Pope Benedict XVI this week moved to increase Europe's dominance over the College of Cardinals by announcing a consistory for next month at which more than half of the men who will get red hats are from the Old Continent.
Speaking at the end of his Wednesday general audience in St Peter's Square, the Pope read the names of 23 men he plans to make cardinals at a ceremony on 24 November at the Vatican. Eighteen of the cardinals-designate are under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave, which will put the number of electors at 121 after next month's consistory, the second of this pontificate.
Even though Europeans constitute only a quarter of all Catholics throughout the world, 10 of the 18 new cardinal-electors announced this week are from Europe. There are five residential archbishops, including Cardinals-designate Agustín García-Gasco Vicente, 76, of Valencia; Seán Baptist Brady, 68, of Armagh; Lluís Martínez Sistach, 70, of Barcelona; André Vingt-Trois, 65, of Paris; and Angelo Bagnasco, 64, of Genoa.
The other five Europeans are all Vatican officials. They include Cardinals-designate Giovanni Lajolo, 72, (Italian) governor of Vatican City State; Paul Joseph Cordes, 73, (German) president of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum"; Angelo Comastri, 64, (Italian) Archpriest of St Peter's Basilica; Stanislaw Rylko, 62, (Polish) president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity; and Raffaele Farina, 74, (Italian) archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church. The now 61 European electors in the College of Cardinals constitute more than 50 per cent of the voters, an increase of about two percentage points. After the consistory, Italy will have 21 electors, the most of any one country.
Even though Latin America is home to more than 42 per cent of the world's Catholics, only three men from the region were selected for the under-80 group of cardinals. They include Cardinals-designate Leonardo Sandri, 70, (Argentinian) prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches; Francisco Robles Ortega, 58, Archbishop of Monterrey (Mexico); and Odilo Pedro Scherer, 58, Archbishop of São Paulo (Brazil). Latin America's 21 voting cardinals make up, roughly as before, just over 18 per cent of all electors in the College of Cardinals.
The two US-born prelates who will be elevated on 24 November are cardinals-designate John P. Foley, 72, the former long-time head of the Vatican's council for social communications who recently became pro-Grand Master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre; and Daniel DiNardo, 58, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston. This former Vatican official's elevation was probably the biggest surprise among the new group of electors. It marks the first time that an archdiocese in the southwestern United States will be headed by a cardinal, a reflection of the demographic shifts among Catholics in the country. It is likely that one of the sees in the northern United States - probably Detroit - will no longer have a cardinal. The United States will now have 13 cardinals. Although half of all Catholics live in the American hemisphere, their 37 cardinals will continue to underrepresent them at roughly 30.6 per cent of all members in the College.
Africa, where the Catholic population is rapidly growing, will get only two new electors - Cardinals-designate Théodore-Adrien Sarr, 71, of Dakar (Senegal); and John Njue, 63, recently named Archbishop of Nairobi (Kenya). Just over 13 per cent of all Catholics live in Africa, but after the consistory the continent will still have only nine cardinals - just 7.4 per cent of all electors.
The only Asian on the list of electors was Cardinal-designate Oswald Gracias, 62, Archbishop of Bombay. The Asian presence in the College is now at 13, but overall that is a drop from approximately 12 per cent to 10.7 per cent of all electors.
Pope Benedict also announced the names of five churchmen over the age of 80 who are to be created cardinals on 24 November, beginning with His Beatitude Emmanuel III Delly, 80, Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans (Iraq). The other four are Cardinals-designate Giovanni Coppa, 82 (Italian), a former papal nuncio; Estanislao Esteben Karlic, 81, Archbishop-emeritus of Paraná (Argentina); Urbano Navarrete, 87 (Spanish), former rector of the Gregorian University; and Umberto Betti, 85 (Italian), former rector of the Lateran University.
The Pope had intended to make Polish Bishop Ignacy Jez a cardinal, too. But the 93-year-old priest, who spent four years as a prisoner at the Dachau concentration camp, died on Tuesday while on pilgrimage to Rome.