Pope Francis will include an extra appointment to the college of cardinals in the December consistory, the Holy See announced on Monday. The pope has decided to create Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples alongside the slate of new appointments announced Oct. 6.
Archbishop Battaglia, 61, has been seen as a rising star in the Italian Church, with Francis occasionally known to cite prayers written by the archbishop.
The archbishop’s creation as a cardinal returns the number of new voting age cardinals who will be created next month to 21, following the announcement of the Indonesian Bishop Paskalis Bruno Syukur that he was declining the pope’s offer to make him a cardinal.
The Vatican gave no clear reason for the bishop refusing the pope’s appointment, saying only that it was “motivated by his desire to continue growing in priestly life and in service to the Church and the people of God.”
Battaglia, known in Italy as “Don Mimmo,” has led the archdiocese of Naples since 2021, after serving for four years as head of the Cerreto Sannita-Telese-Sant’Agata de’ Goti diocese in Campania.
As a bishop there, Battaglia was known for his ministry as a “street priest,” with a particular personal pastoral outreach to youth and those affected by drug addiction, earning him the nickname the “Bergoglio of Southern Italy” in some corners of the Italian press.
In his first year as Archbishop of Naples, Battaglia established himself as an unflinching critic of the city’s entrenched Camorra mafia. During his first year as archbishop, following the murder of a 19-year old man, he released a strident letter denouncing “the trail of blood that in these days is going through the city.”
“The Camorra and the evil are killing her, with the violence and cruelty of those who have forgotten to be human!” the archbishop wrote. “To the men of Camorra, to the corrupt and the colluders with crime I say: return to being human! Convert yourselves! Your bishop will not back down and accompany the steps of conversion and the human rebirth of those who will listen to their own conscience and the word of the Gospel, laying down their weapons, and undertaking paths of collaboration with justice.”
During an audience in March 2022, Pope Francis recited a prayer composed by Battaglia for peace in Ukraine, asking God to “hold fast the hand of Cain.”
Battaglia, who as Archbishop of Naples presides regularly over the reputedly miraculous liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, will become the 52nd living Italian cardinal at the time of the consistory, with 17 of them eligible to vote in a future conclave.
Following the December consistory, the total number of cardinals who could vote in a conclave will rise to 141. Universi Dominici Gregis, the apostolic constitution governing papal elections, sets the maximum number of voting cardinals at 120. However, as that document is merely ecclesiastical law (as opposed to divine law), popes are free to dispense from its norms at will, meaning the total number of voting age cardinals, and the schedule on which they are created, is practically a matter of personal papal discretion.
Customarily, popes treat the 120 voting cardinal limit as a minimum rather than maximum number, dispensing from the upper limit and appointing cardinals in batches in advance to replace a cohort about to age out.
Prior to the announcement of the new appointments last month, there were 124 voting age cardinals, set to fall to 106 by the beginning of 2026.
Of the 32 cardinals who will have turned 80 by the end of next year — thereby losing their right to participate in a conclave — 12 are Europeans, seven from Africa, six each from Latin America and Asia, and two from North America.
At the time Francis was elected pope, more than half of the conclave was made up of European cardinals, though that proportion has successively fallen under Pope Francis to less than 45 percent.
In December the pope will also create cardinals from Japan and the Philippines, as well as the French-born Archbishop of Tehran-Ispahan, Iran.
