Pope Francis to Pick New Cardinals and Begin Reshaping the Hierarchy

By David Gibson
The Religion News Service
January 8, 2014

http://davidgibson.religionnews.com/2014/01/06/pope-francis-pick-new-cardinals-put-stamp-succession/


(RNS) Any day now, Pope Francis is expected to make his first appointments to the College of Cardinals, the select group of about 120 scarlet-clad churchmen whose main duty is to advise the pope while he reigns – and gather in the Sistine Chapel when he dies or resigns to name his successor.

That makes the nominations especially critical, and they will be another indicator of what direction Francis wants to push the church’s leadership. As the Rev. Thomas Reese of National Catholic Reporter put it in his analysis of the importance of the choices: “People in red hats tend to stand out in a crowd.”

The Vatican has announced that Francis will officially “create” the new cardinals (that is the technical church term for the papal appointments) on Feb. 22, and the list of names is usually released weeks in advance.

Canon law provides a ceiling of 120 eligible electors among the cardinals; those who turn 80 no longer have the right to vote in a conclave. As of Feb. 1, there will be 106 cardinals under 80, giving Francis 14 vacancies to fill, though he can use his papal prerogative and exceed that limit. The late John Paul II pushed the number of cardinal-electors to 135 at one point.

John Paul also significantly “internationalized” the college and reduced the traditional, often conservative influence of the Roman Curia – the papal bureaucracy – and the Italian bloc.

But Pope Benedict XVI, whose stunning retirement last February amid turmoil in the Vatican paved the way for the election of Francis, boosted the curial contingent from about one-quarter of the electors to more than one-third.

During Benedict’s eight-year tenure, the Italians also rebounded from just over 16 percent of the electors at John Paul’s death in 2005 to nearly 24 percent of the college today – though Italy claims just 4 percent of the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. All told, Benedict created 65 of the total number of cardinals under 80, nearly two-thirds of the current electors.

There was some discussion in recent months about whether Francis would shock the cardinal-creating system – which has existed more or less in its current format since the 12th century – to include a woman rather than just bishops, who can only be men. But the pope himself ruled that out.