At the end of the Angelus address on October 6, 2024, Pope Francis announced the convocation of a consistory on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It will result in the creation of 21 new cardinals, including 20 electors under the age of 80 who may be called upon to elect his successor in the event of a conclave.
Here we provide you the first of three installations of profiles of these men whom Pope Francis chose as special leaders of the Church.
Promoting the “star” of the Synod
Timothy Radcliffe, 78, Dominican priest and theologian
The renowned British preacher, who recently recovered from grave cancer of the jaw, has found new visibility as a spiritual advisor at the Synod’s two general assemblies on synodality, where his meditations are much noticed and appreciated. Born in London in 1945, he entered the Dominican order in 1965, received priestly ordination in 1971, and taught Scripture at Oxford. His resolute action in the peace movement and in helping AIDS sufferers soon earned him international renown.
Successively prior of the Oxford friary from 1982 to 1988, provincial of England from 1988 to 1992, and master general of the Dominicans from 1992 to 2001, Fr. Radcliffe has been noted for his dynamism and his many books aimed at making the Christian faith accessible to the greatest number of people. While there is controversy surrounding some of his views, he was even presented as a “papabile” (a possible contender for pope) by certain media during the 2005 conclave, even though he was not yet a cardinal at the time.
The first Serbian cardinal
László Német, 68, Archbishop of Belgrade, Serbia
Born in Serbia’s Vojvodina region, on the border with Croatia, László Német joined the Society of the Divine Word, in which he was ordained in 1982. In 1985, he was sent to Rome to study. He became a missionary in the Philippines in 1987, where he worked as an academic.
In 1994, he was sent to Austria to teach theology at the University of Mödling. Between 2004 and 2007, he headed the Hungarian province of his order, and was elected general secretary of the Hungarian Bishops’ Conference in 2006. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI entrusted him with the Diocese of Zrenjanin in Serbia, where he was ordained bishop by Cardinal Peter Erdö.
Since 2016, he has been the president of the International Bishops’ Conference of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, which brings together the dioceses of most of the Balkan countries with an Orthodox tradition. Since 2021, he has also been vice-president of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences. In 2022, Pope Francis appointed him Archbishop of Belgrade. He will become the first Serbian cardinal in history.
Two new cardinals for Africa
Jean-Paul Vesco, 62, Archbishop of Algiers, Algeria
Jean-Paul Vesco was born in Lyon, France, on March 10, 1962. After studying law and working for several years as a business lawyer in Paris, he joined the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans) in 1995. Ordained a priest in 2001, he studied at the École Biblique of Jérusalem before moving to Tlemcen, Algeria, to ensure a Dominican presence in a country deserted by his order since the assassination of Pierre Claverie, Bishop of Oran, in 1996.
In 2010, he was appointed provincial of the Dominicans in France, and moved to Paris. He only held this post for two years, however, as in 2012 Benedict XVI appointed him bishop of Oran. In 2015, he was called by Pope Francis to Rome to take part in the Synod on the Family, and published an acclaimed book titled Tout amour véritable est indissoluble. Plaidoyer pour les divorcés remariés (“All true love is indissoluble. A plea for remarried divorcees”).
Three years after the Mass in Oran for the beatification of the martyrs of the 1990s — including Bishop Claverie and the monks of Tibhirine, the subjects of the movie Of Gods and Men — the Argentine pontiff appointed him archbishop of Algiers in 2021. The Pope and his new cardinal share a strong bond around the figure of St. Charles de Foucauld, the apostle of universal brotherhood canonized in Rome in May 2022.
The following year, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune granted the now Franco-Algerian prelate Algerian nationality, a sign of his successful integration in a country where the Catholic community is very much in the minority. In 2020, the Diocese of Algiers counted some 4,000 faithful and 35 diocesan priests and religious.
Ignace Bessi Dogbo, 63, Archbishop of Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Shortly after his appointment as Archbishop of Abidjan on May 20, Archbishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo will be elevated to the dignity of the cardinalate on December 8. The Ivory Coast diocese will then have two cardinal electors in the event of a conclave, as Cardinal Jean-Pierre Kutwa, recently retired at the age of 78, retains his right to vote until he is 80.
As a sign of the relationship between Archbishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo and Pope Francis, the latter has personally appointed him as a member of the Synod on Synodality, where Africa’s voice is very much heard.
Born on August 17, 1961, and ordained a priest in 1987, this biblical theologian studied in Rome for four years. In 2004, he was appointed bishop of the diocese of Katiola, in the center of the country. In 2017, he was chosen as administrator of the diocese of Korhogo, and became archbishop of this northern diocese in 2021. In the meantime, he was elected president of the Ivory Coast Episcopal Conference (2017-2023). As the new archbishop of Abidjan since May, Archbishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo is at the head of a diocese with a population of almost 4 million, of which around two thirds are Catholics.
The first cardinal for Iran
Dominique Mathieu, 61, Archbishop of Teheran-Ispahan, Iran
He’s one of the most discreet prelates in the Catholic Church. At 61, this Belgian Franciscan is archbishop of the Latin diocese of Teheran-Ispahan in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where Christians face discrimination and even persecution. According to Rome’s official statistics, there are only five priests and 12 professed nuns in the country (2020).
Born in Belgium in 1963, Archbishop Mathieu took his simple vows with the conventual Friars Minor in 1984 and was ordained a priest five years later. After serving as provincial of the Friars Minor in Belgium, he was sent on mission to Lebanon in 2013 and incardinated into the Province of the Friars Minor Conventual for the Orient and the Holy Land. Appointed by the Pope to Tehran in 2021, he occupies a seat left vacant in 2014.
There are an estimated 2,000 Catholics in Iran, a tiny minority in this Islamic republic of over 80 million Shiite Muslims. A member of the Synod on Synodality, Archbishop Mathieu is currently in Rome for the final session in October.
His appointment demonstrates the Pope’s determination to give a voice to the ultra-minority Churches facing major difficulties. After Cardinal Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldeans (Baghdad), Cardinal Mario Zenari (Apostolic Nuncio to Syria), and Cardinal Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Dominique Mathieu is the fourth cardinal elector from the Middle East appointed by Francis.
Italy: Rome and Turin back among the cardinal electors
Bishop Baldassare Reina, 54, vicar general for the Diocese of Rome
In announcing the list of new cardinals, Pope Francis also made official the name of the new vicar general for the Diocese of Rome, a strategic post that has been vacant since the naming of Cardinal Angelo de Donatis as major penitentiary on April 6. The vicar general of Rome is the representative of the pope for his own diocese as Bishop of Rome.
The new vicar general is, unsurprisingly, Bishop Baldassare Reina, auxiliary bishop of Rome and vice-regent, who had been acting as Vicar General for the past four months.
Born in 1970 in Sicily, Baldassare Reina was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Agrigento in 1995. After various posts as a formator and in parishes, he became superior of the Agrigento seminary from 2013 to 2022. He was appointed auxiliary bishop of Rome in 2022, then vice-regent on January 6, 2023, the day the Apostolic Constitution In Ecclesiarum Communione was published, reinforcing the Pope’s direct authority over his diocese.
This cardinalate comes just a few days after the publication of Pope Francis’ motu proprio La vera bellezza (“True Beauty”), in which he announces an overhaul of the diocese’s geographical distribution. This abolishes the “Center” sector, whose 35 parishes will be dispersed across the four remaining sectors, geared towards the peripheries: North, South, East, West. Cardinal Reina will have the onerous task of overseeing this transformation, which will coincide with the arrival of millions of pilgrims for the Holy Year 2025.
Roberto Repole, 57, archbishop of Turin, Italy
With Archbishop Roberto Repole, the capital of Piedmont will regain its traditional status as a “cardinal’s” city, which it had lost since the retirement of Cardinal Severino Poletto on October 11, 2010. His successor, Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia, who received Pope Francis during a warm pastoral visit in the footsteps of his ancestors on June 21 and 22, 2015, had not been promoted.
Roberto Repole, born June 29, 1967, in Turin and ordained priest in 1992, is a well-known theologian in Italy. In 2018, he coordinated a collection of theological reflections to mark the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ pontificate, for which Benedict XVI allegedly refused to write a preface due to the presence of authors who had attacked his pontificate and that of John Paul II.
Roberto Repole, who holds a doctorate on the thought of Henri de Lubac in dialogue with Gabriel Marcel, was president of the Italian Theological Association from 2011 to 2019. He is one of the few theologians elevated by the Pope to the episcopate, becoming both Archbishop of Turin and Bishop of Susa on May 7, 2022.
And today we celebrate...