Cardinal creations of Pope Francis
Knights, Forced Labourers, and a "Robin Hood"
133 men will elect the new pope in the Conclave next week. Names like Pietro Parolin, Luis Antonio Tagle, and Pierbattista Pizzaballa are making the rounds in the media. But there are also cardinals who aren't as much in the spotlight.
Pope Francis felt it was important to make a mark with his cardinal appointments. The participants in the 2025 Conclave come from more countries than ever before. 80 percent – over 100 – of them were appointed by Francis and have never participated in a papal election before. As is well known, it was important to Francis not to focus on traditional cardinal seats such as Milan, Paris, or Berlin, but to elevate churchmen who are, in the truest sense of the word, "on the margins." We introduce six of them.
Konrad Krajewski – the Robin Hood of the Vatican
The Polish cleric is probably one of the most unusual employees of the Roman Curia. As early as 2013, in the first year of his pontificate, Francis declared the Pole the "Papal Almoner," responsible for distributing charitable goods to the poor. In this role, he made a name for himself through unconventional actions. For example, when the electricity was turned off in an illegal housing complex with 500 people, he climbed into the distribution shaft and removed the safety seals. A criminal offence, he was subsequently reported to the energy company.
During the Ukraine war, he was deployed to the war zone together with Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny and personally came under fire. And he's also committed himself away from the headlines: Rumor has it that he regularly helps out in Roman soup kitchens. Francis apparently liked all of this: in 2018, he admitted him to the College of Cardinals.
The Central African Republic is rarely in the spotlight of the world public. A Catholic presence in this civil war-torn country has only existed for a good hundred years. Catholics make up a quarter of the population, but, like others, have to live with repression from armed groups. Pope Francis has clearly been moved by this situation. Francis opened the extraordinary "Holy Year of Mercy" 2016 not in Rome, but in Bangui, in the Central African Republic, shortly before the official Vatican opening. "Open the doors of mercy," Francis said on November 29, 2015, as he solemnly opened the Holy Door of Bangui Cathedral with an appeal for peace and reconciliation.
The local Archbishop, Dieudonne Nzapalainga, grew up in very poor circumstances and financed his studies with menial jobs as a cook or mechanic. In 2012, Pope Benedict appointed him archbishop. Francis also seemed to like the clergyman's work and life story. In the Holy Year of 2016, he appointed him the first cardinal from Central Africa.
During the Conclave, it will be noticeable that a few cardinals will enter the Sistine Chapel wearing other, unusual vestments. One of them is Patriarch Sako of Iraq. In addition to the majority of "Roman" Catholics, several Eastern Churches are also united under the Pope, including the Chaldean Catholic Church with its Patriarch, whom Pope Francis appointed a cardinal in 2018.
Cardinal Louis Raphael I. Sako, born in Iraq, is considered an extremely outspoken voice for his country. During the Iraq War, he repeatedly criticized the American armed forces, including for the execution of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
One of his main concerns in predominantly Islamic Iraq is inter-religious dialogue. He initiated various inter-religious peace prayers and was awarded the Pax Christi Peace Prize for this in 2010. He also played a major role in the Pope's visit to Iraq in 2023, which took place under the highest security precautions.
Iraqi Christians describe this visit as a "turning point in Christian-Islamic dialogue."
Since July 2023, Sako has been in conflict with the Iraqi government, which withdrew his administrative powers over land and property belonging to the Chaldean Catholic Church. In protest, he left his patriarchal see in the capital, Baghdad, and continues to reside in a seminary near Erbil.
There are around 250 cardinals. A Cardinal as a Knight of the British Crown is unique. And he comes from the other side of the world. Sir John Ribat was the first bishop from Papua New Guinea to be elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2016. In the same year, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He said in a DOMRADIO.DE interview in 2024 that he still wonders which title has a higher status in terms of protocol. "No one has been able to tell me that yet."
In his homeland, Ribat is a tireless fighter against climate change, which is already devouring entire islands in the Pacific region. "We are losing our homeland," he said in the same interview. Pope Francis, who created a new ecclesiastical awareness of environmental protection with his environmental encyclical "Laudato si," visited Ribat and his homeland just over six months ago, in September 2024. There, he called for peace – between people and also with nature. "No to armament and the exploitation of our common home!"
Mongolia is the most sparsely populated country in the world. On average, there are only two people per square kilometer. When Pope John Paul II elevated the country to an Apostolic Prefecture in 1992, there were just 114 Catholics here. Today, there are approximately ten times that number attending the country's nine Catholic churches.
One of the missionaries administering the church in the country is the northern Italian friar Giorgio Marengo. He was ordained a priest in 2001 and has since worked (with interruptions) as a missionary in Mongolia. Because Pope Francis was interested in "the margins," his attention also turned to Mongolia. In 2020, he appointed Marengo Apostolic Prefect of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Mongolia is still not an official diocese. In 2022, Francis appointed Marengo, at the age of 48, the youngest member of the College of Cardinals at the time. A year later, he paid him a visit during the first papal visit to Mongolia in history.
Although the Albanian priest Ernest Simoni has long since passed the age limit of 80, at 96 years old, his moving story is briefly told here. For a long time, Albania was the only country in the world officially governed by an atheist regime. Any commitment to religion was punishable. Ernest Simoni, born in 1928, experienced this firsthand. He spent 18 years in prison under the socialist dictatorship because, as a young priest, he had celebrated a Christmas mass.
Torture and isolation were part of his daily life. For almost two decades, he was forced to work under life-threatening conditions in a mine 500 meters underground. When he was released, his life was more secure, but no more pleasant: Until the end of the dictatorship, he worked as a sewer worker daily, surrounded by filth and feces. As a Christian and priest, he could only work in secret during all this time.
When Pope Francis visited Albania in 2014, Simoni described his fate to him. The Pope was surprised and moved. "I didn't know your people had suffered so much." Apparently, the fate of the Albanian forced laborer never left his mind even after his return to Rome. Two years later, he appointed Ernest Simoni, then already 88 years old, a Cardinal. A turn of events that the forced prisoner under the communist dictatorship surely couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams.
.jpeg)
Comments