On Saturday, the Vatican announced Pope Francis’s picks for the four cardinals who’ll preside over an October meeting of bishops focused on youth. All four come from what the pontiff has described the “peripheries” of the world: Myanmar, Iraq, Madagascar and Papua New Guinea.
Though a “president delegate” post doesn’t necessarily mean much in terms of the ability to shape discussion or ram through decisions, the choices are nevertheless telling as to where Francis wants the conversation in October to go.
The four prelates tapped to lead the synod are all cardinals Francis himself has created in recent years:
- Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako of Iraq
- Desire Tsarahazana of Madagascar
- Charles Maung Bo of Myanmar
- John Ribat from Papua New Guinea
A president delegate takes turns presiding over a synod meeting in the name of the pope. Usually, all that means in practice is calling on speakers in the order indicated by the synod office, so it’s generally not a terribly memorable role. On the other hand, a president delegate does have access to the microphone, and nothing prevents them from offering their captive audience the occasional fervorino.
In terms of symbolism, the most striking element of the four choices is that each represents one of what Francis considers the core challenges facing humanity today, and thus they embody this pope’s agenda for the world’s youth.
A martyred Church
Under the unwatchful eyes of an oblivious West, Iraq’s Sako is fighting against all odds to keep Christianity alive where the faith was born.
Over a million Christians have fled the country since 2003, escaping violence, war and persecution, with high-end estimates putting the number today at 300,000.
“We Christians, we are persecuted, this is part of our faith,” Sako told reporters on the eve of being created a cardinal, in late June. Despite the challenges he faces, he’s convinced that “the future will be much better than now.”
A missionary Church
“How I long for a poor Church for the poor!” are perhaps the most quoted words of Francis’s first week in office, offering a theme that continues to be front-and-center.
Soon after, he explained the meaning of his words to a gathering of “new movements”: “A poor Church for the poor begins by going to the flesh of Christ,” Francis said. “If we go to the flesh of Christ, we begin to understand something, to understand what this poverty is, the poverty of the Lord.”
Arguably, in few countries is this more of a necessity than in Madagascar, where Tsarahazana faces the daily challenge of leading a missionary Church in a nation that often ranks in the top 10 of poorest in the world, with a GDP per capita of $1,504, and where 90 percent of the population of two million lives below the $2 a day poverty line.
A Church for migrants
In Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country Pope Francis visited last year, Bo heads a Church that is at the forefront in aiding the victims of the fastest growing humanitarian crisis in the world: the Rohingya Muslims.
Some 700,000 Rohingya have been forcibly displaced in recent years into neighboring Bangladesh, and Catholic aid agencies such as Caritas, Jesuit Refugee Service and Catholic Relief Service, the overseas development arm of the U.S. bishops have stepped up to help.
The Rohingya fall prey to every tragedy associated with migration today, from families decimated as they run towards perceived safety through a dangerous route to being trapped by human trafficking networks that employ the Rohingya in slave-like conditions, many in the fishing industry in other Asian nations.
A church of care for creation
In Papua New Guinea, a country of immense cultural and biological diversity, known for its beaches and coral reefs, Ribat leads the Church in an island in the Pacific that has began to experience the devastating effects of climate change.
Ribat has emerged as a leading religious voice in the South Pacific in favor of strong limits on carbon emissions. In a Vatican press conference in October 2015, ahead of the Paris summit that took place in December of that year, he was visibly emotional.
“In Oceania, our survival and existence are at stake,” he said. “What we are asking for is a fair, legally binding and truly transformational agreement by all the nations on earth.”
“This is my urgent call,” Ribat said to those who would negotiate in Paris: “Guarantee the future of Oceania. Change society to a low-carbon lifestyle.”
Full story at Angelus News.
I’m tired of synods.
Who invited you. Stay home and rest!
Want to keep youth in the Church? Celebrate the TLM more. The problems began when the TLM was abandoned. Every TLM I attend has young, growing families all around the country. Will the synod recognize that? Do any of these cardinals celebrate the TLM? If they are from the peripheries, how will they know what’s going on in the United States? How will they know the TLM in the US is growing in popularity especially with the young? Money wasted on youth groups should be spent on making the TLM more available and training priests to say it. Most kids leave the church in college even after youth group, but TLM kids tend to stay in the church.
Andrew, just to be a bit cynical, I’m not sure all these folks care all that much about the youth in the U.S. since we only represent six percent of Catholics. The majority of youth today are in the Southern Hemisphere. You don’t see much of the TLM down there, I’m told. In the U.S., kids lose the faith between 7th grade and high school, and never come back, especially if they go to college. Let’s think through how we attract young people to church. It’s the music, the programs for kids, the programs for adults. A big reason is the music and the sermons. Take a look at the PEW studies for more information. Liturgy is not high on the list of attractions. We who know it revere it, but we are trying to attract people who don’t know…
Bob One you answer is as predictable as the sunrise, oh sure these so called youth masses may attract kids to Mass but it will never keep them there, why, it is emotion based, and does not appeal to the youth on an intellectual basis. Bob One the Church in the West will continue to hollow up with the emotion based nonsense it will be us Trads who rebuild from the rubble your pathetic generation caused
Bob One, guess what – it’s about sex!. “The youth” reject the Church’s teachings on fornication, masturbation, contraception, pornography, homosexual relations, divorce and remarriage outside the Church, etc etc, and since nobody ever bothered to explain and explore these issues, they go away and stay gone. They leave at the time they decide to embrace these evils, do you not see the connection?
This leaders will be given a chance to change the World for the next Generation Hope that they will guided by God Accordingly.
Interesting that all four Cardinals are from ‘Eastern’ Hemisphere countries.