French bishops will meet at the end of March to elect a new bishops’ conference president.
Outgoing president Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort is stepping down after serving the maximum two three-year terms.
Given French Catholicism’s global influence, the election of a new conference president at the bishops’ plenary assembly on March 31-April 4 will be closely watched.
The identity of Moulins-Beaufort’s successor might also confirm whether a new pattern is emerging in the choice of bishops’ conference presidents worldwide, following a Vatican directive in March 2022.
The bishops’ dicastery said that candidates who would turn 75 during their term of office should not be elected as conference presidents. The reason, it explained, was that it impeded the pope’s freedom to accept a president’s resignation as a diocesan bishop as it would create a vacancy in the conference’s leadership.
A new cohort
To see whether there’s any evidence of a new pattern, let’s consider recent changes at the helms of bishops’ conferences:
🇪🇸 On March 6, 2024, Archbishop Luis Javier Argüello García, 70, succeeded Cardinal Juan José Omella Omella, 77, as Spanish bishops’ conference president on March 6, 2024. Cardinal Omella was 73 when he was elected president on March 3, 2020.
🇵🇱 On March 14, 2024, Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda, 68, succeeded Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, 74, as Polish bishops’ conference president. Archbishop Gądecki was 64 when he was chosen as president on March 12, 2014.
🇩🇰🇫🇮🇮🇸🇳🇴🇸🇪 Bishop Erik Varden, 50, succeeded Bishop Czeslaw Kozon, 72, as president of the Nordic bishops’ conference on Sept. 11, 2024. Bishop Kozon was 63 when his presidential term began on Sept. 9, 2015.
🇨🇿 Archbishop Josef Nuzík, 58, succeeded Archbishop Jan Graubner, 76, as president of the Czech bishops’ conference on Jan. 21-22, 2025. Archbishop Graubner was 71 when he became president on April 28, 2020.
🇵🇪 Bishop Carlos Enrique García Camader, 70, succeeded Archbishop Héctor Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte, 76, as president of Peru’s bishops’ conference on Jan. 22, 2025. Archbishop Vidarte was 69 when he was elected president on March 8, 2018.
In this sample, the average age of the incoming presidents is 63.2. When their predecessors were elected, they had an average age of 68. The new cohort are almost five years younger, on average, than their predecessors.
But we can’t, at this stage, broaden that into a general conclusion, given there are more than a hundred Latin bishops’ conferences worldwide.
There are obvious counter-examples. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, 70, succeeded Archbishop José Gómez, also 70, as president of U.S. bishops’ conference on Nov. 15, 2022. Archbishop Gómez was 67 when he was elected president on Nov. 12, 2019.
France’s outgoing president Archbishop Moulins-Beaufort was just 57 when he was first elected in 2019. So it’s unlikely his successor will be significantly younger.
Also, age is only one factor in the election of conference presidents. Spain’s Archbishop Argüello and Poland’s Archbishop Wojda were significantly older than the recent average.
Perhaps this is because their fellow bishops were drawn to candidates with greater experience, considering the great challenges facing the Church in their respective countries.
Pope Francis’ youthful picks
If bishops’ conference presidents are getting younger, it might reflect Pope Francis’ apparent preference for more youthful leaders.
Reviewing the pope’s recent picks to lead major metropolitan archdioceses, he has tended to pass over experienced churchmen in their 60s in favor of little-known figures in the 50s who are often described as “Pope Francis bishops.”
The pope has never commented publicly on this preference, but he may believe that younger leaders are less likely to say, “We have always done it this way” — a phrase Francis has frequently disparaged.
Besides their detachment from established practice, younger archbishops are likely to serve for decades to come, ensuring, in theory, that Pope Francis’ influence extends far beyond his lifetime.
The pope may wish to apply a similar vision to bishops’ conference presidents, who tend to be aged, highly experienced figures. One current example is the English and Welsh bishops’ conference, whose president is the 79-year-old Cardinal Vincent Nichols. The Vatican granted the conference a dispensation, permitting Nichols to continue serving as president “until other provision is made.”
In its March 2022 directive, the Vatican reportedly connected the age limitation for bishops’ conference presidents to the pope’s freedom to appoint new diocesan bishops. So the provision for conference presidents and the pope’s policy of choosing younger archbishops seem to be connected.
Pope Francis has also selected a sprinkling of strikingly young cardinals, including Cardinal Giorgio Marengo and Cardinal Mykola Bychok, who were respectively 48 and 44 when they received the red hat.
It could be argued that the age of presidents makes little difference to the operation of bishops’ conferences. But electing leaders with less ecclesiastical experience could have an impact. It might also be significant given that the role of bishops’ conference could be redefined in the coming years, following the synod on synodality.
The synod’s final document, approved by Pope Francis, called for further study of “the theological and juridical statute of episcopal conferences,” and more clarity on “the domain of the doctrinal and disciplinary competence of episcopal conferences.”
But we’ll need more evidence before we can say with certainty that it’s not just police officers that are looking younger these days, but also bishops’ conference presidents.
