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.
The Vatican’s publication October 12 of the Pope’s liturgical schedule for the next few weeks showed that in fact, the consistory will be held on the vigil of the feast, on December 7.
In any case, the event 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 is the last of three sets of profiles of these men whom Pope Francis chose.
Here is part one, and part two.
Strengthening the “pivot to Asia”
Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, 65, archbishop of Tokyo, Japan
Born in 1958 in Iwate on the northern island of Honshu, Japan, Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi joined the Divine Word Missionaries in 1985 and was ordained a priest in 1986. He then served as a missionary in Ghana for six years before returning to his diocese to work for his order. Between 1999 and 2005, he was provincial of his order. Between 1999 and 2004, Fr. Kikuchi headed Caritas Japan. During these years, he worked on behalf of refugees in the Bukavu camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In 2004, John Paul II appointed him Bishop of Niigata. Between 2011 and 2019, he headed Caritas Asia, and has been president of Caritas Internationalis since 2023, a position in which he succeeded Cardinal Tagle. In 2017, Pope Francis appointed him Archbishop of Tokyo. Archbishop Kikuchi is committed to dialogue with North Korea and to pastoral care for people with homosexual tendencies. He is taking part in the current Synod.
Japan, with Cardinal Thomas Aquino Manyo Maeda, archbishop of Osaka, will now have two cardinals.
Pablo Virgilio David, 65, bishop of Kalookan, Philippines
Born in 1959, Pablo Virgilio David is the tenth of 13 children. After passing through the minor seminary, he joined the major seminary in Manila, then studied in Louvain, Belgium, and at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem. Ordained to the priesthood in 1983, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of San Fernando in 2006 by Benedict XVI. A recognized biblical scholar, he took part in the 2008 Synod on the Word of God.
In 2016, Pope Francis entrusted him with the diocese of Kalookan. He has distinguished himself through his criticism of President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug policy. In retribution, he was subject to a government investigation in 2019. Since 2021, he has been president of the Philippine bishops’ conference. He is currently taking part in the Synod on Synodality.
He will become the 10th Filipino cardinal in history and the third cardinal elector of the current College of Cardinals, along with Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the dicastery for Evangelization, and Cardinal Jose Advincula, archbishop of Manila.
Paskalis Bruno Syukur, 62, bishop of Bogor, Indonesia
Paskalis Bruno Syukur was born in 1962 on the Indonesian island of Flores, whose population is predominantly Catholic. He joined the novitiate of the Friars Minor on the island of Java, taking his vows in 1989 and being ordained in 1991. After three years in a parish in West Papua, he was sent to Rome to study in 1993, then took charge of the Java novitiate on his return.
Between 2001 and 2007, he was provincial for Indonesia, then sent to Rome as superior of the Asia-Oceania zone within the Franciscan General Chapter. In 2013, Pope Francis appointed him Bishop of Bogor. He is currently general secretary of the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference, and in this capacity welcomed Pope Francis to his country for four days last September.
Bishop Mykola Bychok, 44, of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul in Melbourne, Australia
A sign of closeness to the Ukrainian diaspora, the cardinalate of this very young Ukrainian comes as a surprise. Mykola Bychok was born in 1980 in Ternopil, western Ukraine. He joined the Redemptorists in 1997, and studied in Ukraine and Poland. He made his final vows in 2003 and was ordained a priest in 2005 for the archieparchy of Lviv. He was then sent as a missionary to Siberia, before returning to his homeland to become parish priest in Ivano-Frankvisk.
From 2015 to 2020, he was vicar of the Ukrainian Catholic parish in Newark, USA. In 2020, Pope Francis appointed him bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul in Melbourne, where he looks after the local Ukrainian Catholic community. Aged 44, he will be the youngest member of the College of Cardinals.
This appointment of a Ukrainian bishop from the diaspora may be an indirect way for the Pope to give a sign of support to Ukraine, without having to face the strong political implications that a cardinal promotion of Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk might have represented.
Atypical promotions within the Roman Curia
Fr. George Jacob Koovakad, from India, 51, official of the Secretariat of State, responsible for papal travel
Born in 1973 in Chethipuzha in the Kerala region of India, George Jacob Koovakad was ordained in 2004 for the diocese of Changanacherry. A graduate in canon law, he joined the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and began serving in the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 2006.
Having served in the nunciatures of Algeria, Korea, Iran, and Costa Rica, he joined the General Affairs section in Rome in 2020. A year later, he was appointed the papal travel organizer by the Pope. Since then, he has organized 14 trips by Pope Francis to 20 different countries. He is not a bishop, and his promotion to cardinal is one of the biggest surprises of this consistory. It may presage a change of responsibility in the future.
Fr. Fabio Baggio, 59, from Italy, Under-Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
Promoted to cardinal from a priest, Fabio Baggio finds himself in the same position as one of his predecessors in this role, Michael Czerny, and could succeed the Canadian Jesuit as head of the dicastery responsible for ecological and humanitarian issues.
Born in Bassano del Grappa in 1965, this Italian, who is also a musician and songwriter, began his training at a very early age with the Scalabrinian order, which is dedicated in particular to helping migrants. Ordained a priest in 1992, he has worked in Chile and Argentina. He worked with Cardinal Bergoglio as national secretary of the Pontifical Mission Societies starting in 1999, and as national director of the department for migration of the diocese of Buenos Aires starting in 2002.
Pope Francis called his former collaborator to the Vatican in 2016. Fr. Baggio then became undersecretary of the dicastery for the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, in charge of the Migrants and Refugees Section, a body placed under the direct guidance of Pope Francis.
Archbishop Rolandas Makrickas, from Lithuania, 52, coadjutor archpriest of the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major
Born in 1972 in Birzai, Lithuania, the youngest of five siblings, Rolandas Makrickas grew up under the Soviet yoke, his family unable to practice their Catholic religion freely. Considering a career as an airplane pilot, he eventually joined the seminary in Kaunas shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was later sent to Rome to continue his studies.
Ordained a priest for the diocese of Panevezys in 1996, he became under secretary of his country’s bishops’ conference from 1996 to 2001, and headed the committee in charge of the Jubilee Year 2000. In 2003, he joined the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, and in 2006, the Vatican diplomatic service. He was sent to Bolivia, Georgia, Sweden, the United States, Gabon, and Congo. In 2019, he joined the Section for General Affairs in Rome, where he became the first non-Italian “head of administration” in history, overseeing the economic and financial restructuring of the Roman Curia’s central body.
In 2021, Pope Francis appointed him extraordinary commissioner of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, where he again took charge of the accounts and administrative structures. The pontiff elevated him to the rank of archbishop in 2023, then created him coadjutor archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in 2024 following publication of the chapter’s new statutes.
He will become the fourth Lithuanian cardinal in history, and should soon succeed Polish cardinal Stanislaw Rylko as archpriest of St. Mary Major, a basilica dear to Pope Francis, who has indicated his wish to be buried there.
And today we celebrate...