The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
– Church for the poor –
The latest appointments continue a recent trend towards increasing the representation of Asia, Africa and Latin America within the college of cardinals at the expense of European and North American clerics.
But those latter areas remain hugely influential, making up 56 percent of the college. Italy alone has more than a fifth (24) of cardinals eligible to vote in the conclave that elects popes.
El Salvador’s first cardinal, Gregorio Rosa Chavez, was a close friend of Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop slain by a death squad as he gave mass in 1980, during the Central American state’s brutal civil war.
Often portrayed as an advocate of liberation theology, Romero shared Francis’s belief that the Church should be at the service of the poor.
“He should be here in my place,” Rosa Chavez told AFP. “He is a cardinal by martyr’s blood.”
Altogether there are now 225 cardinals around the world but those over 80 are not allowed to vote.
One, former Scottish archbishop Keith O’Brien, renounced his voting rights after being forced to step down over predatory sexual conduct with student priests.
Jean Zerbo’s appointment as Mali’s first cardinal was partly overshadowed by a scandal embroiling the Church in the mostly-Muslim African state.
Zerbo was named in press reports at the end of May as one of three Church officials in Mali to have access to 12 million euros held in several accounts at a private bank in Switzerland. The Church in Mali has denied any wrongdoing.
