Pope Francis has announced the appointment of 21 new cardinals, including archbishops from Belgrade, Tokyo and Tehran, as well as a bishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Among them is the 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.
The new cardinals will receive their red hats in a ceremony known as a consistory on December 8, the feast day that officially opens the Christmas season in Rome. It will be the pope’s 10th consistory at which he will name the new princes of the church, and the largest recruitment of cardinals of voting age to the college in all 11 years of his pontificate. Acerbi is the only one of the new line-up who is over 80, meaning he is too old to vote for a new pope.
The collegium usually has a limit of 120 cardinals eligible to vote, but popes often temporarily exceed that limit as existing cardinals age. As of September 28, there were 122 cardinal-electors in the college; so with the new additions, the number will rise to 142.
Among those named by Francis, who became the first Pope from Latin America in 2013, are the heads of several major dioceses and archdioceses in South America. They are Vicente Bokalic Iglic, archbishop of Santiago del Estero in Argentina; Jaime Spengler, archbishop of Porto Alegre in Brazil; Fernando Natalio Chomalà Garib, archbishop of Santiago, Chile; Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera, archbishop of Guayaquil in Ecuador; and Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio, archbishop of Lima, Peru.
In contrast, only one new cardinal was appointed from North America: Archbishop Francis Leo of Toronto.
Francis appointed Dominic Joseph Mathieu, archbishop of Tehran, Iran, and Paskalis Bruno Syukur, bishop of Bogor, Indonesia. They belong to the Franciscan religious order and are two of the four new Franciscan cardinals.
In addition to Syukur, Asia will have two other cardinals, Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, archbishop of Tokyo, and Pablo Virgilio Siongco David, bishop of Kalookan in the Philippines.
Africa will have two new cardinals, Ignace Bessi Dogbo, archbishop of Abidjan in Ivory Coast, and Jean-Paul Vesco, archbishop of Algeria.
The Pope said the appointment of the new cardinals “manifests the unbreakable bond between the See of Peter and the local Churches throughout the world.”
Pope Francis led a prayer for peace to the Virgin Mary on Sunday. The pontiff also urged everyone to dedicate a day of prayer and fasting on 7 October, the anniversary of the start of the conflict in the Middle East. The Pope has repeatedly called for a truce in the Middle East. On September 30, during a Mass in Brussels, Francis expressed concern about the worsening conflict in the region and called for an immediate ceasefire.
