(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has named Toronto Archbishop Francis Leo among 21 new cardinals to be appointed at a December 8 consistory.
On October 6, Pope Francis announced that 21 bishops will be made cardinals in a consistory on December 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, including 53-year-old Archbishop Francis Leo from the Diocese of Toronto, Ontario.
“I am humbled and honoured to receive this appointment from the Holy Father,” Leo wrote in a diocesan press release. “I pray and rely on the prayers of the faithful in Toronto that I will be a worthy servant of the Lord Jesus in fulfilling my responsibilities as a member of the College of Cardinals and to continue in my primary role as shepherd of the faithful of the Archdiocese of Toronto.”
“I entrust to the Blessed Mother Mary, myself and this new ministry of service to the Universal Church and to the Successor of St. Peter, the Pope,” he added.
Of the 21 new cardinals, 20 will be cardinal electors upon the day they are created because they are under the age of 80. After the December 8 consistory, Francis will thus render the College of Cardinals to be almost entirely composed of men he appointed.
Leo, notably the only incoming cardinal from North America, entered the Grand Séminaire de Montréal in 1990 and was ordained a priest for the archdiocese on December 14, 1996.
He served in various parishes in Montreal until he entered the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome. From 2006 to 2012, he traveled to Apostolic Nunciatures while working in the Diplomatic Service of the Holy See. In January 2012, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as the Chaplain of His Holiness and gave him the title “Monsignor.”
Leo then returned to Canada to join the formation team of the Grand Séminaire de Montréal. Beginning in fall 2015, he served as General Secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) until fall 2021.
In February 2022, Leo was named Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia for the Archdiocese of Montreal. On September 12, 2022, he was consecrated a bishop. The next year, on March 25, 2023, he was installed as Archbishop of Toronto.
Campaign Life Coalition’s Jack Fonseca told LifeSiteNews that he is “cautiously optimistic about the future Cardinal Leo, and the added influence the red hat gives him both in Toronto and throughout Canada.”
As archbishop, Leo has used his position to encourage Catholic teachings, such as in June when he urged all federal Canadian MPs living in his archdiocese to support a Senate bill that aims to protect children from accessing online pornography.
Similarly, a January pastoral letter criticized abortion, euthanasia and contraception, and “the harmful gender ideologies that have permeated the institutions.”
At the same time, there are times that Leo is noticeably silent on important issues, especially when it comes to protecting children from the LGBT ideology in Catholic schools.
As LifeSiteNews reported in April, Leo failed to publicly weigh in on three Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) trustees who publicly rejected one of their fellow trustees proposed pro-life initiative for all schools in the district to fly the pro-life flag in May.
At the time, Neil MacCarthy, director of public relations and communications for the archdiocese, told LifeSiteNews that there “has not been any public comment by His Grace to this point.”
Additionally, Fonseca pointed out that since becoming Archbishop of Toronto in 2023 Leo has not condemned the Toronto Catholic District School board for promoting the LGBT agenda that is directly contrary to the Catholic faith.
“I’m happy to be corrected on this point, but to my knowledge, he has been totally silent about the TCDSB’s celebration of homosexual lifestyles, transgenderism, and the Gay Pride Parade, and has not done anything to protect the tens of thousands of impressionably Catholic children who are being spiritually corrupted by this errant board,” Fonseca declared.
“In fact, one of his priests, Father Michael Lehman, even used transgender ‘he/him’ pronouns during a live-streamed 2SLGBTQ+ propaganda session at the TCDSB,” he revealed. “To our knowledge, Father Lehman was not defrocked nor even disciplined for his participation in this heretical, anti-Christian event.”
“We urge all Catholics, especially those withing the Toronto archdiocese, to pray daily for our future Cardinal, that the Holy Spirit will strengthen him and make him fearless to fight evil and to defend his flock, even unto the shedding of his blood,” Fonseca concluded.