The 20 new cardinals-to-be, announced by the pope this week for the February consistory, are a broad range of names and nationalities, but also of ideological positions within the spectrum of current critical issues in the Catholic Church. While the media touts the pope’s diverse choices of nationalities from the world’s economic and political “peripheries” – such far-flung nations as Tonga, New Zealand, Myanmar, and Thailand – some have noted the wide disparity of opinion among the choices on homosexuality, possibly the most contentious strategic issue in the Church’s ongoing internal struggles.
One of those named, Archbishop Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is the head of a small but historically significant minority branch of Catholicism, the head of the Ethiopian Catholic Church. Archbishop Souraphiel is the patriarch of the Ge’ez Rite of the Church, which represents Catholic Christians in some of the most embattled places in the world, including Eritrea, Jerusalem, and Somalia, where Christians are regularly targeted by Islamic extremist militias.
Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Ethiopia and punishable with one to fifteen years in prison. Archbishop Souraphiel was a signatory to a letter, also signed by the heads of the Ethiopian Orthodox and Anglican Churches, to ask for a constitutional prohibition on homosexual activity. At a conference in 2008, Catholic and Protestant churches formed a national task force called the Ethiopian Inter-Religious Council Against Homosexuality (EICAH) that called homosexual behavior “the pinnacle of immorality.”
Another on the list of new cardinals is known to those who closely followed the proceedings of the Synod on the Family in October. Archbishop John Atcherley Dew of Wellington, New Zealand, is among the surprise names. Not normally a “red-hat see” the archbishop of Wellington and head of the New Zealand bishops’ conference, was among those voices at the Synod who called for the Church to “soften” its language with regards to sexual sin, for fear of appearing condemnatory.
Archbishop Dew specified that the term “disordered,” which the Catechism of the Catholic Church uses to describe homosexual acts, ought to be dropped. He was among those who supported Cardinal Walter Kasper’s project to allow those in “irregular” sexual unions to receive Holy Communion, overturning the Church’s discipline.
Fifteen of the men named are under 80 and could be eligible to vote in a future conclave, the primary purpose of the office. A number of them, such as the patriarch of Lisbon, Archbishop Manuel José Macario do Nascimento Clemente, and the newly-appointed prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, who recently replaced Raymond Cardinal Burke, are matters of course, with the “red-hat” being considered normal for the office.
The new cardinals who are eligible to vote in a conclave include only two Italians and no Americans. Notably absent from the list is the recent surprise appointee to the hugely influential Archdiocese of Chicago, Blase Cupich, the ultra-liberal who replaces the ailing conservative Francis Cardinal George. But this is not a surprise since it is normally not the practice for a new appointee to a red-hat see to be named to the College of Cardinals if the emeritus cardinal-archbishop is still living.
Another absentee is Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia who has been outspoken in his defences of the Church’s teaching on life and family for many years. While Philadelphia is normally considered a “red-hat see,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, head of the Holy See’s Press Office, said that Pope Francis “does not feel chained to the tradition,” in his cardinalatial choices.
Lombardi said, “The pope doesn’t feel tied to the traditional ‘cardinal sees,’ which reflected historic reasons in various countries. Instead we have various nominations of archbishops or bishops of sees in the past that wouldn’t have had a cardinal.”
Summarizing the ideological and theological configuration of Pope Francis’ choices, US liberal Catholic commentator and Vatican analyst John Allen said that while the mainstream media is talking about the “diversity” of the new cardinals-elect, the list “includes a couple of high-profile moderates but no one with a clear reputation as a doctrinal or political conservative.”
Allen said that the decisions were reflective of Pope Francis’ stated intentions of moving the centres of power in the Church out to the “peripheries,” but added that there would be “possible consequences” to this decentralizing project that could backlash on the pope’s intentions.
As policy-makers and advisors to the pope, men with little or no experience in the larger, global issues facing the Church could end up handing power over to “lobbyists.” “Prelates who have no Vatican experience, who don’t speak Italian, and who don’t themselves have the experience of running a large and complex ecclesiastical operation, may feel a natural tendency to defer to the old hands,” Allen wrote, including those curial officials who are accustomed to the use of power in the Vatican.
“The cardinals were not selected on the basis of a clear mandate or policy agenda, and they don’t all belong to the same ideological bloc. For that reason, it’s not as if they’re likely to stride into Vatican meeting rooms with a clear sense of purpose from day one.”