Francis extends cardinal dean’s term

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re will continue past his five-year term, with no indication of when a new dean could be elected

Pope Francis has extended the terms of the dean and subdean of the College of Cardinals, the Vatican announced Thursday.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. Image credit: Lorenzo Iorfino, CC BY-SA 4.0

According to the Vatican press office, the pope “extended the approval granted by Him to the election of the Most Eminent Lord Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re as Dean of the College of Cardinals,” and did the same for the current subdean, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri.

The announcement dated the “extensions” as having been approved by the pope on Jan. 7 for Re and Jan. 14 for Sandri, though the announcement did not say for how long.

Re, 91, and Sandri, 81, have served as dean and subdean since their election in 2020 by the members of the order of cardinal bishops — the most senior members of the college.

Those elections followed a reform to the office of dean made by Pope Francis the previous month, with which he converted the office from a lifetime appointment into having a five-year renewable term.

The news that Francis has extended his “approval” for both cardinals to serve comes after reports that the election of a new dean — due after Re’s term lapsed Jan. 18 — had been delayed, even though the cardinal bishops had reportedly gathered in Rome ready to vote.

Several outlets suggested that Pope Francis was moving to stall the vote out of a coolness towards the likely outcome of Cardinal Sandri becoming dean, as is customary for subdeans — though reports varied for the supposed reasons for the pope allegedly holding this view.

The role of the dean of the college is well defined in canon law. The dean acts as first-among-equals for the college, especially during a papal interregnum, organizing the conclave for the election of a pope.

But the method of election for the dean is only summarily described in law and news of Francis’ “extension of approval” for Re and Sandri in their current roles raises a number of questions.

The pope approves the election of the dean and subdean, following their election by the cardinal bishops. Canonical norms provide that the one competent to approve an election for a set period of time is also competent to notify them of their term of office lapsing, which formally triggers the office becoming vacant.

In Re’s case, then, he would seem to have continued his role as dean until the pope formally notified him that his five-year term had lapsed, so it is unclear if a formal “extension of approval” was legally necessary.

The dating of the extension to several weeks before Re’s term lapsed — though only announced Feb. 6 — suggests the pope was preemptively acting to forestall the cardinal bishops electing a new dean, though it is unclear when they were informed of the decision.

Some reports have said that Cardinal Parolin curtailed his January travel itinerary to return to Rome for a vote to elect a new dean which never took place.

Another question raised by the Vatican announcement Thursday concerns Pope Francis’ separate decision to “extend his approval” for Sandri to serve as subdean one week after apparently doing so for Re.

Neither the Code of Canon Law nor Francis’ 2019 motu proprio defining a five-year term of office for the dean of the college create a similar term limit for the subdean, so it is unclear why Francis formally extended his approval for Sandri, since his office does not lapse after a period of time.

The Vatican announcement did not specify if the pope’s extension of approval for both cardinals was for a specified period of time, either another five years or shorter, or if it was granted on a continuing basis ad bene placitum nostrum.

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Also on Feb. 6, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had promoted Cardinal Robert Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, to the order of cardinal bishops and assigned him the titular suburbicarian diocese of Albano, previously held by the last dean of the college, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who died in 2022.

The rank of cardinal bishop is a legal term of art. Most cardinals are bishops, but the formally designated “cardinal bishops” are the most senior members of the college, who are given the titular leadership of the Diocese of Rome’s ancient suburbicarian dioceses.

Other cardinals have the rank of either cardinal priest or cardinal deacon, and are given honorary titles attached to ancient churches of the Roman diocese, with the three orders of cardinals serving as a historical nod back to the time when the Bishop of Rome was elected by the clergy of the diocese.

Over the past decades, the ranks of cardinal priests and deacons has swelled considerably, as popes broadened membership of the College of Cardinals to ensure a global voice in the election of the pope in a conclave.

But because of the historic link of the rank of cardinal bishop to Rome’s ancient suffragan dioceses, the ranks of cardinal bishops remained limited. For this reason, in 1965 Pope St. Paul VI extended the rank to cardinal patriarchs of Eastern Catholic Churches.

Then, in 2018, Pope Francis added four new cardinals to the rank of cardinal bishop, granting them full membership of the order, even though there were no vacant suburbicarian titles to assign them.

The pope did so again in 2020, promoting Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle to the rank without a titular diocese, alongside Cardinal Beniamino Stella, giving him the then-vacant titular diocese of Porto-Santa Rufina.

In both 2018 and 2020, Pope Francis made it known he wished to see membership of the order expanded, in line with the rest of the college, and pointedly conferred the rank on cardinal prefects of major Vatican dicasteries even if there were no suburbicarian titles to assign them.

He did so for Cardinal Tagle as prefect of the then-Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, having also previously promoted for his predecessor Cardinal Fernando Filoni, along with the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the then-prefect of the Dicastery for Oriental Churches, Cardinal Sandri, and Prevost’s predecessor, Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

Prevost’s elevation, and his assignment to the vacant title of Albano, is notable in that he was made a cardinal in 2023, when he was appointed to lead the Dicastery for Bishops.

Prevost was therefore junior in his appointment to a senior Vatican role and as a cardinal to Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik at the Dicastery for Clergy, though senior in precedence as a cardinal to both Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti at the Dicastery for Eastern Churches.

With Prevost’s promotion, there are now 11 cardinal bishops eligible to elect the dean and subdean, among whom seven, including Cardinals Re and Sandri, are ineligible to exercise many of the dean’s functions during a papal interregnum because of their age.

Currently, the senior cardinal bishop eligible to lead a conclave is Cardinal Parolin.