“I am happy to announce to you that on December 8 I will hold a consistory for the appointment of new cardinals,” Pope Francis declared Sunday after the Angelus prayer. “Their provenance expresses the universality of the Church and (…) manifests the indissoluble link between the See of Peter (the Vatican, Editor’s note) and the particular Churches in the world.”
Dominique Joseph Mathieu is one of three French speakers on this list of 21 new cardinals, with Mgr Jean-Paul Vesco, archbishop of Algiers, and Mgr Ignace Bessi Dogbo, the archbishop of Abidjan. The Belgian priest was named archbishop of Tehran-Isfahan, in Iran, in January 2021.
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The Vatican considers that the appointment of Mgr Mathieu to the rank of bishop is “significant and likely to strengthen dialogue with Iran – a country with which the Holy See has maintained diplomatic relations since 1954 – especially in the current context of war in the Middle East. Orient,” according to a statement from Vatican News, the information portal of the Holy See.
The 21 new cardinals will bring the number of cardinals to 256 on December 8. Note that during this 10th consistory of Francis will be created both the youngest cardinal, the Ukrainian Mykola Bychok, 44 years old, archbishop of Melbourne, and the oldest, the Italian apostolic nuncio Angelo Acerbi, 99 years old.
