VATICAN CITY (RNS) – In a solemn Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday (Dec. 7), Pope Francis welcomed 21 new cardinals supporting the pope’s various imaginative and prescient for the church.
“Right now, in a specific approach, I want to say to you, expensive brothers who’re being made cardinals: make each effort to stroll within the path of Jesus,” the pope informed the prelates in his homily, urging them “to be builders of communion and unity.”
The brand new cardinals, representing the range of the worldwide church, will be a part of a School of Cardinals whose members already hail from 90 international locations. All through his hold forth, Francis has been mounted on refashioning its hierarchical and sometimes opaque construction right into a extra clear and welcoming group that’s nearer to the individuals, a program of reform recognized in Catholic circles as synodality.
In a three-year lengthy synod that summoned bishops and lay leaders to the Vatican in October 2023 and 2024, Francis tried to democratize resolution making, attain out to LGBTQ Catholics and provide extra management alternatives for ladies within the church. He additionally prodded church leaders to take heed to the calls for of the individuals within the pews.
Lots of the new cardinals Francis made on Sunday attended the 2 Vatican summits, which supplied them time get to know each other and talk about the way forward for the church.
Amongst them was newly made Cardinal Jaime Spengler, president of the Latin American Episcopal Convention. “We are able to now not return from the street that that Pope Francis has tried to construct. We should advance it. What does Pope Francis need from the church by means of his magisterium in these years? A church that’s nearer to the individuals, a church that’s easier, a poorer church,” Spangler informed Vatican reporters on Saturday.
Spangler, a Brazilian, is one in every of 5 new cardinals from Latin America, Francis’ native continent, which is second solely to Europe in its variety of cardinals.
Latin Individuals can have an essential function to play within the conclave that may elect Francis’ successor. Spangler known as his and the opposite nominations to the School of Cardinals, “an indication of acknowledgement from the pope, but additionally an indication of hope or a better name to duty.”
The Brazilian prelate believes the church should discover a steadiness between safeguarding its conventional instructing and listening to the wants of the individuals, particularly the following technology. Requested who he want to see turn into the following pope, Spangler stated that the following pontiff ought to be a person of “simplicity, transparency, objectivity and holiness.”
Francis has persistently shifted the main focus of the church towards the worldwide south and the peripheries of an establishment traditionally oriented towards the West. The brand new Cardinal Ladislav Nemet, Archbishop of Belgrade in Serbia and one other participant on the Synod on Synodality, oversees a area which is barely 5% is Catholic. Of a polyglot Hungarian background, he’s the primary ever cardinal from Serbia, and his elevation highlights the pope’s want to advertise ecumenical dialogue.
“I hope that our existence as Catholics in Serbia will present to the bulk orthodox inhabitants that we want to dwell with them in peace and dialogue,” he informed journalists on Saturday.
At a time when the Russian Orthodox Church, led by Patriarch Kirill, has turn into deeply intertwined with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s occasion line, Nemet stated the church should keep away from severing its ties with the Orthodox group. Francis himself has tried to toe the road between being a mediator for peace in Russia’s Ukrainian conflict and standing up in opposition to violations of human rights or worldwide regulation.
Eleven of the brand new cardinals are members of spiritual orders and a few have determined to maintain sporting their plain habits as an alternative of donning scarlet cardinal robes. This isn’t solely a return to historical Catholic customs, they stated, however a logo of humility. U.S. Cardinal Sean O’Malley has lengthy worn his Franciscan behavior, and the newly made Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe has additionally determined to maintain his white Dominican gown, pointing to a brand new pattern among the many cardinals.
“It’s a return to the liberty of the particular person and what you’re feeling inside,” stated the Dominican Archbishop Jean-Paul Vesco, including, “the pope additionally gave us his blessing.”
Vesco runs the archdiocese of Orano, in Algeria, and wears a really small picket cross over his chest, a humble image in a rustic the place fewer than 10,000 Christians reside amongst a Muslim majority inhabitants.
“Now we have to learn to be Christians in a scenario of minority,” Vesco stated. “Because the starting, Christianity has been a minority religion, it’s in our DNA. When the church is simply too highly effective it isn’t when she offers her finest.”
He hopes his changing into a cardinal he enable him to talk with extra authority concerning the points he holds expensive, together with defending migrants and the function of ladies within the church. Six of the eight leaders of his diocese are ladies, Vesco stated, including that he hopes to listen to ladies preach at Mass quickly.
With this new crop of cardinals, Francis has efficiently remade the school that may elect his successor, having personally handpicked almost 80% of its members. The just about 88-year-old pope has ensured that his imaginative and prescient for a welcoming, various and synodal church outlives his hold forth.
