Pope Francis delivers the Angelus midday prayer in St. Peter’s Square on the Vatican on Sunday.

Gregorio Borgia/AP

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Pope Francis delivers the Angelus midday prayer in St. Peter’s Square on the Vatican on Sunday.

Gregorio Borgia/AP

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday introduced he has chosen 21 new cardinals, together with prelates from Jerusalem and Hong Kong — locations the place Catholics are a small minority — as he continues to depart his mark on the physique of churchmen who will choose his successor.

The pope introduced his picks throughout his customary weekly look to the general public in St. Peter’s Square, saying the ceremony to formally set up the churchmen as cardinals will probably be held on Sept. 30.

Among these tapped are a number of prelates holding or about to imagine main Vatican posts, together with the archbishop from La Plata, Argentina, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, 59, whom the pope simply named to guide the Holy See’s highly effective workplace for guaranteeing doctrinal orthodoxy and overseeing processing of allegations of sexual abuse towards clergy worldwide.

The new cardinals additionally embody Hong Kong Bishop Stephen Sau-yan Chow, 64, and the Vatican’s high official within the Middle East, Monsignor Pierbattista Pizzaballa, 58, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Those two churchmen information flocks in geopolitical areas of eager concern to the Vatican.

On Sunday, in remarks previous his studying out of the checklist of latest cardinals, Pope Francis expressed hope that Israeli and Palestinian authorities would take up “direct dialogue” to finish the “spiral of violence” — a reference to current lethal clashes.

Francis repeatedly has cited the hardships of the Christian minority within the Middle East in current a long time.

In an interview in April with The Associated Press, Pizzaballa, an Italian prelate who’s the highest Catholic churchman within the Holy Land, mentioned that the area’s 2,000-year-old Christian community has come underneath growing assault, with probably the most right-wing authorities in Israel’s historical past emboldening extremists who’ve harassed clergy and vandalized spiritual property at a quickening tempo.

For a long time, the Vatican and China have skilled tensions alternating with enchancment of relations over the Communist-led nation’s insistence that it has the proper to nominate bishops and the jailing of clergymen who professed loyalty to the pope.

Earlier this 12 months, the Hong Kong bishop, who, like Francis, is a Jesuit, made the primary go to to mainland China in practically 30 years by a prelate in that submit.

In asserting their names, Francis mentioned the appointment of cardinals from throughout the globe “expresses the universality of the Church that continues to announce the merciful love of God to all men of the Earth.”

Cardinals’ most necessary job is naming the following pope

Pope Francis prays in entrance of latest cardinals throughout consistory inside St. Peter’s Basilica on the Vatican on Aug. 27, 2022. Pope Francis introduced on Sunday that he has chosen 21 new cardinals.

Andrew Medichini/AP

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Pope Francis prays in entrance of latest cardinals throughout consistory inside St. Peter’s Basilica on the Vatican on Aug. 27, 2022. Pope Francis introduced on Sunday that he has chosen 21 new cardinals.

Andrew Medichini/AP

Cardinals function advisers to the pontiff on issues of educating and administration, together with the Vatican’s scandal-plagued funds. But their most important responsibility is gathering in a secret conclave to elect the following pontiff.

Francis has now named 9 batches of latest cardinals in his 10-year papacy. Even earlier than this newest group, he had already appointed the massive majority of these eligible to elect the following pontiff — these aged underneath 80. With the most recent appointments, the variety of cardinals who meet that situation stands at 137.

That means, more and more, the boys who will vote for whoever succeeds Francis, within the occasion of his resignation or demise, are churchmen supportive of his values, priorities and views and who share his imaginative and prescient for the way forward for the Catholic Church.

Three of the churchmen chosen to obtain the cardinal crimson work in Africa, a continent the place the Church has expertise development in current a long time. They are Monsignor Stephen Brislin, 66, archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa; Monsignor Protase Rugambwa, 63, co-adjutor archbishop of Tabora, Tanzania; and Monsignor Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, 59, archbishop of Juba, South Sudan, which the pope visited earlier this 12 months.

The workplace that Francis appointed Fernández to is historically headed by a cardinal. But the velocity with which the La Plata archbishop was tapped publicly as a cardinal — eight days after the appointment — was notable and highlights the eye the pontiff offers to that workplace.

A U.S.-based group that tracks how the Catholic hierarchy offers with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy says Francis made a “troubling” alternative in selecting the Argentine archbishop, who, in 2019, refused to believe victims who accused a priest in that archdiocese of sexually abusing boys.

Two others holding necessary places of work on the Vatican had been additionally among the many pope’s picks on Sunday. They are the Chicago-born Monsignor Robert Francis Prevost, 67, who heads the Dicastery for Bishops; and Monsignor Claudio Gugerotti, 67, an Italian accountable for the Dicastery for Eastern Churches.

Also on the checklist are:

Monsignor Americo Manuel Alves Aguiar, an auxiliary bishop from Lisbon, Portugal, which the pope will go to subsequent month for a Catholic youth jamboree, was additionally on the checklist. At 49, he’s exceptionally younger for a cardinal.

Monsignor Sebastian Francis, 71, bishop of Penang, Malaysia, who heads the bishops convention of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei; Monsignor Francois-Xavier Bustillo, 54, a Franciscan and native Spaniard who’s bishop of Ajaccio, on the French island of Corsica; Monsignor Luis Jose Rueda Aparicio, 71, archbishop of Bogota, Colombia; and Monsignor Grzegorz Rys, 59, archbishop of Lodz, Poland.

Monsignor Emil Paul Tscherrig, 76, a Swiss prelate who’s the primary non-Italian to function papal ambassador to Italy and San Marino; and Monsignor Christopher Louis Yves Pierre, 77, a Frenchman whose diplomatic postings included Washington, D.C.

Monsignor Angel Sixto Rossi, 64, a Jesuit who’s archbishop of his native Cordoba, Argentina; Monsignor Jose Cobo Cano, 57, who was simply appointed final month by Francis to be archbishop of Madrid; and the Rev. Angel Fernández Artime, 62, a Spaniard who’s rector main of the Salesians, a congregation of clergymen current in 133 international locations.

Three of the 21 new cardinals are 80 or older and thus not eligible to vote in a conclave. They are Italian prelate, Agostino Marchetto, 82, who served as the highest Vatican diplomat in Belarus, Madagascar, Mauritius and Tanzania; Monsignor Diego Rafael Padron Sanchez, 84, archbishop emeritus of Cumana, Venezuela; and a Franciscan priest, Luis Pascual Dri, 96, famed for listening to confessions within the pope’s native Buenos Aires and who has been praised by Francis for his stress on mercy.