Heaven’s conclave: The cardinals proclaimed saints and blesseds
Meet the cardinals who’ve offered inspiring examples of holiness.
Cardinals are currently under the spotlight as they prepare to elect a successor to Pope Francis. But there’s a lot more to being a cardinal than voting in a conclave.
The cardinalate is also one of many paths to holiness, or union with God in Christ, which is the point of being Christian.
As the Church teaches in the Vatican II document Lumen gentium, “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society.”
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn underlined this teaching in a homily on April 29, the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, in Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, which houses her remains.
Nothing is more important than “the sanctification of the people of God,” Schönborn said, summarizing the message of the virgin saint, doctor of the Church, and co-patroness of Italy and Europe.
That St. Catherine’s feast fell in the sede vacante period was providential, according to the cardinal, who is 80 years old and ineligible to vote in a conclave.
The saint, he pointed out, had sacrificed her life for the Church, including through counseling popes amid the controversies of her day. She was instrumental in the return of the popes to Rome from Avignon.
Cardinal Schönborn, who recently retired as Archbishop of Vienna, urged worshipers to offer prayers and sacrifices as she did for the holiness of the Church, while his fellow cardinals prepare to go into conclave.
The cardinals themselves acknowledged the priority of holiness in an April 30 message, issued through the Holy See press office. They called on the entire Church to participate in preparations for the conclave, “an event of spiritual grace and discernment, listening to the will of God.”
The cardinals asked Catholics to intercede for them, saying “it is first of all necessary to make ourselves humble instruments of the wisdom of our Heavenly Father, in docility to the action of the Holy Spirit.”
So who among the ranks of cardinals has the Church recognized as models of holiness?
The website catholic-hierarchy.org documents at least 2,000 clerics who have been elevated to the cardinalate since the 11th century. Of these, the Church has canonized or opened canonization causes for only 29 cardinals.
The Church has canonized at least 10 cardinals and beatified nine more.
The blesseds are:
Bl. Giuseppe Benedetto Dusmet (1818-1894), who served the poor and victims of a cholera epidemic.
Bl. Ciriaco Maria Sancha y Hervas (1833-1909), who founded the Sisters of Charity.
Bl. Andrea Carlo Ferrari (1850-1921), who promoted social justice.
Bl. Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878-1946), who resisted Nazism and was placed under house arrest until the end of the Second World War.
Bl. Alfredo Idelfonso Schuster (1880-1954), who served as a Benedictine abbot and Milan’s archbishop, and after initially showing signs of supporting Italian fascism, opposed it.
Bl. Aloysius Stepinac (1898-1960), who opposed Nazism and communism, dying as a martyr in confinement.
Bl. Iuliu Hossu (1885-1970), who was initially made cardinal in pectore (in secret) by Pope Paul VI and suffered under Romanian communists, who kept him under house arrest until he died a martyr.
Bl. Stefan Wyszyński (1901-1981), who faced down Nazism and communism in Poland.
Bl. Eduardo Francisco Pironio (1920-1998), the promoter of the first World Youth Day.
The cardinals proclaimed saints are:
St. Peter Damian (1007–1072/3), a bishop and doctor of the Church. He was a Benedictine monk named cardinal-bishop of Ostia in 1057. He actively guarded the communion of different dioceses with the Holy See and fought clergy-wrought sexual, financial, and spiritual abuses. In a letter on episcopal immunity from valid criticism, he wrote, “what scornful pride [it is], that in our day a bishop should feel so mighty that he could hide behind the dignity of his office and not appear in court, as justice required, to reply to the sons of his diocese who insisted that they have been aggrieved.”
St. Anselm of Lucca (1036–1086), who was born Anselm Baggio. He was a bishop of Lucca. Pope Alexander II named him a cardinal in 1062. He was a prominent, initially indecisive figure in the Investiture Controversy. He refused and then accepted investiture as bishop by a secular power – Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Regretting the decision, he resigned from his diocese to join the Benedictines. But Alexander’s successor, Pope Gregory VII, ordered the cardinal back to his see. Thereafter, Baggio committed himself to defending and serving the Church. He wrote in defense of the pope’s right to appoint bishops and produced a compilation of canons that would become part of the Decretals of Gratian, the first comprehensive codification of Church law, which influenced law as a whole in the West.
St. Guarinus of Palestrina (1080–1158) was an Augustinian canon. Pope Lucius II made him cardinal-bishop of Palestrina in 1144. He sold all his belongings and gave the proceeds to the poor before joining the Augustinians. He struggled with the honors and entitlements of an advancing ecclesiastical career. Elected Bishop of Pavia but convinced that he was unworthy, he jumped out of a window and hid until another cleric was consecrated. After he tried once again to escape promotion, the pope had him arrested and subsequently made Guarinus a cardinal. When the pope gave him expensive presents supposedly befitting his office, he sold the gifts and gave the money to the needy. Guarinus participated in the conclaves that elected popes Eugene III, Anastasius IV, and Adrian IV.
St. Galdino (1096–1176), who was made cardinal-priest of Santa Sabina by Pope Alexander III in 1165. He staunchly resisted the interference of secular powers in ecclesiastical affairs, standing with the pope against Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who supported antipope Victor IV’s claims to the See of Peter.
St. Bonaventure (1221–1274), bishop and doctor of the Church, was a minister-general of the Franciscans. Pope Gregory X made him a cardinal in 1273. The pontiff deployed Bonaventure in the work of reconciling the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In a sermon titled “Christ, the one Master of all,” he wrote: “And since all teachers of the Christian Law finally ought to hold to the bond of charity, for that reason they ought to agree in their judgments.” Prior to his cardinalate, Bonaventure, according to some accounts, helped end history’s longest conclave, which took place in Viterbo, around 41 miles northwest of Rome. That papal election lasted more than three years, from 1268 to 1271. Bonaventure gave Viterbo’s magistrates the idea of locking the cardinals in the city’s Palace of the Popes — hence the term “conclave,” from Latin roots that mean under lock and key — with the roof torn off and with nothing but bread and water for their nourishment until they would choose a pope. The cardinals had been deeply divided following the death of Pope Clement IV. Eventually, they elected Cardinal Teobaldo Visconti, who took the name Gregory X.
St. Charles Borromeo (1538–1584), who is the patron saint of cardinals. He was an archbishop of Milan. Pope Pius IV elevated him to the cardinalate in 1560. A leader of the Counter-Reformation, Borromeo was appointed the pope’s Secretary of State. He resolved conflicts such as those between France and Spain over the Castle of Arona. He served as cardinal protector of Lower Germany, Portugal, and the Catholic cantons of Germany. In his biography of Cardinal Borromeo, author G.P. Giussano relates that in the conclave of 1566, the cardinal did not arrive in time to be considered for the papacy. But he supported Dominican friar Antonio Ghislieri, who won, took the name Pius V, and went on to be canonized.
St. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), who was a bishop and doctor of the Church. He served as Archbishop of Capua, and Pope Clement VIII raised him to the rank of cardinal in 1599. Translator Ryan Grant published in English “The Timeless Catechism of St. Robert Bellarmine.” The cardinal wrote it in long and abridged forms in 1597, and per Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the Church catechized using this book for hundreds of years. The Catholic Encyclopedia says Bellarmine was considered by his fellow cardinals for the papacy. He received some votes in the conclaves of 1605 and 1621.
St. John Fisher (1469–1535), who was a chancellor of the University of Cambridge, bishop, and martyr. Pope Paul III made him a cardinal in 1535, shortly before his death. England’s King Henry VIII condemned Fisher to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, a penalty that was changed to beheading after a court found the cardinal guilty on the charge of treason for refusing to submit that the English monarch was head of the Church of England. Henry’s resentment toward the cardinal was first provoked by his opposition to the wrongful annulment of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Fisher had declared himself prepared to die as a testimony to the indissolubility of the sacrament of holy matrimony — and he walked the talk. He was nominated a delegate for England to the Fifth Lateran Council but he cancelled his travel plans. King Henry forbade the delivery to England of Fisher’s red hat, which Pope Paul had hoped would ease the monarchy’s mistreatment of Fisher while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
St. Gregory Barbarigo (1625–1697), who was a Bishop of Padua and prior to that, of Bergamo. Pope Alexander VII gave him the red hat in 1670. Barbarigo participated in the conclaves of 1667, 1676, and 1689. He was considered as a front-runner but did not get elected in the conclave of 1689. Barbarigo asked his fellow cardinals not to vote for him, said author Ludwig Freiherr von Pastor in his “History of the Popes.”
St. John Henry Newman (1801–1890), who was a University of Oxford academic and Anglican priest who converted to and was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII designated him a cardinal in 1879. Newman gave up an illustrious career and sacrificed his good name and social networks as he went in search of the fullness of Christianity and found it in the Catholic Church. He did not stop at personal conversion but proclaimed Catholicism in a voluminous body of works, including letters, pamphlets, and books that energized intellectuals across England, many of whom took courage from his example and crossed the Tiber.
More cardinal saints marching in
A further 10 cardinals are on the road to sainthood.
The Church deems at least three other cardinals Venerable due to their heroic degree of sanctity. They are:
August Joseph Hlond (1881-1948), of the Salesian Society in Poland.
Elia Angelo Dalla Costa (1872-1961), of the Archdiocese of Florence.
Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuân (1928-2002), from Vietnam, a president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
A miracle attributed to a Venerable cardinal’s intercession will facilitate his beatification.
The Church has also recognized that nothing stands in the way of opening the causes of seven others. This merited for the seven the title Servant of God. They are:
Rafael Merry del Val (1865-1930), from Spain, who was Vatican Secretary of State.
Angelo Herrera Oria (1886-1968), from Spain.
The theologian Charles Journet (1891-1975), from Switzerland.
Terence Cooke (1921-1983), from the U.S. Archdiocese of New York.
Thomas Benjamin Cooray (1901-1988), from Sri Lanka’s Colombo archdiocese.
Maurice Michael Otunga (1923-2003), of the Archdiocese of Nairobi.
Bernardin Gantin (1922-2008), from Benin, a dean of the College of Cardinals.
Servants of God proven after investigation to have lived to a heroic decree of sanctity will be acknowledged as Venerable.
A priest’s elevation to the College of Cardinals is no guarantee that he will become a saint.
But when he receives his biretta, a cardinal listens to the pope telling him that it is red “as a sign of the dignity of the cardinalate, signifying your readiness to act with courage, even to the shedding of your blood, for the increase of the Christian faith, for the peace and tranquillity of the people of God and for the freedom and growth of Holy Roman Church.”
And when a cardinal votes for the man he thinks should be pope, he takes an oath saying: “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who, before God, I think should be elected.”
So when a man takes his cardinalate seriously before God and the Church, he will have been faithful to clearly worded indications for sanctification — his own and that of the people of God.
Excellent read! I appreciated the photos from the relevant sites in Rome, it gives us who can't be there something of the feeling of a guided pilgrimage.
St. Jerome was frequently depicted in art with a cardinal's hat. Since he was a priest of the Diocese of Rome and a good buddy to Pope Damasus, it was thought he must have been one even though it was an anachronism. He can often be distinguished in this way in depictions of the four Latin Doctors.