EDITORIAL: The telling outcome of the latest round of red-hat roulette

The Holy Father has done it again: 21 new prelates of his liking to be made cardinals on 8 December. By this stage of the Francis papacy the list comes as no surprise. Obvious contenders have been passed over once again, while people no one has heard of make their first appearance on the world stage.

At the same time, some of those obvious contenders have actually made the cut: among them the Archbishops of Toronto and Turin and high-ranking functionaries like the vicar-general of the Diocese of Rome. Meanwhile, retired nuncio Archbishop Angelo Arcebi has been made a Prince of the Church at the grand old age of 99. He will not be voting at the next conclave, whether he lives to see it or not.

Some of the lucky winners of the latest round of red-hat roulette may also find themselves on the wrong side of the Sistine Chapel doors when “extra omnes” is called. Should the Lord choose to call a conclave next September, for example, the famous English Dominican Timothy Radcliffe will also be excluded. A former Master-General of the Order of Preachers, he turns 80 in August. An erudite theologian with impeccable liberal credentials, he is currently leading the spiritual retreats on the Synod on Synodality in Rome.

Others, much younger, will almost certainly be called on to cast their votes. Fr Fabio Baggio, the Undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugees Department of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, is only 59. If one eyebrow might be raised at a priest-administrator being given the Church’s second-highest honour, then the other might go up for Mgr George Jacob Koovakad, 51, a Syro-Malabar-Rite Indian whose job involves organising papal travel. It is important work, certainly, but not the kind that in the past got one made a Prince of the Church.

Which brings us to Bishop Mykola Bychok, the Redemptorist Eparch of the Ukrainian Church in Melbourne, Australia, who at only 44 years old is very much the baby of the bunch – and the first cardinal to be born in the 1980s. He will become the youngest member of the Sacred College, displacing Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, the Apostolic Prefect of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, who is six years his senior. Consecrated to the episcopate just four years ago, there is no reason to doubt that Bishop Bychok is a wise and learned prelate, but the combination of identities which melds in his person should give us pause for thought.

If Pope Francis wanted a cardinal from Australia – which has been without scarlet socks since George Pell died at the start of last year – then the obvious candidate would have been the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher. If he wanted a cardinal from Australia who was a member of a religious order, such as Bychok is, then the obvious candidate would still have been Archbishop Fisher, who is a Dominican. And yet, as anyone who has been paying attention will remember, Fisher spoke out in pastoral and learned tones when Pope Francis sought to restrict Catholics’ access to the Traditional Latin Mass with Traditionis Custodes in 2021.

On the other hand, if Pope Francis had wanted a Ukrainian cardinal then the obvious candidate would have been Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Archbishop of Kyiv and Primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. The Pope’s relations with Kyiv have not exactly been warm, however, as the terrible conflict between Russia and Ukraine has dragged on. Well-meaning comments and a genuine desire for an end to the conflict have not been well received, and have been interpreted on the ground as being rather too soft on the oppressor. An obvious gesture of reconciliation would have been to create a cardinal in the very place where Ukrainian Catholics are dying for their freedom; but this is not a papacy of obvious gestures.

Once more there is a kind of apophatic interest in the latest appointments; who isn’t on the list is as interesting as who is. It is perhaps just as well that the Archbishop of Paris is not among them – although you’d think that his office would make him a natural choice – as it would have been something of a diary clash with the much-anticipated reconsecration of his cathedral after its restoration post-conflagration. Pope Francis was himself invited to the ceremony by President Macron, the head of the French state, but declined.

It’s important that the conclave that elects the next pope represents the Church in all her fullness, of course, and there is an impressive contingent from the far-flung places to which Pope Francis has devoted so much time and prayer. Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering that there are still faithful Catholics in the old heartlands of the Church, who deserve to be represented as well.

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