Consistory for the Creation of New Cardinals 2024

Salt + Light Media

Friday, December 6, 2024

Pope Francis leads the College of Cardinals in prayer. The Holy Father will create 21 new Cardinals at the next consistory on December 7, 2024. Photo by Jonathan OreMen on Cathopic.

On December 7, Pope Francis will hold a consistory for the creation of new Cardinals. Then on December 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, he will preside over a Holy Mass of Thanksgiving with the new Cardinals.

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Consistory
Saturday, December 7, 2024
LIVE at 10:00 am ET | 7:00 am PT
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Thanksgiving Mass with the new Cardinals
Sunday, December 8, 2024
7:30 pm ET | 4:30 pm PT

What is a consistory?

A consistory is an official meeting of all or some of the Cardinals, called by the Pope. The Cardinals, as a group, act as advisers to the Holy Father, who can call them together to consult on major issues facing the Church. Also, in order to create new Cardinals, he must issue a public decree in the presence of the other Cardinals. This will be Pope Francis' tenth consistory for the creation of new Cardinals.

All Cardinals under the age of 80 are eligible to vote in a Conclave, the solemn gathering of Cardinals to elect a new Pope.

What will happen during the event?

On Saturday, December 7, Pope Francis, the Cardinals-elect, and the whole College of Cardinals will gather in St. Peter's Basilica for the ceremony. After words of greeting, a prayer, a reading from one of the Gospels, and Pope Francis' homily, the Holy Father will proclaim the names of the new Cardinals. It is from this moment that they actually become Cardinals. They will then make a Profession of Faith and take an oath of fidelity to the Church and to the Pope. They will then kneel before the Pope one at a time to receive from his hands the Cardinal's biretta (red hat) and Cardinal's ring. They will also be assigned a church in Rome, which is known as their "title" or "deaconry." This represents their role in assisting the Pope, who is the chief pastor of the city of Rome. After the Cardinals exchange the sign of peace with the Pope and each other, the ceremony ends with the Lord's Prayer. They will join the Pope at Holy Mass on December 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

Who are the new cardinals?

Pope Francis will make 21 new Cardinals from all over the world. In the Angelus address during which he announced the consistory, he said that the Cardinals’ diverse “origin reflects the universality of the Church, that continues to announce God's merciful love to all people.”

Among the new Cardinals is Canada’s own Archbishop Francis Leo of Toronto. Cardinal-elect Leo was born in Montreal, and served as a parish priest in the Archdiocese of Montreal before entering the Holy See’s diplomatic corps. He taught at the Grand Séminaire until he was appointed as the General Secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2015. Pope Francis appointed him as an auxiliary bishop of Montreal in 2022 and then Archbishop of Toronto in 2023.

The Holy Father is also continuing the precedent he has set in previous years of selecting Cardinals from dioceses and countries that rarely receive the red hat. This includes Archbishop Joseph Mathieu of Tehran-Ispahan, Iran; Archbishop Ladislav Nemet of Belgrade, Serbia; and Eparch Mykola Bychok of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne, the eparchy for Ukrainian Catholics throughout Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania.

Alongside these four, the new Cardinals are:

Archbishop Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio of Lima, Peru
Archbishop Vicente Bokalic Iglic, CM of Santiago del Estero, which Pope Francis recently made the Primatial See of Argentina due to its historic importance.
Archbishop Gerardo Cabrera Herrera, OFM of Guayaquil, Ecuador
Archbishop Natalio Chomalí Garib of Santiago de Chile, Chile
Archbishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo, Japan
Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, Philippines
Archbishop Jaime Spengler, OFM of Porto Alegre, Brazil
Archbishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo of Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Archbishop Jean-Paul Vesco, OP of Algiers, Algeria
Archbishop Roberto Repole of Turin, Italy
Archbishop Baldassare Reina, Cardinal Vicar of Rome
Archbishop Rolandas Makrickas, Coadjutor Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major, where the Salus Populi Romani icon is housed to which Pope Francis has a special devotion, and where he wishes to be buried. Cardinal-elect Makrickas led the reorganization of the Basilica’s leadership structure.
Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples, Italy
Archbishop George Koovakad, Official of the Secretariat of State, who has been in charge of organizing Pope Francis’ apostolic journeys for the last three years. He was ordained a titular archbishop in November.
Fr. Fabio Baggio, CS, Under-Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. He will be ordained a titular archbishop in January by his dicastery prefect, Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ.

Among these, Pope Francis will make two Cardinals in honour of their long service to the Church. One is above the age of eligibility to vote in the next Conclave, and one likely will be as well:

Archbishop Angelo Acerbi, long-serving Apostolic Nuncio, who turned 99 in September. He is one of the two remaining men ordained to the episcopate by Pope Paul VI.
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP, theologian who led the opening retreats at the First and Second Sessions of the Synod on Synodality. Cardinal-elect Radcliffe turns 80 next August.

After Saturday's consistory, the College of Cardinals will rise to 256 members. There will be 141 Cardinals eligible to vote in the next Conclave. However, 15 of them will turn 80 in 2025, including Fr. Radcliffe.

Congratulations to the new Cardinals of the Catholic Church!