New Cardinals: Pope Francis Calls Another Consistory

A surprising decision, since the urgency of these new cardinal creations is not immediately apparent: on October 5, the Sacred College had 121 electors, one more than the maximum number of 120 cardinals with an effective right to vote at the conclave, a quorum set and engraved in the marble of canon law by John Paul II.

Since the announcement on October 6 that they are to join the Sacred College, there will soon be 141 cardinals eligible to elect the future Successor of Peter. Some may object that fifteen of them are due to lose their voting rights by 2025, due to the age limit of 80, but isn't the urgency more on the side of the Pope, who seems intent on speeding things up?

The profile of the new cardinals suggests certain intentions that may have guided the Pope in his decision. Firstly, the desire to impress his pastoral legacy as clearly as possible on the College that will have to designate his successor: with the underlying fear that the synodality forcefully imposed by the Argentine Pontiff could be called into question in an unpredictable “post-Francis” period.

Archbishop Jean-Paul Vesco, Archbishop of Algiers since 2021, is strongly committed to dialogue with Islam and, as early as 2015, took a clear stance in favor of integrating the divorced-remarried into the pastoral care of the sacraments. As Jean-Marie Guénois reminds us in Le Figaro on October 8, Archbishop Vesco is “against the ‘patriarchal’ and ‘anachronistic’ model of today's Church” and wishes to give women a greater place.

The case of Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, a progressive Dominican favorable toward same-sex marriage, and that of Archbishop Carlos Gustavo Castillo of Lima, close to Liberation Theology, leave little doubt as to Pope Francis' intentions.

If the proportion of Europeans in the Sacred College is declining, reflecting the evolution of the Church, the weight of the Curia is also weakened by these new appointments: only three new cardinals come from it; an observation that takes on its full meaning if we remember that the current Pope is wary of a Roman Curia that he does not consider sufficiently docile to his orientations, and he does not hesitate to bypass it regularly.

A question arises concerning Africa, which is virtually absent from this appointment: have the Africans been “punished,” as an article in Corrispondenza Romana suggests, because of their rejection of Fiducia supplicans? This continent, one of the most flourishing in terms of numbers, will have only one Cardinal, Archbishop Ignace Dogbo of Abidjan, while the very small minority of North African bishops, who approved blessing homosexuals, will also see an appointment.

The Europeans, too, will see only one; as for the American episcopate, it has once again been sidelined, in favor of a Canadian. As for Latin America, it receives four: it is true that bishops from this part of the American continent are often (very) progressive.

One thing is certain: Francis has no intention of giving up. The next Consistory includes many new, very young cardinals, demonstrating a desire to give the Church a line for future generations, and no doubt also to try to influence the next conclave.

This kind of calculation is always risky, and nothing is ever a foregone conclusion, but this very youth, which makes it difficult to apprehend the Church's problems with the desired maturity, can only worry those who scrutinize the composition of the future meeting that must elect the next Pope.