Created in response to requests from cardinals and others, ‘The College of Cardinals Report’ is the first such site of its kind offering in-depth profiles on the ‘papabili.’
VATICAN CITY — To help cardinals know one another better — that is the overriding goal of The College of Cardinals Report we have launched today.
The first interactive online resource of its kind, 40 cardinals are profiled in-depth revealing who they are and where they stand on various issues, along with summary profiles of the remaining 200 plus members of the Sacred College including the 21 who received the red hat last week.
Working with an international team of Catholic journalists and researchers, both Vatican journalist Diane Montagna, the project’s executive director, and I have endeavored to provide a fact-based and reliably sourced database of information on the largest and most diverse College of Cardinals in the Church’s history.
The project, created in association with Sophia Institute Press and Cardinalis Magazine, is a response to persistent requests from cardinals and others around the world who have expressed a wish to know more about today’s princes of the Church, any one of whom could become the 267th Successor of Peter.
These requests have arisen mainly because the cardinals have little knowledge of one another, despite our globalized, information age. This is partly because Pope Francis has chosen many new cardinals from lesser known “periphery” locations, but also because, since 2014, regular consistories have ceased, leaving the Sacred College with few opportunities to meet.
Unlike my 2020 book The Next Pope which had a similar premise, what makes this project unique is its interactive nature: for the first time, visitors will be able to filter a complete list of cardinals by various relevant categories, discover the geographical and statistical breakdown of the Sacred College through an interactive map, and be able to consult a user-friendly, color-coded table showing where the cardinals stand on 10 key contemporary issues facing the Church and society.
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Still, it’s rare for anything to be truly unprecedented in the Catholic Church given her long history, and that is also true in this case. Centuries ago diplomats and other trusted scribes would compile in-depth and reliable biographies of the cardinals and distribute them to interested parties. The College of Cardinals Report is essentially a revamped 21st version of those efforts.
Papabili Profiled
Among those thoroughly profiled, the site singles out a selection of papabili — those widely considered to have the best chance of being elected pope. These include such cardinals as the Vatican secretary of state and architect of the Vatican-China agreement, Cardinal Pietro Parolin; the head of Italy’s bishops and Pope Francis’ peace envoy to Ukraine and Gaza, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi; and Hungarian canon law expert, Cardinal Péter Erdö of Esztergom-Budapest.
Also included are emerging young papabili such as the Church’s point man in the Holy Land, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa; the modernist Portuguese poet and prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça; and French migrant expert and allegedly Pope Francis’ “favorite” cardinal, Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille.
Many have speculated that an African pope could be elected next, and so we have included a thorough report on the leading emerging candidate from the continent, Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa.
The profiles will naturally require updating and refinement and so if a cardinal, or any visitor to the site for that matter, should wish to make an amendment or an addition to a cardinal profile, they can submit them using an easily accessible form on the site. Each submission will naturally be vetted for accuracy before being implemented.
Our overall hope and expectation is that The College of Cardinals Report will provide a lasting resource for members of the Sacred College, as well as inform the media, Catholic faithful, and anyone interested in who could one day be pope.
Diverse Approaches
In analyzing each of the cardinals, their visions for the Church and their approaches to a variety of pressing issues can be roughly delineated by the pope who appointed them bishop and elevated them to cardinalate.
In general terms, for many of those whom Pope Francis has created cardinal (he has to date chosen as many as 110 of the 140 cardinal electors), their focus tends to be on social justice issues, usually interreligious dialogue, helping the poor and peacemaking. They value synodality and almost all of them tend to be concerned about migration and combatting climate change. Francis’ cardinal appointments are usually bishops from the global south, or Ordinaries from unusual Western dioceses, deliberately chosen from the Church’s “periphery.”
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Where the delineation becomes less clear is on sexual ethics, the role of women in the Church, and restricting the Traditional Latin Mass. While almost all of Pope Francis’ Western cardinals tend to advocate, or are open to, a change in these areas, those in the developing world, especially Africa, do not. They are more preoccupied with problems facing them closer to home — usually internal conflict, interreligious friction and poverty — and actively oppose the push of many Western cardinals to loosen the Church’s pastoral teaching on marriage, family and sexuality.
For the remainder of the cardinals, the centrality of the faith and the Sacraments, the importance of the liturgy, a focus on the interior life, and robustly defending the Church’s teaching — especially on life issues — tend to be the priority. For these cardinals, most of whom were appointed bishop by Benedict XVI and who now number less than 30 cardinal electors, the interior state of souls and soteriology appear to be the mainstay of their ministries. That is not to say Francis’ chosen cardinals are not concerned about these issues but their focus is largely elsewhere.
Also of interest, aside from their visions for the Church, is the diversity of the cardinals’ backgrounds. Among them is a former national basketball player, the son of an African tribal king, a priest who was jailed for 18 years and condemned to hard labor by Albania’s communist dictatorship, and a cardinal who went from shining shoes and working down a mine to becoming a Bolivian bishop. The longest-serving member of the Sacred College is Thai Cardinal Michael Mitchai Kitbunchu, 95, elevated to cardinal by John Paul II as far back as 1983.
Few of the cardinals are aware of these vastly different visions, backgrounds and characteristics which is why we hope that, with this innovative online resource, they will be better equipped to know their brother cardinals — who they are and where they stand.
Edward Pentin
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