The Pope chooses 21 more cardinals

ROME (AP).— Pope Francis named 21 new cardinals on Sunday, considerably increasing the number of members of the College of Cardinals and consolidating his mark on the group of prelates who will one day elect his successor.

Among those chosen by the first Latin American Pope in history are the leaders of several important dioceses and archdioceses in South America.

This is the archbishop of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Vicente Bokalic Iglic; the archbishop of Porto Alegre, Brazil, Jaime Spengler; the archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Fernando Natalio Chomali Garib; the archbishop of Guayaquil, Ecuador, Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera, and the archbishop of Lima, Peru, Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio.

He also named the oldest cardinal yet: Monsignor Angelo Acerbi, a 99-year-old retired Vatican diplomat who was once held hostage for six weeks in Colombia by leftist guerrillas, and the youngest, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. 44-year-old in Melbourne, Australia, Bishop Mykola Bychok, named in a nod to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The new cardinals will receive their red hats in a ceremony known as a consistory on December 8, an important holiday that officially begins Christmas celebrations in Rome.

It will be Francis’s 10th consistory and the largest infusion of voting-age cardinals into the college in his 11 years of pontificate.

Already before Sunday’s announcement, Francis had named the vast majority of cardinals of voting age who will one day participate in a conclave to elect his successor. According to Vatican statistics, before Sunday 92 of the cardinals under the age of 80 — and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave — had been chosen by Francis, compared to 24 appointed by Pope Benedict XVI and six by St. John Paul II.

Showing the universality of the Church around the world, Francis also turned to the Archbishop of Tehran, Iran, Monsignor Dominique Joseph Mathieu, and the Bishop of Bogor, Indonesia, Monsignor Paskalis Bruno Syukor. Both belong to the Franciscan religious order and are two of the four new Franciscan cardinals. He also appointed the Archbishop of Toronto, Francis Leo.

In addition to Syukor, Asia has two more cardinals: Monsignor Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, archbishop of Tokyo; and Monsignor Pablo Virgilio Sinogco David, bishop of Kalookan, Philippines.

Aside from Asia, the other region where the Church is growing is Africa, which has two new cardinals: the archbishop of Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Monsignor Ignace Bessi Dogbo, and the bishop of Algiers, Algeria, Monsignor Jean-Paul Vesco.

In a gesture to the synod being held this month at the Vatican that is debating the future of the Church, Francis also named the Rev. Timothy Racliffe, a British theologian who is one of the meeting’s spiritual advisors.