whom are electors.
Pope Francis announced his intention to add to the College of Cardinals from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, after leading the angelus September 1.
Immediately after the news broke, conservative Catholic commentators expressed grave concern about the composition of the College of Cardinals.
Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf commented as follows September 1 on his wdtprs.com blog:
“You know what an atomizer is, right? Think of those bottles of perfume with little squeeze bulbs that send out poofs.
“To atomize means to break down into discrete parts, to separate something into tiny bits.
“That’s what is happening to the College of Cardinals.
“The last few consistories point to the possibility that Francis is trying purposely to atomize the College.
“Today the names of the new members of the College were announced. They were a mixture of the unremarkable. The list is a combination of the expected and the seemingly random, as if a dart were thrown at map with the light switched off. (A reader sent a positive remark by email about Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg.)
“How does atomization enter into this?
“One cardinal told me some time ago that the cardinals don’t know each other anymore.
“It was always going to be the case that not every cardinal knew all the others. However, there were always a goodly number who had worked in the Curia, who had studied in Rome and met others. There were many more occasions when the College was brought to Rome and they had a chance to meet each other.
“Hence, when a cardinal says that the members don’t know each other, that means that College is being atomized. That means that previous blocs have been broken down.
“Also, the fact that men to whom Rome is truly a foreign concept are being made cardinals, who don’t have their own sense of the Roman thing, of Romanità, of how things work and how to network, power blocs will coalesce around well-known, even famous, cardinals, whose names are in the news all the time, movers and shakers: Tagle, Marx, Maradiaga, Baldisseri, etc. The newbies and relative outsiders will gather magnetically to the Big Names in the College. It stands to reason.
“The seemingly random — dart in the dark — method is described as an attempt to reflect the missionary dimension of the Church. Okay. The result within the College is that no one knows the others. Atomization.
“There are other matters in the list which prompt concern. One popped — or rather poofed — out at me.
“It is not at all usual that the Italian see of Bologna would have a cardinal’s hat. Remember that the late Dubia Cardinal Caffarra was in Bologna. As if to snuff out the very memory of the man who sent in the Dubia and who had, previously, founded the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family, and who had received the note from Sr. Lucia saying that the Enemy’s last battleground was the family, a certain Archbishop Matteo Zuppi was appointed to Bologna.
“Zuppi wrote the foreword to the Italian translation of the infamous homosexualist manifesto by the Jesuit James Martin.
“He also called for the building of mosques and Islamic celebrations in schools.
“So, what we have now is a rather odd, seemingly random — and yet not — poofing of the College into ever smaller fragments. And just as in the case of an atomizer which is poofed upon a mirror on the wall, the droplets will eventually coalesce into the bigger drops.”
Rorate Caeli (see https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/) also offered an analysis, stating in part:
“They are, without a doubt, the most liberal group of cardinal-electors ever assembled. At least two of them are widely known in Roman circles for their ‘gay’ preferences (and the word ‘gay’ is used here advisedly, to include the whole homosexual ‘gay culture’ mentioned by Benedict XVI in his 2005 document on seminarians to be avoided), as well as two liberal Jesuits. Even those explicitly non-liberal, as the archbishop of Kinshasa, were chosen probably due to their extreme proximity with the German Church and the concerns of the German bishops.”
Phil Lawler commented September 3 at his www.catholicculture.org website:
“Having named 13 new members of the College of Cardinals, Pope Francis will — as of October 5 — have named a majority of the cardinals who will elect the next Roman Pontiff. At least on paper, then, he has had a chance to ensure that the next conclave will elect a prelate who shares his vision for the Church.
“The numbers, by themselves, mean very little. Pope John Paul II appointed 231 cardinals: more than enough to constitute a super-majority in the next conclave. But he sought authentic diversity in the College, and he conferred many red hats on prelates who would differ with his pastoral approach: Cardinals Bernardin, Danneels, Laghi, Martini, Mahony, Silvestrini, Turkson, and — in the remarkable consistory of 2001 — Kasper, McCarrick, Maradiaga, Hummes, Lehmann, and Bergoglio, now known as Francis.
“In naming the cardinals who will be his advisers and will choose his successor, Pope Francis has taken a different approach. Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, the former worldwide leader of the Jesuit order, reported that Pope Francis once told him that he hoped to remain as Pontiff until ‘the changes are irreversible.’ Packing the College of Cardinals with like-minded electors is an obvious step in that direction.
“The liberal Jesuit columnist, Fr. Thomas Reese, wrote in 2016 that the Pope’s selections to the College were “the most revolutionary thing Francis has done in terms of Church governance.” He admitted that if he were a conservative Catholic, looking at the Pope’s selections, “Frankly, I would have been outraged.”
“Now, two consistories later, the pattern is even more unmistakable. In his analysis of the Pope’s choices, John Allen of Crux underlines the salient point:
“‘This is a consistory in which Francis is elevating a cohort of like-minded churchmen, positioning them to help advance his agenda right now and also to help ensure that the next pope, whoever it may be, isn’t someone inclined to roll back the clock’….
“Among the new cardinals-designate, there are several clear indications of the Pope’s determination to put his stamp on the college:
“Three (Czerny, Hollerich, and Tamkevicius) are fellow Jesuits.
“Two — Hollerich and Zuppi — are prominent members of the European liberal bloc.
“Cardinal-designate Zuppi wrote a foreword for Building a Bridge, the book by the notorious Fr. James Martin, SJ, advocating a change in Church attitudes toward homosexuality.
“Cardinal-designate Tolentino de Mendonca wrote a laudatory introduction to a book by Sr. Maria Teresa Forcades, who supports legal abortion and women’s ordination and has been dubbed by BBC as ‘Europe’s most radical nun.’
“Cardinal-designate Fitzgerald (who will not have a vote in a papal conclave because of his age) was removed from his Vatican post by Pope Benedict; the red hat will be a sign that his views — including a conciliatory line in Catholic-Islamic dialogue — are now welcome in Rome. It may also be noteworthy that the current president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue (the office that Fitzgerald once held), Bishop Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, will also receive a red hat, in a sign of the importance Pope Francis attaches to that effort.
“Cardinal-designate Czerny is not a bishop, nor does he head a Vatican office. He is undersecretary at the dicastery for integral human development, responsible for migrants and refugees. In the Vatican tradition, a cardinal never serves under any other prelate but the Pope. If Cardinal Czerny continues in his current role his status would break that rule; he would appear on the organizational chart under Cardinal Peter Turkson, the prefect of the dicastery. His status as a cardinal would emphasize — as if any emphasis were necessary — the Pope’s keen interest in the issue of migration.”
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