Team Francis

The eight members of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals – the ‘C8’ as they are already becoming known – got round the table with him for the first time this week. The three-day meeting at the Apostolic Palace in Rome will set the agenda for what looks likely to become a new era of transparency and collegiality within the Church. Reform of the Roman Curia, the attitude to marriage, annulment and divorce – all are up for change. The cardinals, drawn from around the world, have proven organisational ability and pastoral skills. They know their way around the machinery of government in Rome. Here, we profile the eight men set to make a revolution

Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga

There may be some members of the College of Cardinals who are trained musicians, but few can match the skills of Cardinal Rodríguez, who studied music at conservatoires in El Salvador and the United States and plays the piano, saxophone and guitar, writes Francis McDonagh.

The prelate appointed by Pope Francis as coordinator of the C8 also has teaching qualifications in science and a diploma in psychology and psychotherapy from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. A Roman doctorate in theology, a pilot’s licence and competence in English, French, Italian, German and Portuguese, in addition to his native Spanish, complete the portrait of a twentyfirst-century Renaissance man.

Born in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, in December 1942, he joined the Salesians in May 1961. He was ordained bishop in 1978 after only eight years of priesthood and appointed auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa. He was apostolic administrator of the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán from 1981 to 1983, a period in which this frontier diocese was home to thousands of refugees from the civil war in neighbouring El Salvador.

Rodríguez spoke out against the authorities’ harassment of the refugees and also criticised the United States’ use of Honduran territory as a base for attacks on the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua. He was appointed Archbishop of Tegucigalpa in January 1993, and made cardinal in February 2001.

He was secretary general of the coordinating body of the Latin American episcopate, Celam, from 1987 to 1991 and its president from 1995 to 1999. He is a member of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

Since 2007, Rodríguez has been president of Caritas Internationalis. As president of Celam, he led the “Globalisation of Solidarity” campaign for the reduction of the debts of highly indebted countries, which preceded the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative launched by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in 1996.

Before the 2005 conclave, he was frequently spoken of as papabile, though he was probably too left-leaning for many cardinals. His left-wing credentials were damaged in 2009 when he supported the coup that deposed the President of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya, though he has subsequently accused the political class in Honduras of “robbery” for not using resources made available by debt relief for the benefit of the poor.

In 2011 he publicly complained about the blocking by the Vatican Secretariat of State of a second term for the secretary-general of Caritas Internationalis, Lesley-Anne Knight. At the United Nations climate conference in Durban in 2011, Rodríguez said that climate change “is a faith issue because, from the very beginning of the Bible, you see how creation was entrusted to human beings for them to administer not to exploit”.

His contacts with Pope Francis go back to their collaboration in Celam, and to their work together at the Aparecida conference.

Someone who worked with him said: “He is compassionate and gentle, warm and sociable and not embroiled in the intrigue and gossip of the Roman Curia. He hates clericalism and the hubris of Vatican officials.”

Francis McDonagh writes about Latin America for The Tablet.

Giuseppe Bertello

As the sole Italian and the only top-ranking Roman official in the C8, Cardinal Bertello faces enormous challenges because of his place in the very administrative structures that are to be overhauled, writes Robert Mickens.

More than the other seven, he will have the delicate role of dealing with those in Rome – predominantly Italians – that would be inclined to resist the reform and restructuring efforts.

Those who have known Bertello for many years unhesitatingly describe the warm and affable cardinal as “authentically evangelical”, “conciliar”, “informal” and a “true Vatican II man”. The 72-year-old cardinal became Vatican City’s governor after capping a long, illustrious diplomatic career of more than two decades with the post of papal nuncio to Italy (2007-2011).

Bertello got that job, one of the Holy See’s most prestigious posts, in recognition of his work as Pope John Paul II’s ambassador to Mexico (2000-2007). However, it was while serving as nuncio in Rwanda between 1991 and 1995 that he won highest marks. In 1994, the bloodiest moment of the African country’s civil war, he ignored warnings to flee and bravely stayed. “It was my specific duty to witness to the Church’s presence even in a risky situation,” Bertello would later say. “There were hundreds of missionaries that could not be abandoned, even if leaders of the UN military forces advised me to leave the country.”

Bertello was born in a small town at the foot of the Alps just north of Turin in Italy’s Piedmont region. He entered minor seminary at 11 and was eventually ordained a priest in 1966 for the Diocese of Ivrea. A year after his ordination, while serving as an assistant parish priest, his bishop released him to train as a church diplomat at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome.

In his first years he was an attaché at the Holy See’s missions in the Red Sea, Sudan, Turkey, Venezuela and the United Nations in Geneva. Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican’s legendary Secretary of State, ordained him archbishop in 1987 as he took up his first post as papal nuncio in Benin, Ghana and Togo. In addition to his assignments as nuncio, he also returned to Geneva as the Holy See’s first official “permanent observer”.

Cardinal Bertello grew up less than 20 miles from the Ecumenical Monastery of Bose and is close to its founder, Enzo Bianchi. He was making a spiritual retreat with the community in 1967 when he learned of his appointment to the Ecclesiastic Academy. He has been an enthusiastic supporter of Bose ever since and continues to visit the monastery at least once a year.

Bertello is the only member of the C8 that has never been a diocesan bishop, though he has a licentiate in pastoral theology. He brings an international vision, pragmatism and a sense of what works and what doesn’t inside the Church and at the Vatican.

Robert Mickens is The Tablet’s Rome correspondent.

Oswald Gracias

There is a consensus among senior Catholics in India that Cardinal Gracias was appointed to the C8 for his skills as a canon lawyer, pastor and diplomat, writes Anton Akkara.

Cardinal Ossie, as he is popularly known, was ordained in 1970 in Mumbai and later completed his doctoral studies in Rome. He became a professor in several seminaries and assumed the post of the president of the Canon Law Society of India before he was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of Bombay archdiocese. Elevated in 2000 as Archbishop of Agra, city of the Taj Mahal in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, he was installed as Archbishop of Bombay in 2006 and raised to cardinal in 2007.

He has held several high-ranking posts including secretary general and then, from 2010, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. He has been president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences for the last two years.

In 2008 Pope Benedict appointed him a member of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and in 2010 he was also appointed to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Fr Paul Thelakkat, spokesperson of the sui iuris Syro-Malabar Church based in the southern Indian state of Kerala, says Cardinal Gracias is a born leader. “I see him as a good diplomat in the right sense of the term, which means getting things done with minimum hurt feelings around. In these areas he has been a great asset for the Indian Church,” said Fr Thelakkat.

Lay Catholic leaders have expressed confidence that he would reflect the views of the laity, even those critical of the Vatican, as part of the C8.

“The single-most quality that makes Cardinal Ossie stand out among senior world Church officials is his pastoral outreach and concern for the laity. He not only encourages different shades of lay opinion, but also supports lay leaders, who may have a different point of view,” said Joseph Dias, founder of the vocal action group Catholic-Christian Secular Forum, based in Mumbai.

Dias cited a recent case when Cardinal Gracias asked a Mumbai priest, who preached in a sermon that homosexuality was a sin, to be sensitive to gays, adding: “This showed his compassionate self, while stressing … the Church’s stance on the subject.”

Anto Akkara writes for The Tablet from India.

Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa

This Chilean cardinal has been a curial official, Archbishop of Santiago and superior general of a religious congregation, writes Francis McDonagh. Cardinal Errázuriz joined the Schoenstatt Fathers – part of an apostolic movement centred on the Marian shrine of Schoenstatt near Koblenz, Germany – following his ordination in Friboug, Switzerland, at the age of 27 in 1961.

He quickly rose through the ranks of the Fathers, becoming a regional superior in Chile in 1965 when he worked closely with the then Archbishop of Santiago, Raúl Silva Henriquez, who had invited the Fathers to work in his archdiocese. He then became superior general in 1974, a position he held until 1990, during which time he became well acquainted with the Church in the Americas, Europe and Africa.

He was appointed secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and was ordained bishop in 1991 by Pope John Paul II, as titular Archbishop of Hólar. During his time in Rome he also served as a consultor to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and a member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

In September 1996 Errázuriz was appointed Bishop of Valparaiso and promoted to Archbishop of Santiago in April 1998. It was at this time that he got to know Pope Francis who had become Archbishop of Buenos Aires a year earlier. As well as serving as president of the Chilean bishops’ conference from 1998 to 2004, he was vice-president and later president of Celam, the coordinating body of Latin American bishops’ conferences, between 1999 and 2007.

In his capacity as president of Celam, Errázuriz was also president of the Fifth General Conference of Latin American Bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, in July 2007. After the conference, he admitted changing the text approved by the bishops to weaken the approval given to church-based communities, though it is likely that the changes also had the approval of the then Cardinal Bergoglio, who had headed the committee that had drafted the document.

Errázuriz resigned as Archbishop of Santiago on grounds of age in 2008, though his resignation was not accepted until December 2010. He is a conservative on social issues and has frequently attacked the Chilean government polices of allowing abortion, the “morning after” pill and gay marriage.

His official biography stresses his work for reconciliation in Chile in the years following the collapse of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), though Errázuriz’s statements have drawn criticism from representatives of victims of the dictatorship. He condemned the detention of Pinochet by the British in London in 1998, acting on a warrant from the Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón. In 2001, Cardinal Errázuriz suggested that lawsuits against Pinochet and other former junta defendants in human rights cases be dropped, saying “excessive justice could be detrimental to reconciliation and social peace”.

More recently Cardinal Errázuriz has admitted mistakes in dealing with accusations of sexual abuse against an influential Chilean priest, Fernando Karadima, going back to 2002. The priest was found guilty by a Vatican investigation in February 2011 and ordered to “retire to a life of prayer and penitence”.

Reinhard Marx

Europe’s representative on the C8 is the youngest member of the commission by nine years, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. Reinhard Marx was born on 21 September 1953, at Geseke, in North Rhine-Westphalia. His father was a master locksmith and a committed trade unionist. He has been Archbishop of Munich and Freising since 2007 and received his red hat from Benedict XVI a year later, at the age of 57.

Besides being president of the Bavarian Bishops’ Conference, Marx is president of Comece, the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, made up of delegates from the 26 bishops’ conferences of the EU. As a champion of justice and peace – and a staunch supporter of European union – he never tires of recalling that the EU was founded for peace after the horrors of the Second World War and is not primarily a financial union.

An advocate of Catholic social teaching and a social market economy, Marx is critical of neo-liberalism and has condemned what he calls “turbo-capitalism” for enlarging the gap between rich and poor. He says what the world needs is a “globalisation of the social market economy”. In 2010, he published a book entitled The Capital, an allusion to the masterwork of his namesake, Karl. The book opens with a letter to the philosopher that begins: “I am writing to you as, of late, the question of whether it was not too early to condemn you and your economic theories outright and for good has left me no peace …”

It is therefore no wonder that Marx has been an outspoken critic of the Institute of Religious Works; he said in a recent interview that it was “debatable” whether the Vatican needs a bank at all. But he is convinced the Church needs a strong central authority, and that it is imperative to improve the Vatican’s image, especially after the VatiLeaks scandals.

Doctrinally, Marx is a conservative. He maintains that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood, or to the diaconate, but that it is essential to involve more women in the Church’s decision-making. He believes that marriage will always remain indissoluble but the Church must find a solution for remarried divorcees. He is also in favour of mandatory celibacy for priests.

He is one of the few German bishops in favour of turning abusers over to the police. He often quotes Luke 7:34, in which Jesus is criticised for being “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” for attending feasts and celebrations. “Jesus’ focus on people was unacceptable at the time and that is why he is so fascinating,” Marx says. After lengthy official celebrations on his sixtieth birthday two weeks ago, he went straight to the Oktoberfest in Munich with a small group of friends and relatives, and mixed in with the crowd over a huge mug of beer.

Christa Pongratz-Lippitt is The Tablet’s correspondent for Germany and Austria.

Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya

Ordained a bishop in 1980 by Pope John Paul II and now Archbishop of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cardinal Monsengwo stands tall on the Catholic stage of Africa, writes Sally Ninham. His experience brings much to the C8. After studies with the future Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Maria Martini SJ, in Rome, he was awarded a doctorate in biblical studies.

Monsengwo has known at first-hand the savage realities of armed conflict. As Archbishop of Kisangani in the eastern Congo (1988-2007), he survived the shelling of his residence by Rwandan forces in August 2000. Notably conversant with the complexities of African politics, in 1991 he agreed to be “president” of a transitional government that guided the country after the horrors of the Mobutu regime.

These days he continues to take a tough stand against ongoing atrocities. Recently, he called for civil disobedience to protest against the corruption that discredited the last national election. Together with the presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences of Africa and the Bishop Presidents of National Caritas in Africa (from 34 countries), he implored leaders of the European Union, the African Union, the United Nations, the DRC and the world’s multinational corporations to help the Congo’s suffering poor, facilitate dialogue, bring to justice the perpetrators of violent crimes and end the ongoing human tragedy that the Congo has become.

When I met Monsengwo, he was all business. Wearing gold-rimmed, cat-eye glasses with winged frames, he proved brusque, hurried and enormously distracted by the demands on his time. I was struck by the way he owned the space around him and filled it with magnetism.

Judging from his build, he could have been a world champion sportsman. Africa’s 11 active cardinals form an impressive team but it is Monsengwo who is kicking goals, redefining the code and dominating the game. Since being made a cardinal at the age of 71in 2010, he has been a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

At our meeting in Rome last year, the architecture spoke of the power and influence at the Church’s centre. But he had no hesitation in openly criticising his high-profile European colleagues for their lack of focus on Africa’s poor. A few days later he was named Pope Benedict’s special envoy to Syria.

Sally Ninham’s book, Ten African Cardinals, will be published next month by Connor Court Publishing.

Seán P. O’Malley, OFM Cap

When Cardinal O’Malley was installed as Archbishop of Boston in 2003, the Catholic community was in meltdown following a clerical abuse scandal that resulted in the first-ever resignation of a US cardinal, Cardinal Bernard Law, writes Michael Sean Winters. Financial contributions to the Church in Boston had dried up; the seminary was only half full; despite demographic changes, no parishes had been closed; and some accounts, such as the fund for retired clergy, had not been solvent since the 1970s.

In his 10 years in Boston, O’Malley has gradually righted the ship. After selling the cardinal’s residence and its adjacent property, the archdiocese paid a US$110 million settlement to the victims of clergy sex abuse. O’Malley took a room at the cathedral rectory. Consolidating operations at the chancery produced more savings. Some parishes were closed, producing enormous pain for the communities involved but putting the archdiocese on a sustainable financial track. Today, the seminary is full. And the Catholic schools in Boston – for the first time in decades – have seen enrolment start to climb again.

The assignment to Boston was the third time the Holy See had tapped O’Malley to perform triage. He did a similar job in Fall River, Massachusetts, then in Palm Beach, Florida. In all cases, his simple piety, approachable manner and sound administrative skills helped to turn the situation around.

O’Malley was born in Lakewood, Ohio, in 1944. He was 12 when he entered minor seminary and 21 when he took his vows as a Capuchin. Unlike many of his brother bishops who studied at seminaries in Rome, he earned his doctorate in Spanish and Portuguese literature at the Catholic University of America. As a young priest, he founded the Centro Católico Hispano, which provided education, legal and medical assistance to Washington DC’s Latino immigrant community.

In 1984, he was named bishop of the US Virgin Islands, where he opened the first home for people suffering from Aids and ministered to the islands’ mostly impoverished people. While serving in the Caribbean, he came to know many of the future leaders of the Church in Latin America, and has frequently been sent to conduct apostolic visitations on behalf of the Holy See.

O’Malley has always shunned the “culture warrior” approach adopted by some of his brother bishops. For example, in Denver, Colorado, in 2010, Archbishop Charles Chaput barred the adopted child of two lesbians from attending a Catholic school. A few months later, a similar incident arose in Boston and O’Malley issued a statement insisting that Catholic schools were open to all children. He presided at the funeral of Senator Edward Kennedy, despite protests from pro-life groups who objected to Kennedy’s votes in favour of abortion rights. Last month, at the Knights of Columbus convention, O’Malley gave the keynote address, a strong defence of Pope Francis’ more pastoral style.

Even since becoming a cardinal, he usually wears his brown Capuchin habit. Guests invited to lunch at his office usually get a tuna sandwich and some crisps. During the weeks leading up to the 2013 conclave, his simple demeanor combined with the Italian people’s love of the Capuchin order to make him the first American papabile.

Michael Sean Winters writes for The Tablet from Washington DC.

George Pell

Australia’s seventh cardinal combines an imposing physical presence with an apparent fearlessness about speaking his mind, writes Mark Brolly. It has not always made him a comfortable figure, within the Church or beyond it. For all his public prominence, his colleagues have never elected him president of the Australian Bishops’ Conference.

Sexual abuse is an issue that has dogged Pell in the 17 years he has been an archbishop, first in Melbourne (1996-2001) and for the past 12 years in Sydney. With a royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse due to report by December 2015 – six months before Pell reaches the official retirement age of 75 – public scrutiny of his role is only going to intensify.

Pope John Paul II gave him the red hat in 2003 but Pell moved seamlessly into the era of Benedict XVI, hosting the German pontiff at World Youth Day in Sydney five years ago and chairing the Vox Clara Committee to advise the Congregation for Divine Worship on new English translations of liturgical texts.

Pell was one of only two cardinal electors from Oceania at the 2005 Conclave that elected Benedict XVI and the only one from the region at the Conclave in March that elected Francis. His geographic status within the College of Cardinals and his knowledge of the English-speaking world and its traditions may have been significant factors in Francis’ choice of him for the C8.

Pell was born on 8 June 1941 in Ballarat, in the state of Victoria, a city built on the 1850s Gold Rush. His father was an Anglican, his mother from an Irish Catholic background. He studied in Rome and was ordained a priest there in 1966, but he also attended universities in England. He completed a doctorate in church history at Oxford and, in 2003, was elected an honorary fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. Much of his career has been devoted to education, but his public persona has been shaped by his stances on moral issues and public policy.

His friendship with, and influence on, the new Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, a former seminarian, is often remarked upon and perhaps exaggerated. But the cardinal has been a keen participant in the political process, being appointed by Prime Minister John Howard to the 1998 Constitutional Convention, even though he is a republican.

In Rome for the canonisation of Australia’s first saint, Mary MacKillop, in 2010, Pell delivered a widely praised homily addressed to his fellow citizens in which he said: “In yesterday’s papal ceremony, the universal Church put its seal on the outstanding Catholic contributor in Australian history. By its approval, majority Australia [sic] now acknowledges that Godliness, Christian virtue and Catholic service have a well deserved place in the pantheon of Australian achievements.”

It is a legacy Pell has spent his life asserting and defending.

Mark Brolly is The Tablet’s correspondent in Australia.