The Filippino cardinal was in tears as a group of
Nigerian nuns prayed with their hands raised towards the sky and Indian
pilgrims kneeled down around the obelisk gripping their rosaries. Emotions and fragments of a special and unprecedented day.
For the first time in history, a batch of cardinals that come from countries outside Europe.
St. Peter’s Square, packed as it was with faithful from emerging countries, was the prophesy of a global Church of the third millennium.
With last Saturday’s mini Consistory, Benedict XVI pointed towards an exit from the Vatileaks scandal, he “purified” the ecclesiastical hierarchies corrupted by scandal and outlined the characteristics of his successor: non-European and a pastor of persecuted communities.
The Pope essentially renewed the Church’s hierarchy and changed the face of his “senate”.
“What makes the Church catholic is the fact that Christ in his saving mission embraces all humanity” and Christian Messianism proposes “a mission directed to the whole man and to every man, transcending all ethnic, national and religious particularities” the Pope explained in the homily pronounced during the Consistory for the creation of six new cardinals, his main collaborators in the Church government.
“It is by following Jesus, - Benedict XVI remarked - by allowing oneself to be drawn into His humanity and hence into communion with God, that one enters this new kingdom proclaimed and anticipated by the Church, a kingdom that conquers fragmentation and dispersal.”
The College of Cardinals, the Pope stressed, “presents a variety of faces, because it expresses the face of the universal Church.”
“In this Consistory, I want to highlight in particular the fact that the Church is the Church of all peoples, and so she speaks in the various cultures of the different continents,” Benedict XVI said. “She is the Church of Pentecost: amid the polyphony of the various voices, she raises a single harmonious song to the living God."
At the start of the Church’s journey, the theologian Pope highlighted, “the Apostles and disciples set off without any human security, purely in the strength of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel and the faith. This is the yeast that spreads round the world, enters into different events and into a wide range of cultural and social contexts, while remaining a single Church. Around the Apostles, Christian communities spring up, but these are 'the' Church which is always the same, one and universal, whether in Jerusalem, Antioch, or Rome."
The rite for the creation of new cardinals is the expression of the supreme value of loyalty.
Six new cardinals from three continents.
The red biretta cardinals received indicates to them what is expected of them: “fortitude, even unto the shedding of blood.”
The new cardinals who “represent different dioceses around the world,” the Pope said after greeting the delegations present in the Basilica, are henceforth associated by a special title with the Church of Rome, and in this way they reinforce the spiritual bonds that unite the whole Church, brought to life by Christ and gathered around the Successor of Peter.”
The cardinals the Pope created during last Saturday’s Consistory hail from the United States, Lebanon, India, Nigeria and Colombia.
They are: Archbishop James M. Harvey, Prefect of the Papal Household (63); His Beatitude, Bechara Boutros Raï, Maronite Patriarch of Antioch in Lebanon (72); His Beatitude, Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, Major Archbishop of Trivandrum in India and head of the Syro-Malankara Church (53); Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria (68); Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez of Bogotá, Colombia (70); and Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila in the Philippines (55).
The six new cardinals took their oath and received the red biretta from the Pope. They also received the ring and the “title”, with which the Roman Catholic Church formally confirms that an individual had been created cardinal. This was the crux of the rite celebrated in the St. Peter’s Basilica. This was Pope Benedict XVI’s fifth Consistory, a few months ahead of the one in February.
Old and new cardinals then embraced with the sound of the organ in the background. The various national delegations applauded and a tear could be seen on newly elected cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle’s cheek. The Pope had explained the meaning of the gestures that are used during this Catholic rite, stressing the renewed bond of “loyalty”.
“I promise and I swear, from now on and for as long as I live, to remain faithful to Christ and his Gospel, constantly obedient to the Holy Apostolic Roman Church”.
These were the words pronounced by each of the cardinals.
Each of the clerics who received the biretta was reminded: “you must be ready to conduct yourselves with fortitude, even to the shedding of your blood, for the increase of the Christian faith, for the peace and well-being of the people of God.”
During the consignment of the ring, the cardinals were told: “Know that your love for the Church is strengthened by your love for the Prince of the Apostles.”