Some video to supplement Austen Ivereigh's reporting below, on the 24 new cardinals, including two Americans, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signatura.
Video: Pope Benedict Creates 24 New Cardinals
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Engagement with Catholic schools can help seminarians enter ministry with a clearer sense of the pastoral needs of their flock.
“This is a day of gratitude for El Paso, the work of Annunciation House and the resilience of our community’s hospitality workers,” Bishop Mark J. Seitz of the Diocese of El Paso said in a statement.
Vulnerability, defined as the capacity the human being has to be open and responsive to another human being, is a central mark of what makes us human.
Tom Wolfe would have loved to write about a debate between a billionaire former president who is also a convicted felon and an octogenarian sitting president whose public mental lapses are vociferously denied by many of his own confidantes.
Cardinals reaching the age of 80 can no longer cast their vote in the election of a pope. The newly elected pope, however, can continue to reign as pope even after reaching that now canonically critical age.
This appears strange and unfair: which is easier, electing a pope, or being pope and govern the universal church?
If there is wisdom in the exclusion of the cardinals over 80 from a papal conclave, the same wisdom would suggest also the canonical retirement of the pope on his 80th birthday.
Should such wisdom be questionable, let all cardinals continue to be valid papal electors as long as they live. If not, let even the pope canonically resign on reaching the age of 80.
When a pope is elected, all cardinals would know the exact date of the next conclave, namely the 80th birthday of the newly elected pope, barring of course the possible sudden death of even a young reigning pontiff.
Knowing in advance the exact date of the next papal election would greatly simplify for all cardinals their planning and scheduling of important meetings, retreats, anniversaries and necessary travel.
Cardinals would no longer be surprised by the sudden illness of an aging Holy Father or, worse perhaps, by his possible lingering incapacitated for weeks and even months as pope.
Five years ago, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 78, and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, 78, were the two closest papabili. Today, Cardinal Ratzinger, 83, is pope, and Cardinal Martini, 83, is legally unable even to vote for a pope. Videant consules...