On October 1st, the day following Pope Francis’s ninth consistory and the 80th birthday of Cardinal Patrick D’Rozario, the Sacred College will comprise 136 cardinals under 80 years old eligible to participate in a future papal election, in accordance with Pope Paul VI’s Motu proprio Ingravescentem Aetatem. The youngest member of the College is the 49-year-old Italian Giorgio Marengo, Apostolic Prefect of Ulan Bator, while the oldest is the Argentine Leonardo Sandri, Prefect Emeritus of the Dicastery for the Oriental Churches and Vice Dean of the College of Cardinals, who will turn 80 on November 18th. The count of 136 surpasses the threshold of 120 set by Pope Paul VI and confirmed by Pope John Paul II for the number of electors in a conclave, although the Pope has the authority to make exceptions. By the end of 2023, the count will decrease to 132 as Cardinals Sandri, Yeom Soo-jung, Zerbo, and Cipriani Thorne all reach 80.
Europe boasts 55 cardinals, with Italy leading with 16 representatives. North America has 17 electors, Central America holds steady at 5, and South America increases to 17, totaling 39 cardinals across the entire American continent. Asia boasts 21 cardinal electors, Africa has 18, and Oceania maintains its 3 cardinals.
Italian Presence
As previously mentioned, Italy still has the largest representation, although residential cardinals are in the minority. They include Augusto Paolo Lojudice, Metropolitan Archbishop of Siena-Colle Val d’Elsa-Montalcino and Bishop of Montepulciano-Chiusi-Pienza; Matteo Maria Zuppi, Metropolitan Archbishop of Bologna; Angelo De Donatis, Vicar General of His Holiness for the Diocese of Rome; Oscar Cantoni, Bishop of Como; Giuseppe Petrocchi, Metropolitan Archbishop of L’Aquila; Giuseppe Betori, Metropolitan Archbishop of Florence. Francesco Montenegro, Metropolitan Archbishop Emeritus of Agrigento, joins them. Other Italians are curial cardinals: Mauro Gambetti, Pietro Parolin, Marcello Semeraro, Claudio Gugerotti, Fernando Filoni, and Mauro Piacenza. Completing the picture are Apostolic Nuncio in Syria Mario Zenari, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and Giorgio Marengo, Apostolic Prefect of Ulan Bator.
Curial Representation
The curial representation, excluding emeritus cardinals, consists of 16 cardinals: Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State; Luis Antonio Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization; Victor Manuel Fernandez, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; Konrad Krajewski, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity; Claudio Gugerotti, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Oriental Churches; Artur Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments; Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints; Robert Francis Prevost, Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops; Lazarus You Heung-sik, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy; Joao Braz de Aviz, Prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life and Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church; José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education; Michael Czerny, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development; Mauro Piacenza, Major Penitentiary; Dominique Mamberti, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura; Mauro Gambetti, President of the Fabric of St. Peter.
Cardinals Created by Pope Francis
Out of the 136 cardinal electors, the vast majority have been created during Pope Francis’s pontificate, totaling 98. There are 29 who were created by Pope Benedict XVI, and only 9 received the cardinalate from St. John Paul II: Philippe Barbarin, Josip Bozanic, Luis Cipriani Thorne, Peter Erdo, Marc Ouellet, Polycarp Pengo, Vinko Pulijc, Christoph Schonborn, Peter Turkson. All of them are emeritus except Cardinals Erdo and Schonborn, who are respectively Metropolitan Archbishops of Budapest and Vienna.
In a future conclave, at least as of now, 15 nations will be represented in the Sistine Chapel that had never had their own representative during a papal election: Haiti, Panama, Cape Verde, Tonga, Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Sweden, Laos, Luxembourg, Rwanda, Timor-Leste, Singapore, Paraguay, South Sudan, Malaysia.
