Pope Francis  led a number of major events at the end of August, starting with the creation of 20 new cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Inducting the appointees into the College of Cardinals at an ordinary public consistory Aug. 27, the Pope will give each new cardinal: a scarlet biretta — the “red hat” — whose colour signifies a cardinal’s willingness to shed his blood for the faith; a gold ring, a sign of their special bond with the church of Rome; and a scroll testifying to his new office and containing the name of his titular church in Rome.
On Aug. 28, the Pope will leave Rome for L’Aquila, 55 miles east of the capital, where he is scheduled to open a seven-centuries-old celebration of forgiveness and meet with the families of those who died in a 2009 earth-quake.
Back in Rome, the Pope  then hold an important closed-door assembly with the College of Cardinals Aug. 29-30.
All the world’s cardinals have been invited to attend the consultative session to reflect on the apostolic constitution “Praedicate evangelium” (Preach the Gospel) on the reform of the Roman Curia — a project that has been an important focus of this pontificate.
The Pope will then end the day Aug. 30 with Mass with all the new cardinals and the College of Cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The Pope convening the world’s cardinals in Rome offers a rare chance for the College of Cardinals to get to know each other and to serve as a consultative body for the Pope.
With 20 new members inducted into the College of Cardinals Aug. 27, Pope Francis will bring up to 132 the number of cardinal electors, and the college as a whole will have 226 members.
Some of the significant characteristics of the college after the Aug. 27 consistory can be seen in numbers:
— The college is elderly. The average age of cardinals today is 78, and the average age among the cardinal electors is 72. Even though nine electors are under the age of 60 and one is 48 years old, nearly three-quarters of the electors are 70 and older. Almost 41% of the entire college is over the age of 80.
— The college is international. Today there are more than 90 countries represented in the entire college and 71 countries among the electors. That’s a notable increase from 2005, when all 117 eligible cardinal electors came from 53 countries.