College of Cardinals – The Demographics As Of November 17, 2009

by: Anura Guruge
Another retirement, today, three weeks after the last. This time it was 79 year old Cardinal Christian Wiyghan Tumi of Cameroon, who had been the Archbishop of Douala. The prior material change relating to a cardinal had been on October 24, 2009. That day, Italian Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino (b. Nov. 23, 1932), [...]

Read Full Post »

An Ongoing Errata On Books About Popes

Ongoing list of potential errors found in popular books about the popes.

Read Full Post »

Time For Another Consistory? We Have Lost 16 Cardinals (July 20, 2009)

by Anura Guruge
On July 17, 2009, Cardinal Jean Margéot (Mauritius), a cardinal priest since 1988, died at the age of 93. The last cardinal to die prior to that was the Italian, Franciscan Cardinal Umberto Betti on April 1, 2009, at the age of 87. He had participated in Vatican II. He had been created [...]

Read Full Post »

The Minimum Age to be a Pope

by Anura Guruge
This is in response to a recent query.
The minimum age to be pope is probably 25, that being the minimum age to be a Catholic priest or deacon, but that needs to be qualified and justified.
Contrary to what some believe current Canon Law [i.e., the 1983 code] does not address this, or for [...]

Read Full Post »

Popes in the Episcopal Lineage of Papabili & ‘Recent’ Popes

Concept and ALL the research by Mr. Byron Hoover, Papal Expert from Louisiana.
Earlier this week Byron sent me an e-mail asking whether I realized that Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, #7 in my 2009 papabili list, had seven popes in his episcopal lineage — and that this was more than what any of the other [...]

Read Full Post »

Papabili Names — What They Mean, Part II (of II)

We looked at the names of the first five papabili, viz. Odilo Pedro Scherer (Archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil), Ennio Antonelli (President, Council for the Family, Vatican curia), Marc Ouellet (Archbishop of Québec, Canada), Wilfrid Fox Napier (Archbishop of Durban, South Africa), and Angelo Scola (Patriarch of Venice, Italy), in Part I.

So in this posting [...]

Read Full Post »

Papabili Names — What They Mean, Part I (of II)

Given that I am associated with the analysis of Papal names, it would be remiss of me if I did not study the names of my top ten papabili list for 2009 and make some comments on names.
My top ten, in order, as they appear in popes-and-papacy.com are: Odilo Pedro Scherer (Archbishop of São Paulo, [...]

Read Full Post »

College of Cardinals — Representation/Size of Constituency (July 20, 2009)

< Updated on July 20, 2009 to reflect the death of Cardinal Jean Margéot (Mauritius) on July 17, 2009.>

When compiling my breakdown of the College of Cardinals I realized that only Italy (with 29) had more electors in the College than the U.S.A. (with 13). I knew that some of the Latin American countries certainly [...]

Read Full Post »

Next Pope — Papabili List for 2009

You can find my top 10 papabili (pl. papabile) list for 2009 at: popes-and-papacy.
Since my book, I get quite a few queries as to who I think the next pope will be, after Pope Benedict XVI, and the new name they are likely to assume. In the past, per this BLOG entry, I have been [...]

Read Full Post »

Another Cardinal Dies. The College of Cardinals is Now At 192.

Cardinal Antonio José González Zumárraga, of Ecuador, died on October 13, 2008. He was 83 years old. He was created a cardinal by Pope John Paul II on February 21, 2001 — three months short of his 76th birthday. He turned 80 on March 18, 2005 and thus missed by a month the chance to [...]

Read Full Post »