Reaching Out, For Cardinals Too

That’s Pope Francis, for you.

Announcing the names of 15 new cardinal electors, who will get their red hats at the Feb. 14 consistory at the Vatican, the pope again expanded representation at the highest level of the Church to the global south and to lesser-known dioceses in Europe and elsewhere that traditionally have not been led by a cardinal.

The cardinal electors, so-called because they’re under age 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a papal conclave, come from places as diverse as Cape Verde (an island nation off the west coast of Africa), Tonga (an island kingdom in the South Pacific) and Myanmar, which many of us remember as Burma.

It’s an eclectic choice, to be sure. But an exciting one as well.

We hear a lot about globalization in reference to the economy here in the United States and in other developed countries, and in reference to the power of social media and the entire Internet to create a global community.

Here, now, is the pope acknowledging in a very concrete way that the Church is part of that movement.

Of course, those of us in Catholic media and others who closely follow news of the Church have known for some time that Latin America and the Caribbean hold the world’s largest proportion of Catholics at 40 percent. We know too that the expansive energy of the Church was coming from sub-Saharan Africa and the vast Asia-Pacific region.

Of the new cardinal electors, three are from Latin America, homeland of the Argentina-born pope; three are from Asia; two from Africa and two from the southern Pacific region known as Oceania.

Also of note, only one of the new cardinal electors is a member of the Roman Curia, the administration arm of the Church, which currently holds about 25 percent of them.

This gravitational shift of the Church is not taking place only internationally. We see it right here in our own country, with the Church growing fastest in areas like the South and Southwest, where it traditionally has not been strong.

Indeed, Pope Benedict XVI recognized this trend in 2007 when he elevated Texas Archbishop Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston to the College of Cardinals, making him the first cardinal from a diocese in the southern part of the country.

In announcing his choices, Pope Francis said he wanted to demonstrate “the inseparable link between the Church of Rome and the particular churches present in the world.”

We applaud the pope’s vision of a truly international Church, a Church that recognizes where its faithful live and worship in this age of jet travel, instant communications and migration of peoples.