On October 5th, Pope Francis will hold a consistory for the creation of new cardinals.

Watch the event here LIVE on

Saturday, October 5, 2019

at 10 am ET / 7 am PT.

Just click on the player above.

WHAT IS A CONSISTORY?

A consistory is an official meeting of all or some of the cardinals, called by the pope. The cardinals, as a group, act as advisers to the pope, and the Holy Father may sometimes call them together to consult on major issues facing the Church. Also, in order to create new cardinals, the pope must issue a public decree in the presence of the other cardinals. This will be Pope Francis' sixth consistory for the creation of new cardinals.  

WHAT WILL HAPPEN DURING THE EVENT?

Pope Francis, the cardinals, and the cardinals-designate will gather in St. Peter's Basilica for the ceremony. After words of greeting, a prayer, a reading from one of the Gospels, and Pope Francis' homily, the Holy Father will proclaim the names of the new cardinals. It is from this moment that they actually become cardinals. The new cardinals then make a Profession of Faith and take an oath of fidelity to the Church and to the pope. They will then kneel before the pope one at a time to receive from his hands the cardinal's biretta (red hat) and cardinal's ring, and they will also be assigned a church in Rome, which is known as their "title" or "deaconry," representing their role in assisting the pope, who is the chief pastor of the city of Rome. After the cardinals exchange the sign of peace with the pope and each other, the ceremony ends with the Lord's Prayer.  

WHO ARE THE NEW CARDINALS?

• Bishop Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (Spanish)
• Archbishop José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça, archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church (Portuguese)
• Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo of Jakarta, Indonesia
• Archbishop Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez of San Cristóbal de la Habana, Cuba
• Archbishop Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., of Luxembourg
• Archbishop Álvaro Leonel Ramazzini Imeri of Huehuetenango, Guatemala
• Archbishop Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, Italy
• Archbishop Cristóbal López Romero of Rabat, Morocco
• Fr. Michael Czerny, S.J., under-secretary of the Section for Migrants of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (Canadian)
• Archbishop Michael Louis Fitzgerald, emeritus of Nepte, Tunisia (British)
• Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius, emeritus of Kaunas, Lithuania
• Bishop Eugenio Dal Corso, emeritus of Benguela, Angola (Italian)

 

WANT TO MEET TWO OF THEM?

Check out these two videos from the Salt + Light Media archive. Listen to this presentation by Canadian Jesuit, Fr. Michael Czerny, on Laudato Si', given at the CCCB plenary in 2016. Here's a little more information provided by our friends at the Jesuits of Canada:

Fr. Michael Czerny, SJ, was born on 18 July 1946, in Brno, Czechoslovakia (today the Czech Republic). The family moved to Canada in 1948. Following his 1963 graduation from Loyola High School in Montreal, he joined the Society of Jesus.

On 9 June 1973 he was ordained to the priesthood. In 1978 he received the doctorate in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Chicago. With the founding in 1979 of the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto, he was its first director until 1989. Following the killing of the Jesuits at University of Central American (UCA) in San Salvador, he served there as a Vice-Rector and directed its Institute for Human Rights.

In 1987-88 he lived for several months in Czechoslovakia and at L’Arche in Trosly-Breuil, France.

From 1992 to 2002, Czerny served in the Social Justice Secretary at the Jesuit General Curia in Rome. He then founded and directed the African Jesuit AIDS Network from 2002 to 2010, collaborating with the Kenyan Bishops' Conference and occasionally teaching at Hekima College in Nairobi.

In Rome again, from 2010 to 2016, he served as advisor to Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Since the beginning of 2017 he has been one of the two Under-secretaries of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

He is now serving as one of the two Special Secretaries for the October 2019 Special Synod of Bishops for the Amazon.

On 1 September 2019, Pope Francis included Father Czerny among the 13 new Cardinals to be created on 5 October 2019, preceded by episcopal ordination 4 October.

  Watch this rare interview with Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius from 2009, in which he recounts his experiences of persecution in Soviet-occupied Lithuania and his imprisonment in Soviet labour camps.