Cardinals are to serve the people of God and tackle the sins of the world, not be“princes” of the Church, Pope Francis has said.
The Pope told five new cardinals that Jesus “calls you to serve like him and with him, to serve the Father and your brothers and sisters”.
The new cardinals created during a ceremony in St Peter’s Basilica were: Cardinal Jean Zerbo of Bamako, Mali, 73; Cardinal Juan José Omella of Barcelona, Spain, 71; Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Stockholm, 67; Cardinal Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun, apostolic vicar of Pakse, Laos, 73; and Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez, 74, auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, El Salvador.
Jesus asked his disciples, the Pope said, to “look at reality, do not let yourselves be distracted by other interests or prospects”.
The reality is always the Cross, he said, and the sins the cardinals must face today include: “the innocent who suffer and die as victims of war and terrorism; the forms of enslavement that continue to violate human dignity even in the age of human rights; the refugee camps, which at times seem more like a hell than a purgatory; the systematic discarding of all that is no longer useful, people included.”
Jesus “has not called you to become ‘princes’ of the Church, to ‘sit at his right or at his left’,” the Pope told the cardinals.
The Gospel reading at the consistory was St Mark’s account of James and John’s pride and ambition to have a position of power and be honoured, and how the other disciples reacted with angry jealousy (Mk 10:32-45).
Jesus corrects his disciples, explaining that pagan leaders are the ones who lord their authority over their people, and “it shall not be so among you.” The Pope said the cardinals, as leaders like Christ, are there to be slaves and serve others.
After reciting the Creed and taking an oath of fidelity to Pope Francis and his successors, each cardinal went up to Pope Francis and knelt before him. The Pope gave them each a cardinal’s ring, a red skullcap and a red three-cornered red hat. The crimson hue the cardinals wear is a reminder that they must be courageous and faithful to Christ, his Church and the Pope to the point of shedding blood.
They also received a scroll attesting to their appointment as cardinals and containing the name of their “titular church” in Rome.
Pope Francis insists that the Church isn’t a gerontocracy
Cardinals are called to be “grandfathers” who pass on their dreams to young people, Pope Francis has said.
The Pope told about 50 cardinals that young people “need it so that from our dreams they can draw the strength to prophesy and carry out their task”. A critic who calls the Church a “gerontocracy … doesn’t understand what he is saying”, Francis said.
The Pontiff concelebrated Mass in the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace to mark 25 years since his ordination as bishop. Most of the cardinals present were officials of the Curia or retired curial officials living in Rome. Many needed assistance up and down the steps to the altar at Communion time. The average age of the College of Cardinals is 78.
The Pope noted that Abraham was 75 when he got the call. “He was more or less our age. He was about to retire.” At 75, “with the weight of old age, that old age that brings aches, illness”, Abraham heard God call him “as if he were a scout”, the Pope said. God tells him: “Go. Look. And hope.”
God says the same thing to the pope and the cardinals, he said. “He tells us that now is not the time to shut down our lives or to end our stories.”
New cardinal: jail purified me
Laos’s Cardinal Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun has said that three years in jail for preaching the Gospel was an “apostolate”.
The cardinal was arrested in 1984 for evangelising in communist Laos, according to his Vatican biography. He was imprisoned for three years “with chains on my arms and my legs”.
He told Catholic News Service: “My presence [in prison] was necessary for my conversion and purification.”
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