Pope Francis created 21 new cardinals for the Catholic Church in a consistory this Saturday, December 7 in St. Peter’s Basilica, whom he encouraged to “follow the path of Jesus,” rejecting the seductions of prestige and power.
The thanks of the new cardinals
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After the entrance procession of the new cardinals and after the first invocation of the Holy Father, Cardinal Angelo Acerbi, a 99-year-old Italian, addressed a few words on behalf of the new cardinals.
Acerbi highlighted the “deep gratitude to the Supreme Pontiff and a sincere desire to serve in ecclesial unity” among the new cardinals and expressed his desire to “look to the future with hope and see a world finally pacified.”
The cardinal also expressed the desire to “unite us in his prayer to the Lord Jesus so that from his heart rivers of living water may flow for all of us that strengthen our capacity to love and serve. We confidently entrust ourselves to the maternal intercession of the Immaculate Conception”, whose Solemnity is celebrated this Sunday, December 8.
The creation of the 21 new cardinals
After a moment of prayer, Pope Francis announced the creation of the 21 new cardinals. When calling each of the cardinals, they all stood up, after hearing their name pronounced in Latin.
Afterwards, the 21 made their profession and prayed the Creed together, also in Latin. Then each one made an act of obedience and fidelity to the Holy Father: “I (name), cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, promise and swear to be faithful from now and forever as long as I live, to Christ and his Gospel, always being obedient. to the Holy Roman Apostolic Church, to blessed Peter in the person of the Supreme Pontiff Francis and his canonically elected successors; always maintain communion with the Catholic Church through words and actions; not to reveal to anyone what is secretly entrusted to me nor to make known what could bring harm or dishonor to the Holy Church; “carry out with diligence and fidelity the tasks to which I am called in my service to the Church, according to the norms of law.”
After the oath, each of the cardinals received, on their knees, the cap (hat), the imposition of the ring on the ring finger of the right hand, and the bull of cardinal creation in which is their corresponding title.
With these new cardinals, the College of Cardinals is made up of 253 cardinals, of which 140 are electors.
After reading the Gospel of Saint Mark in which Jesus walks with the Disciples and explains to them what will happen to him with his death and resurrection, and in which James and John ask him for a place of honor at their side, the Pope made a warning:
“This can also happen to us: that our hearts become lost, allowing themselves to be dazzled by the charm of prestige, by the seduction of power or by an all-too-human enthusiasm for our Lord.”
For this reason, the Pope continued, “it is important to look within ourselves, place ourselves humbly before God and honestly ask ourselves: where is my heart going? Where is my heart going today? In what direction is it moving? Maybe I’m going the wrong way?”
The Holy Father stressed that “following the path of Jesus means above all returning to Him and putting Him back at the center of everything. In the spiritual life as in the pastoral life, sometimes we run the risk of concentrating on the superfluous, forgetting the essential. Too often secondary things take the place of what is necessary, externalities prevail over what really matters, we immerse ourselves in activities that we consider urgent, but without reaching the heart.
“And, instead, we always need to return to the center, recover the foundation, strip off the superfluous to clothe ourselves with Christ,” Pope Francis continued.
The Holy Father highlighted that “what should animate your service as cardinals is the risk of the journey, the joy of meeting others, the care of the most fragile” and stressed that their mission is “to be witnesses of fraternity, artisans of communion.” and builders of unity.”
In a “society obsessed with appearance and the search for first places,” Pope Francis encouraged them to walk together in the path of Jesus “with humility, with wonder, with joy.”
These are the 21 new cardinals of the Catholic Church
Below is the list of the new cardinals, in the order in which they received the cardinal symbols. Only one, the first is not an elector, the other 20 are cardinal electors.
1. Cardenal Angelo Acerbi.
2. Cardinal Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio, Archbishop of Lima and Primate of Peru.
3. Cardinal Vicente Bokalic Iglic, Archbishop of Santiago del Estero and Primate of Argentina.
4. Cardinal Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera OFM, Archbishop of Guayaquil (Ecuador).
5. Cardinal Fernando Natalio Chomalí Garib, Archbishop of Santiago de Chile.
6. Cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi SVD, Archbishop of Tokyo (Japan).
7. Cardinal Paul Virgil Siongco David, Bishop of Kalookan (Philippines).
8. Cardinal Ladislav Nemet SVD, Archbishop of Belgrade (Serbia).
9. Cardinal Jaime Spengler OFM, Archbishop of Porto Alegre (Brazil).
10. Cardinal Ignace Bessi Dogbo, Archbishop of Abidjan (Ivory Coast).
11. Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco OP, Archbishop of Algiers (Algeria).
12. Cardinal Dominique Joseph Mathieu OFM Conv., Archbishop of Tehran (Iran).
13. Cardinal Roberto Repole, Archbishop of Turin (Italy).
14. Cardinal Baldassare Reina, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome.
15. Cardinal Frank (Francis) Leo, Archbishop of Toronto (Canada).
16. Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, Coadjutor Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major.
17. Cardinal Mykola Bychok CSR, Bishop of the Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul of Melbourne (Australia) of the Ukrainians. (*Because he was of the Ukrainian rite, one of the Eastern Catholic rites, his liturgical vestments were different and he did not have a cap but rather a kind of black cloth covering for his head).
18. Cardinal Timothy Peter Joseph Radcliffe OP, English theologian.
19. Cardenal Fabio Baggio.
20. Cardinal George Jacob Koovakad, Syro-Malabar Archbishop of India. (*Because it is of the Syro-Malabar rite, the most important Eastern Catholic rite in the country, its cap is different and red and black).
21. Cardinal Domenico Battaglia, Archbishop of Naples.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.