Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples has been added by Pope Francis to the list of 20 men he will create cardinals at the consistory on December 7, 2024. Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, made this announcement on November 4. With this unexpected addition, the College of Cardinals will have 141 electors and 113 non-electors after the consistory.
Archbishop Battaglia, 61, was one of the most frequently mentioned names on the list for a possible consistory, and the Pope’s choice of him is not in itself surprising. However, the announcement of this decision in a simple press release is unusual. Typically, the names of future cardinals are read out by the Pope after the Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square, as was the case last October 6.
Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his esteem for this archbishop. In 2021, he sent the Italian bishops a reflection of his titled “The Eight Beatitudes of the Bishop,” a text that defines the qualities of a good bishop; in 2022, it was a prayer by Archbishop Battaglia against the war in Ukraine that caught his attention and was read during a general audience.
A committed pastor
Domenico Battaglia, nicknamed “Mimmo,” is not from Naples, but from the southern region of Calabria, where he was born in 1963. He studied for the priesthood in the Diocese of Catanzaro, where he received priestly ordination in 1988. He then became head of the local minor seminary and of the diocese’s “justice and peace” commission, as well as being a parish priest in several parishes.
A street priest with a strong social commitment, from 1992 to 2016 he headed the Calabrian Solidarity Center, which helps drug addicts. He was also vice-president of the Betania Foundation, which serves the poor, from 2006 to 2015.
In 2016, Pope Francis entrusted him with the Diocese of Cerreto Sanita-Telese-Sant’Agata de’ Goti, in Campania. Four years later, the Pontiff appointed him to head the Archdiocese of Naples. There, he has distinguished himself for his commitment to a population that is often poor and in the grip of the mafia. At his request, Pope Francis received the parents of a young girl who had fallen victim to organized crime.
Naples, whose previous archbishop was Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, is once again a cardinal’s see with this decision by the Pontiff. With Archbishop Battaglia, the Pope will thus create four Italian cardinals. Battaglia’s name joins those of the vicar of Rome, Archbishop Baldassare Reina; the undersecretary of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, Archbishop Fabio Baggio; and the Archbishop of Turin, Archbishop Roberto Repole.
Recently, Bishop Paskalis Syukur of Bogor (Indonesia) was granted a rare permission by the Pope not to be created a cardinal, despite the Pope having announced his name at the Angelus on October 6.
A precedent in 2021
The cases in which the Pope adds the names of cardinals after the general announcement are quite exceptional.
The precedent dates back to 2001, the consistory in which Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio was created a cardinal. On January 21 of that year, John Paul II announced an initial list of 37 cardinals, then added seven more names at the Angelus the following week.
Two of the names added were cardinals who had been created in pectore by the Polish pope in 1998, three years before. They were Marian Jaworski (archbishop of Lviv in Ukraine) and Janis Pujats (Archbishop of Riga), two representatives of Churches that had suffered greatly under the Communist yoke.
And today we celebrate...