13 February 2014, The Tablet

History in the making?


 
Along with the red hat and the right to vote in a conclave, the men to be created cardinals on 22 February will also be assigned a titular church in Rome. This is to symbolically perpetuate the tradition that clergy of the city elected the Bishop of Rome – the Pope. Cardinals hold on to their titular churches until death, so which ones are free to the 19 new red hats? One of them, of course, is Pope Francis’ own titular church, San Roberto Bellarmino, a 1930s building named after the great saint from Francis’ Jesuit order. The church of another former Jesuit cardinal – Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini – is also free: the fifth-century Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Previous titular holders include Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, King Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, and
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