The New Cardinals Francis Has in Mind

Chiesa
January 3, 2014

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350691?eng=y

The official news is that on February 22 Pope Francis will create the first cardinals of his pontificate. This means that at least one month before that date he will make public the list with the names of the churchmen he believes worthy of receiving the scarlet.

Creating new cardinals is a highly personal act of the pope, by which he can among other things influence the selection of his successor.

For this reason as well there is great curiosity over who will be the selections of Pope Francis.

In the past predictions could be made with a fair chance of guessing at least a good number of the new cardinals. It was enough to identify those occupants of ecclesiastical offices of longstanding "cardinalate tradition" - both in the curia and in the leadership of certain dioceses - who were still without the scarlet, and the trick was done.

But with Pope Francis, who has made surprise one of his management traits, the predictions are much more uncertain.

Let's start with the numbers.

On February 22 there will be 106 cardinal electors, those under the age of 80. There will therefore be 14 scarlet hats available, assuming that Pope Francis respects the norm introduced by Paul VI and reiterated by his successors, which sets the maximum number of voting cardinals at 120.

Another cardinal, Dionigi Tettamanzi, will turn 80 on March 14 and it is therefore possible that there could be 15 new cardinals, seeing that in this case the limit would be exceeded by only one and for only twenty days.

Apart from Tettamanzi, another 32 cardinals will turn 80 by the end of April, 2017. This means that during the first four years of his pontificate Pope Francis will be able to create at least 47 new cardinals, more than a third of the college of electors of the bishop of Rome and barely fewer than the 53 created by Benedict XVI and the 20 selected by John Paul II who will make up the roster of cardinals with the right to vote at that time.

We now come to the names.

Among the 14 or 15 new cardinals it is hard to imagine that there will be more than 4 or 5 in the curia. First in line are obviously the archbishops Pietro Parolin, Beniamino Stella, and Lorenzo Baldisseri, the three diplomats whom Pope Francis has promoted respectively to the positions of secretary of state, prefect of the congregation for the clergy, and secretary general of the synod of bishops.

Baldisseri does not hold a position that is cardinalate in itself, but he has been considered a "half-cardinal" since the newly elected pope placed his own cardinal's biretta on his head in the Sistine Chapel, where he was serving as secretary of the conclave, amid the applause of the cardinal electors.

Also in the curia, the scarlet should go to the prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, the German Gerhard L. Muller. While the scarlet appears more uncertain for the French Dominican Jean-Louis Brugues, who in spite of holding the traditionally cardinalate position of archivist and librarian of Holy Roman Church could skip a turn partly by virtue of his squabbles, when he was secretary of the congregation for Catholic education, with then-cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio concerning the appointment of the rector of the Catholic University of Buenos Aires.

With the curia taken care of in this way, there would remain ten or eleven birettas to assign to pastors of local Churches.

The Italian chapter is the most delicate. Seeing that there are already three Italians in the curia waiting for the scarlet, it seems difficult for the pope to add many more.

According to the practice followed after the Lateran Pacts of 1929, for Italy there are reserved, in addition to that of the cardinal vicar for Rome, eight sees with "right of scarlet." In descending order by the number of faithful they are: Milan, Turin, Naples, Palermo, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and Venice. Currently only the sees of Turin and Venice do not have a cardinal at the helm.

But with Pope Francis cardinalate promotion might continue only for the most populous dioceses, and be discontinued for the others. This would mean that at the next consistory the scarlet might go to Turin, where the archbishop is Cesare Nosiglia - a pupil of Cardinal Camillo Ruini - but not to Venice, where the patriarch is Francesco Moraglia, a representative of that Ligurian Church of cardinals Mauro Piacenza and Angelo Bagnasco which Pope Francis seems to want to punish, seeing that he has removed both of them respectively from the congregation of the clergy and the congregation for bishops.

So it remains to be seen if in Italy as well - it will be easier to do this elsewhere - the cardinalship could go to pastors of dioceses that do not have a tradition in this sense but in the eyes of the pope are worthy of it. In this case the one promoted could be archbishop of Perugia Gualtiero Bassetti, vice-president of the Italian episcopal conference and highly esteemed by the pope, who has made him a member of the congregation for bishops precisely in place of the president of the CEI, Bagnasco. If this happens, the scarlet would return to Perugia for the first time since 1853, when it was bestowed on Archbishop Gioacchino Pecci, the future Pope Leo XIII (two former archbishops of Perugia who later received the scarlet were the deceased Pietro Parente and Ennio Antonelli, who is still alive).

With the curial and Italian scarlet doled out sparingly, Pope Francis will also use parsimony with the Europeans. On the Old Continent the biretta will probably go to the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols (under the scrutiny of the Holy Office in the past for the "gay Masses" celebrated in his diocese, but recently promoted as a member of the congregation for bishops), while it will be curious to see if the same will be done for the archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, the "conservative" Andre Leonard, who succeeded to the primatial see of Belgium in the place of the "progressive" cardinal Godfried Danneels, one of Bergoglio's main electors at the conclave.

Waiting for the scarlet in Eastern Europe is the highest-ranking hierarch of the populous Greek-Catholic Church in Ukraine, the major archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who is well known to the pope because in the past he was eparch in Buenos Aires.

With Latin America it is instead easy to imagine that pope Bergoglio will be more generous. Waiting for the scarlet there are first-rank sees like Buenos Aires with Archbishop Mario Aurelio Poli, Santiago, Chile with the Salesian originally from Vicenza Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, and Rio de Janeiro with the Cistercian Orani Joao Tempesta. But a second scarlet could go to Brazil, seeing that currently there are four cardinal electors in the most populous Catholic country of the world and there will be just three in the course of 2014, while there are 11 in the United States and 26 in Italy (although 5 of them will reach the age of 80 within twelve months).

Who knows, then, if with the first Latin American pope Paraguay could have its first cardinal in history. Without counting that the current president of the episcopal council of Latin America - the Mexican archbishop Carlos Aguiar Retes of Tlalnepantla - is not a cardinal and with Pope Francis could become one.

In North America the United States could stand pat at the current 11 cardinals, while in Canada it remains to be seen if the successor of Marc Ouellet in Quebec will become a cardinal.

More attention will certainly go to the continents of Africa and Asia. In Asia, the dynamic Church of Korea does not have any voting cardinal today. Also without one is Japan, where Bergoglio wanted to go on mission when he was a young Jesuit.

It will then remain to be seen if and how the pope may want to reward the tormented Middle Eastern Churches. And if he will appoint a new cardinal from Oceania or if he will allow the only cardinal of that continent to remain the conservative archbishop of Sydney, George Pell.

But about this as about the rest it is hard to make predictions, because with Pope Francis the surprises are always lying in wait, except for that of a female cardinal, which he categorically ruled out in a recent interview with "La Stampa."

So only in the end will it be known if Bergoglio also wants to bestow one or more honorific scarlets on churchmen over the age of 80, as did Benedict XVI and John Paul II beginning with his second consistory in 1983. Or if instead Francis will return to the practice respected by Paul VI, who after setting the limit of 80 years with the motu proprio "Ingravescentem aetatem" of November 21, 1970, abstained from creating cardinals older than that, in his subsequent consistories of 1973, 1976, and 1977.