(Cardinal-designates under 80 years old:)
1. S.E. Mons. Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, mccj – Presidente del Pontificio Consiglio per il Dialogo Interreligioso.
2. S.E. Mons. José Tolentino Medonça – Archivista e Bibliotecario di Santa Romana Chiesa.
3. S.E. Mons. Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo – Arcivescovo de Jakarta.
4. S.E. Mons. Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez – Arcivescovo de San Cristóbal de la Habana.
5. S.E. Mons. Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, o.f.m. cap – Arcivescovo di Kinshasa.
6. S.E. Mons. Jean-Claude Höllerich, sj – Arcivescovo di Lussemburgo.
7. S.E. Mons. Alvaro L. Ramazzini Imeri – Vescovo di Huehuetenamgo.
8. S.E. Mons. Matteo Zuppi – Arcivescovo di Bologna.
9. S.E. Mons. Cristóbal López Romero, sdb – Arcivescovo di Rabat.
10. R.P. Michael Czerny, sj – Sotto Segretario della Sezione Migranti – Dicastero per il Servizio dello Sviluppo Umano Integrale
(Cardinal-designates over 80 years old:)
(Cardinal-designates over 80 years old:)
1. S.E. Mons. Michael Louis Fitzgerald – Arcivescovo Emerito di Nepte
2. S.E. Mons. Sigitas Tamkevicius, sj – Arcivescovo Emerito di Kaunas
3. S.E. Mons. Eugenio Dal Corso, psdp – Vescovo Emerito di Benguela
Here are a few keywords about their careers from what I could hastily gather here and there on the internet. Please point out if some of these are incorrect.
Guixot: Dialogue with Islam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Ángel_Ayuso_Guixot
Tolentino Medonça: Christianity and Culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Tolentino_Mendonça
Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo: Evangelisation. President of the episcopal conference of Indonesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Suharyo_Hardjoatmodjo
Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez: justice and peace. Past president of the episcopal conference of Cuba. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Garc%C3%ADa_Rodr%C3%ADguez
Fridolin Ambongo Besungu: Peace. Environment. Received death threats. Vice-president of the episcopal conference of Congo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridolin_Ambongo_Besungu
Jean-Claude Höllerich: Active in the WYD. President of the episcopal committee of the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Hollerich
Alvaro L. Ramazzini Imeri. Recipient of Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom award. Past president of the episcopal conference of Guatemala. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Álvaro_Leonel_Ramazzini_Imeri
Matteo Zuppi. Close to Sant'Egidio. Wrote a preface to Fr Martin's book "Building a bridge". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matteo_Zuppi
Cristóbal López Romero. Migrants. Dialogue with Islam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristóbal_López_Romero
Michael Czerny. Not a bishop. Social justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Czerny
Michael Louis Fitzgerald. Christian-Muslim relations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_L._Fitzgerald
Sigitas Tamkevicius. Past president of the episcopal conference of Lituania. Founder of a clandestine newspaper in the time of Soviet occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigitas_Tamkevičius
Eugenio Dal Corso. Was bishop in Angola.https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenio_Dal_Corso
Only three Vatican hands, and they are not the automatics. One is in ecumenism, one is an archivist, and one (Czerny) in social justice (human development) and not even a bishop. Hardly anyone from a place the average American could find on a map. Do I smell sheep?
ReplyDeleteTom Blackburn: Yes, you smell sheep.
ReplyDeleteArchbishop Ramazzini is highly regarded. Why? From Wikipedia: "As a priest and bishop Ramazzini has been involved in social justice issues, especially in the area of protecting the rights of indigenous people. He has fought against multinational corporations who come to Guatemala for its mineral wealth while destroying the countryside. Bishop Ramazzini has empowered the poor and marginalized and fostered civil courage to fight against the injustice they experience. He has received many death threats because of his work ..."
Michael Czerny was one of the Jesuits who came to live and work here in El Salvador after the 1989 massacre at the Jesuit university, in which six Jesuits and two women were murdered by the Salvadoran army. He served as a vice president at the university and headed its human rights institute, replacing Segundo Montes S.J., who founded the institute and was one of the six who were murdered.
Czerny later founded and directed the African Jesuit AIDS Network, and subsequently worked with Cardinal Peter Turkson at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He currently heads the Vatican's office for migrants and refugees.
Tom: Please do keep us posted on how you're doing in the midst of the storm.
ReplyDeletePray for the Bahamas. Gusts over 200 mph. They are getting Andrew wind speeds along with 15+ foot storm surges. And unlike Andrew, which tore across southern Miami Dade County in a hurry to get to the Gulf, Dorian is officially described to be "wobbling" and moving at 1 mph as of 6 a.m. I can't imagine what it's like to be in that.
DeleteThe following comments from an arch conservative blog:
ReplyDelete"They are, without a doubt, the most liberal group of Cardinal-Electors ever assembled. Even those explicitly non-liberal, as the
Abp. of Kinshasa, were chosen probably due to their extreme proximity with the German Church and the concerns of the German bishops."
"The passion of the Church will last for many decades more. And Francis will never resign. Not only that, the Puppeteers will leave him in a coma creating cardinals for years, if that is what it takes to completely remake the College of Cardinals."
A more rational assessment by Rocco at Whispers
"Most critically of all, with the new class, Francis has reached a key tipping point – following the Consistory, the reigning Pope will have created 67 electors, giving his oft-unconventional picks a majority of the future Conclave for the first time...
...and lest anyone forgot, that's not merely significant because the cardinals choose the next Pope, but as one of them will be the next Pope."
Difficult to predict the future. After all the years of JP2 stacking not only the cardinals but the bishops, we of course got B12. But we now know that we came very close to getting Francis in that conclave. And we did get Francis in the most recent conclave"
Rocco also tweeted:
a current member of the College sums up the new crop of cardinals this way: “This Pope… my God….”
Whether out of elation or frustration, that’s the most universal reaction of all.
Pass out the smelling salts, the arch-conservatives have a case of the vapors! Rather than seeing everything through a liberal/conservative lense, maybe they should pay more attention to what Francis has said. He is on record as saying (on another occasion) that he doesn't think the clergy should be careerists. I know very little about these people, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be described as careerists. Which is probably upsetting to those whose priority is "climbing the ladder" rather than pastoral concerns.
DeleteI suspect their attitude toward careerism is that it is fine for conservatives but bad for liberals.
DeleteJack: I think we got B16, not B12. Pope Benedict XII, born Jacques Fornier, was Pope from 30 December 1334 to his death in April 1342. He was the third Avignon Pope.
DeleteI am a very poor proof reader; besides I know very little of the history of the popes so B12 has no associations for me.
DeleteIn case you'd want to know a little more about them:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-09/pope-announces-13-new-cardinals-for-the-missionary-church.html
Thamks for the link, Gene. Interesting!
DeleteFor guys like Gomez and Chaput, the clock is ticking. They had every reason to think, at the time of their respective appointments, that the red hat would be a pro forma thing. One aspect of Francis is that he is quite political (in the church-politics sense). Which is kind of ironic, inasmuch as he's said, more than once I think, that a church that is turned inward toward its own affairs isn't healthy. What Trump is doing with conservative judicial appointments, Francis is doing with red hats. I hope it works out okay for the church. I like Catholicism best when it sticks to the "here comes everyone" approach.
ReplyDeleteI also like Catholicism best when it sticks to "here comes everyone". According to Jack's summary below, that is exactly what is happening. Trump's judge appointments are all American-style conservatives. Francis' new cardinal designates seem to reflect geography and culture, representative of the world's Catholics, more than liberal or conservative ideology. And I don't know very much about them yet, but from what I am reading so far, they have more experience in pastoral types of ministry than some of the cardinal appointees of the past.
DeleteI'm sorry (well really I'm not) if Chaput, et al, feel disrespected, but being archbishop of Philadelphia isn't exactly chopped liver.
I remember when I was a kid that it was unheard of for the pope to be anybody but an Italian. The cardinals were also disproportionately Italian. According to Pew figures, Italians were 12.1% of the world's Catholics in 1910. In 2010 Italians were 4.6%. But prior to John Paul II the last non-Italian pope was in the 1500s. Nothing against Italians, but a rebalancing was long overdue.
DeleteReese points out:
ReplyDelete"At Francis’ election in 2013, 35% of the cardinals were members of the Curia, After Oct. 15, the Curia’s presence will be down to 26%.
He has also reduced the number of Italian cardinals. At his election, 24% of the electors were Italian; after Oct. 15, the percentage will be down to 18%.
The percentage of cardinal electors from Europe has also dropped to 42% from 52%.
The United States has also lost votes under Francis, down to 7% from almost 10% under Benedict XVI.
The winners have been Latin America, at 18.5%, up 2 percentage points; Africa at 14%, up 4 percentage points; and Asia at 12%, up 3 points.
In short, the next conclave will be less European and less white. While the Global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania) made up 35% of the college at his election, it will now be 44%. Even so, with 42% of the electors, Europe, home to only 26% of the world’s Catholics, is still overrepresented. The church changes, but it does so slowly."
The papacy is about governing which is politics. Paul VI began the process of making the Cardinals more representation of the world. JP2 slowed down that process; B16 actually reversed it; and now Francis has resumed it. But we are still far from having the cardinals being representative of the Catholic world, let alone the world at large.
Francis has taken initiative which are likely to irreversibly affect the college of cardinals.
1. He has dismantled the promotion system, i.e. when someone becomes archbishop of Los Angeles they become a cardinal soon after, i.e. when their retired cardinal archbishop reaches age 80.
2. He has promoted archbishops and even bishops from places that never before have had them, and now even a priest. That again disrupts the promotion system.
3. All this is making the College of Cardinals far more representative of Catholicism, not just in terms of geography but also of the various levels, small dioceses and archdioceses as well as the great cities of the world.
4. Francis is also clearly making the College of Cardinals far more oriented toward evangelization rather than the internal government of the Church, e.g. a cardinals from the Baltics, the Middle East, Oceania, those engaged in dialogue with Islam. It sounds like his reform of the Curia is headed in that direction, too.
Yes this Third World Pope is very political; he is dismantling the First World (Europe and North America) monopoly of power over the Papacy, and thereby the rest of the Catholicism. Actually he is doing this slowly but very creatively, aiming not just at a rebalance of power but we many new ideas of how the College of Cardinals, the Curia and the Papacy should function.
Pretty clearly, and understandably, he's also working to ensure that his legacy of reform doesn't erode within a few years of his death.
DeleteJP2 also had his own reforms, e.g. the new Code of Canon Law, and the Catechism both of which were designed to channel Vatican II in less progressive directions. For example he reined in national bishops conferences by requiring on many matters that they have a two-thirds majority plus approval by Rome for their decisions. He also appointed most of the bishops from whom the cardinals are chosen. And he created a very strong papacy by journeying around the world to great adulation.
DeleteHowever one can wonder how much of the JP2 legacy will survive even after being made a saint. It almost did not survive the election of his successor. Francis came close to winning that election. It appeared to survive in the election of B!6. However B16 was likely only elected because JP2 had changed the rules of the conclave which required a two-thirds majority by permitting a pope to be elected by a simple majority after so many ballots. B12 had a clear majority on early ballots. However under old rules (which B16 restored after being elected) the strong minority which backed Francis could have forced a compromise candidate. So in some sense Francis had stronger backing at his election than B16 had at his; any real opposition to Francis could have forced a compromise candidate.
Jimmy, notice that I had four B16s and one B12 in the very same paragraph.
DeleteAnd this from the Tighty Righty Disloyal Opposition in Southern California: https://cal-catholic.com/red-hats-for-key-allies/ (don't overlook the comments from the Real Katlik Klavern)
ReplyDelete