The Conclave that will meet in the next few days to elect the new Pope is the most international ever , with cardinals coming from every corner of the world, less and less Eurocentric and with an eye to the peripheries.
In total, the cardinals who have the right to vote - and therefore are under 80 years of age - are 135 (out of a total of 252). Of these, 80% - that is, 108 - were appointed by Pope Francis, 22 by Benedict XVI and now only five by Wojtyla. N
In the last Consistory of December 7th - the tenth of his pontificate - Bergoglio created 20 new electors, as if the already almost 88-year-old Pope wanted to establish a stable reserve, a sort of threshold of tranquility in case the need to elect a new Pontiff should arise. In the electoral college of cardinals, so to speak, the most represented continent is Europe with 53 cardinal electors, followed by the Americas with 37 (16 from North America, four from Central America, 17 from South America) and Asia with 23 cardinal electors. Africa (18 electors) and Oceania (4 electors) close .
The most represented countries are Italy (17 electors) and the United States (10 electors) . The oldest cardinal elector of all is the Spaniard Carlos Osoro Sierra, who will turn 80 on May 16 , while the youngest is the Ukrainian Bychok Mykola, who turned 45 last February. The last cardinal to have lost the right to vote is the Indian George Alencherry, who turned 80 on April 19, two days before Bergoglio's death.
The cardinals who have the right to enter the Conclave represent a group that is anything but homogeneous, much less monolithic in terms of their vision of issues that concern the life and government of the Church. Suffice it to say that among those who have received the purple from Francis there is a fierce opponent of his like the German Gerhard Ludwig Mueller , prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Ratzinger (who however never made him a cardinal), and who has never failed to offer harsh criticism to Bergoglio on various issues. The same can also be said for several African cardinals, who on ethical issues, or for example on the approach to homosexuality, are certainly not in line with what is professed in Europe , and even less with the blessing of gay couples legitimized in the document Fiducia supplicans.
(Online Union)