Cardinals and numbers, registers and curiosities of the “senate” of the Church

Alessandro De Carolis – Vatican City

Then Sixtus V in 1586 brought them to 70, but nothing to do with the amplitude we know today, a group of people who also geographically represent the “ends of the earth”. The College of Cardinals in its current size and composition is a choice that gradually matures in the twentieth century. It was John XXIII who first “violated” the historical limit of Sixtus V, to such an extent that the cardinals who at the end of the last pontificate between the 19th and the 20th centuries had oscillated on average 60 members, at the death of Pope Roncalli. were 82 and among them there are new somatic traits, with the first Filipino, Japanese and African cardinals.

“Global” College

A few years have passed and Paul VI has completed the work. He created up to 143 cardinals, further widening the “latitude” of his origins (the first New Zealand, the first Malagasy, the first Sinhala, etc.), determined the place of the patriarchs of the east in college and, above all , established the threshold, still valid, 80 years to leave the constituency. At the death of Pope Montini, there were 129 cardinals, a number which heralds the subsequent change impressed by John Paul II. With Pope Wojtyla, the College of Cardinals became a complete expression of the world and of the 231 cardinals of some seventy countries created by him in nine consistories (including 42 in the consistory of 2001, a record for the Church), he 16 cardinals remain. Voters of the 65 in the group, the oldest is Jozef Tomko, 96, created in 1985.

Older, younger

The Pontificate of Benedict XVI also saw the entry into the College of 90 cardinals distributed in five Consistories. Among those who obtained the mortar of the Pope Emeritus, there are currently 39 voters and 30 non-voters, including the oldest of the whole group, the 96-year-old Frenchman Albert Vanhoye, appointed cardinal in 2006. Pope Francis, when to him, belongs to the creation of the youngest living cardinal, Dieudonné Nzapalainga – only 49 years old in 2016 at the time of publication – who in the guise of the Metropolitan of Bangui is also the first cardinal born in the Central African Republic.

Francisco, the Cardinals and the Outskirts

With that of November 28, Francis will have presided over his seventh Consistory and created a total of 101 cardinals, of which 73 are currently among those who have the right to vote in the conclave. For the Pope of the “suburbs”, tomorrow’s convocation also shows beginnings and returns. To the first case belong Brunei and Rwanda – countries making their historic entrance to the College – to the second case belongs Malta, which for a short time ceased to be represented, that is to say the death of Cardinal Prosper Grech in December 2019. Other documents also belong to the Pontificate of Francis. Among others, that of the offices of the cardinals in countries that had never hosted it (with the exception of the Central African Republic, Brunei and Rwanda, but also of Haiti, Dominica, Burma, Panama , Cape Verde, Tonga, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Lesotho, Mali, Sweden and Laos, El Salvador, Luxembourg), the first African-American cardinal (Wilton Gregory, Metropolitan of Washington), the first born after the Council (Nzapalainga), the first convert to Catholicism since the time of Jean-Marie Lustiger (Bishop of Stockholm Anders Arborelius, Lutheran by birth).

Curiosity

Some names are linked to certain statistical curiosities. For example, the Thai Michael Michai Kitbunchu, 91, emeritus of Bangkok, is a long-time member (37 years) of the College of Cardinals. A record of duration shared with the New Zealander Thomas Stafford Williams, an ordinary military emeritus of 90 years of his country. Both received the cap from Pope Wojtyla in 1983.

Another figure refers to the presence of religious families in the current College: there are 26, for a total of 51 cardinals (29 electors) who wear the habit of their Institute under purple. The most represented are the Salesians (9), followed by the Jesuits (7). It should be noted that with Father Mauro Gambetti, guardian of the Sacred Convent of Assisi, the Order of Conventual Franciscans is also part of the group of cardinals.

Geography also, as we have said, especially at the will of Pope Francis, continues to redraw, to enlarge, the map of the College, which now reaches 90 countries represented, from Albania to Vietnam, the group of cardinals Italians (47) being much more numerous, followed by the United States (15) and Spain (14). From the point of view of the continents, Europe has 106 cardinals among electors and non-electors, Africa 30, Asia 27. North America has 26, South America with 25, l ‘Central America with 9 and finally Oceania with 6.