Never one to shun surprises, Pope Francis announced the creation of five new cardinals. The ceremony to induct the new Princes of the Church will take place on June 28, and the new cardinals will say Mass with him on the following day, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
The fact that the five cardinals come from “diverse parts from the world,” expresses the “Catholicity of the church, diffused throughout the earth,” Pope Francis said.
The five new cardinals are:
* Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chávez, auxiliary bishop of San Salvador in El Salvador;
* Archbishop Jean Zerbo, of Bamako, Mali;
* Bishop Anders Arborelius, of Stockholm, Sweden;
* Archbishop Juan José Omella of Barcelona, Spain;
* Bishop Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun Apostolic Administrator of Vientiane, Laos.
In keeping with his passion for the peripheries, four of the five men Francis named represent countries that have never before had a cardinal: Mali, Sweden, El Salvador and Laos.
In what has become a trademark of this pontificate, Francis blindsided long-time Vatican watchers and even most of his closest collaborators alike when he announced the names of his new cardinals. He did so at the end of his Sunday Regina Coeli prayer, which during the Easter season replaces the traditional Angelus.
“We entrust the new cardinals to the protection of Sts Peter and Paul,” Francis said, “so that with the intercession of the prince of the apostles they are authentic servers of the ecclesial communion, and so that with that of the apostle of the peoples they are joyful announcers of the Gospel, and that with their witness and council they sustain me more intensely in my service as bishops of Rome, shepherd of the Universal Church.”
All of the new cardinals are under 80 and therefore eligible to vote for the next Pope.
Of the five cardinal-elect, two were appointed to their dioceses by Francis: Omella, who has been in Barcelona since 2015, and Mangkhanekhoun, who took over in Vientiane in Feb. 2017. The rest were appointed by John Paul II.
On choosing Rosa Chávez from El Salvador, the Pope bypassed the titular archbishop of the diocese, José Luis Escobar Alas, once again making the point that when he gives red hats, he’s more than willing to go beyond the traditional “cardinal sees,” something he’s done in the previous three consistories he’s celebrated.
This pick in particular says a lot about Francis, because Rosa Chávez was a close collaborator of slain Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered in 1980 while he was saying Mass.
Talking to Vatican Radio in the days previous to the beatification of Romero, the archbishop said that the murdered archbishop is “the icon of [the kind of] pastor Francis wants, the icon of the Church Francis wants … a poor Church for the poor.”
