Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis asked the new members of the College of Cardinals to cultivate a sense of prayer and closeness with God’s people, so they remain at the service of the church and their flocks.
In a letter addressed to the 21 new cardinals, who will receive their red hats at a consistory Dec. 7, Pope Francis asked that they “make every effort as a Cardinal to embody the three attitudes with which an Argentinean poet — Francisco Luis Bernardez — once characterized Saint John of the Cross,” namely: “eyes raised, hands joined, feet bare.”
The cardinals must raise their eyes because “your service will require you to lengthen your gaze and broaden your heart, in order to see farther and to love more expansively and with greater fervor,” the pope wrote in the letter dated
Oct. 6, the day he announced the new cardinals, and made public by the Vatican Oct. 12.
Pope Francis originally announced he would create his 21 new cardinals Dec. 8. The Vatican did not explain the change.
Releasing a calendar of the pope’s liturgies in November and early December, Archbishop Diego Ravelli, master of papal liturgical ceremonies, said Pope Francis will create the new cardinals at a consistory in St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 7.
The next morning, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the pope and all members of the College of Cardinals will concelebrate Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.
In his Oct. 6 letter, Pope Francis asked the new cardinals to have their hands joined in prayer “to be able to shepherd well the flock of Christ.”
“Prayer is the realm of discernment that helps me to seek and discover God’s will for our people, and to follow it,” he wrote.
The pope then encouraged the new cardinals to keep their feet bare so that “they touch the harsh realities of all those parts of the world overwhelmed by the pain and suffering due to war, discrimination, persecution, hunger and many forms of poverty; these will demand from you great compassion and mercy.”
Pope Francis thanked the new cardinals for their generosity of spirit and wrote that he prays that the title of “servant,” received by all ordained ministers in the diaconate, “will increasingly eclipse that of ‘eminence,’” referring to the formal title used for cardinals.
The 21 cardinals-designate hail from 18 countries. Eight come from Europe, five from Latin America, five from Asia, two from Africa and just one from North America — Archbishop Francis Leo of Toronto.
The oldest on the list is Italian Archbishop Angelo Acerbi, 99, a career Vatican diplomat who retired in 2001. The youngest is 44-year-old Ukraine-born Bishop Mykola Bychok, who was named head of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne, Australia, in 2020.
Here is the list of new cardinals in the order named by the pope:
- Italian Archbishop Angelo Acerbi, former nuncio, 99.
- Archbishop Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio of Lima, Peru, 74.
- Archbishop Vicente Bokalic Iglic of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, 72.
- Archbishop Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera of Guayaquil, Ecuador, 69.
- Archbishop Fernando Natalio Chomalí Garib of Santiago, Chile, 67.
- Archbishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo, who will be 66 Nov. 1.
- Bishop Pablo Virgilio Siongco David of Kalookan, Philippines, 65.
- Archbishop Ladislav Nemet of Belgrade of Belgrade, Serbia, 68.
- Archbishop Jaime Spengler of Porto Alegre, Brazil, 64.
- Archbishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, 63.
- Archbishop Jean-Paul Vesco of Algiers, Algeria, 62.
- Bishop Paskalis Bruno Syukur of Bogor, Indonesia, 62.
- Archbishop Dominique Joseph Mathieu of Tehran and Isfahan, Iran, 61.
- Archbishop Roberto Repole of Turin, Italy, 57.
- Auxiliary Bishop Baldassare Reina of Rome, who will turn 54 Nov. 26 and whom the pope named Oct. 6 as his vicar for the Diocese of Rome.
- Archbishop Francis Leo of Toronto, 53.
- Lithuanian Archbishop Rolandas Makrickas, coadjutor archpriest of Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major, 52.
- Bishop Mykola Bychok of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne, Australia, 44.
- English Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe, theologian, 79.
- Italian Scalabrinian Father Fabio Baggio, undersecretary and head of the section for migrants and refugees at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, 59.
- Indian Msgr. George Jacob Koovakad, 51, an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State responsible for organizing papal trips.
