Unless his reign was brief, a Catholic pontiff appointed most of the men who voted for his successor. But Pope Francis’ additions to the College of Cardinals since his election in 2013 have also served another purpose: to shift the Roman Catholic Church’s leadership design away from its former European base and toward emerging countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The pope recently announced that he will appoint 16 new cardinals to vote (in addition to five other cardinals who are 80 or older and not eligible to vote). After the official installation of the latter organization in a rite on August 27 in the Vatican, the College of Cardinals will have 132 members with voting rights, 40% of whom are European, compared to 52% in 2013.
This research examines the regional distribution of Pope Francis’ elections for new cardinals (since 2014, the year after he became pope). Consider only cardinal electors, that is, cardinals who are recently under the age of 80 and therefore have the right to vote. in a papal election. The knowledge for this research comes from the Vatican’s online page and other Internet sites containing knowledge bases of cardinals, adding gcatholic. org and catholic-hierarchy. org.
For the analysis, each cardinal is assigned a single geographic region among the following: Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America-Caribbean, Middle East-North Africa, North America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Cardinals who run a diocese or archdiocese are counted as related to the global region where that diocese or archdiocese is located, even if they were born in another region. Most are the same as their region of birth, but there are some exceptions. For example, Giorgio Marengo, one of those chosen to become cardinal on August 27, was born in Italy but served as apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and is considered to constitute the Asia-Pacific region.
Cardinals who hold or have held positions in the Vatican are counted as belonging to the region of the world where they spent most of their years in the clergy before running for the Vatican.
The research also uses 2010 knowledge about the regional distribution of the world’s Catholic population published in a 2013 Pew Research Center demographic study titled “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World Christian Population. “
Francis’ appointments (including the recently announced long-term cardinals) increase the overall representation of the Asia-Pacific region in the voting body of cardinals from 9% in 2013 to 17% in 2022, while expanding the representation of sub-Saharan Africa from 9% to 12%. These figures come with cardinals who were appointed through Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II.
Francis, an Argentine who is the first pope outside Europe since the eighth century, has selected more cardinals from Europe than from any other region. Of the 83 newly appointed or recently eligible cardinals francis has appointed so far during his pontificate, 34 percent are from Europe, 22 percent from the Asia-Pacific region, 20 percent from Latin America and the Caribbean, thirteen percent from sub-Saharan Africa, 8 percent from North America and 2 percent from the Middle East and North Africa region. In total, the cardinals appointed by Francis will constitute the majority (63%) of the thirteen2 voting members of the College of Cardinals after the Rite of Installation on August 27.
Of the 16 long-term cardinal electors Francis has selected this year, 4 will constitute Europe (Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom). Six will constitute the Asia-Pacific region (two from India and one from East Timor, Mongolia, Singapore and South Korea). Three other long-term cardinal electors are from Latin America and the Caribbean (two from Brazil and one from Paraguay). Two are from sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana and Nigeria) and one from North America (born in the United States, Robert McElroy, Archbishop of San Diego).
Given that in 2010 only about a quarter (24%) of the world’s Catholic population lived in Europe, the continent remains particularly overrepresented among cardinal voters. By this measure, the region with the most underrepresentation in church leadership— even with Francis’ new possible options — is Latin America and the Caribbean, home to 39 percent of the world’s Catholic population (again, in 2010) but has only 18 percent of cardinals.
Note: This is an update of an article originally published on November 17, 2016 and updated on November 23, 2020.
Fresh knowledge delivered on Saturday morning.