Pope Francis Names 19 New Cardinals, None from the US

Pope Francis released the names of 19 new princes of the Catholic Church Sunday — none from the United States.

The list included cardinals for Burkina Faso and Haiti to show “concern for people struck by poverty,” according to Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi. And the pope created new cardinalatial sees, Perugia in Italy, and Cotabato on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. 

The consistory, scheduled for late February, will fill 13 vacant seats plus bring in three more cardinals to replace those who will turn age 80 — too old to vote in a papal election — by the end of May.

One reason the Archbishops of Philadelphia and Los Angeles may not have been elevated to red hat status is that both cities currently have cardinals under age 80. It is unusual for one cardinal see to have two electors. However, the United States, with 11 voting cardinals already compared to merely five for Brazil, is hardly slighted in electoral clout. 

Francis, the first Jesuit pope, did not include any Jesuits, although four of those named are members of religious orders, Catholic News Service observed.

Francis also named three cardinals who are well beyond voting age to honor their contributions to the church: Archbishop Capovilla, age 98, the secretary of soon-to-be-canonized Pope John XXIII; Fernando Sebastian Aguilar, C.M.F., Archbishop emeritus of Pamplona, 84, and Kelvin Edward Felix, Archbishop emeritus of Castries, 80.

The 16 eligible to vote are:

• Four from the curia, the governing bureaucracy of the church, including: Pietro Parolin, Titular Archbishop of Acquapendente, Secretary of State; Lorenzo Baldisseri, Titular Archbishop of Diocleziana, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops; Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Regensburg, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Beniamino Stella, Titular Archbishop of Midila, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy.
• Three from North and Central America: Leopoldo Jose Brenes Solorzano, Archbishop of Managua, Nicaragua;  Gerald Cyprien Lacroix, Archbishop of Quebec, Canada, and Chibly Langlois, Bishop of Les Cayes, Haiti.
• Three from South America including his successor as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Mario Aurelio Poli; Orani Joao Tempesta, O.Cist., Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro;  and Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, S.D.B., Archbishop of Santiago del Cile, Chile
• Two from Europe: Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, United Kingdom and Gualtiero Bassetti, Archbishop of Perugia-Citta della Pieve, Italy.
• Two from Africa: Jean-Pierre Kutwa, Archbishop of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Philippe Nakellentuba Ouedraogo, Archbishop of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
• Two from Asia: Orlando B. Quevedo, O.M.I., Archbishop of Cotabato, Philippines and Andrew Yeom Soo jung, Archbishop of Seoul, South Korea.