When Pope Francis created new cardinals Sunday, five of the men he appointed were Latin American bishops, a larger number of Latin Americans than the pope has appointed ahead of prior consistories.
The pontiff himself is Latin American, and most of the new Latin American cardinals have personal relationships with the pope, or a similar pastoral style. Most have been seen as Francis “loyalists,” committed with him to a common ecclesiastical agenda.
But the five new cardinals have very different pastoral styles, theological backgrounds, and priorities —and it would be hard to argue that there is a clear ideological unity between Latin America’s newest cardinals.
The ‘safe picks’
Three of the new cardinals-elect seem like obvious choices. Lima and Santiago are traditionally primatial sees, making Cardinals-elect Carlos Castillo and Fernando Chomalí clear choices.
Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian Archdiocese of Guayaquil is not traditionally expected to come with a red hat, as that normally goes in the country to the Archbishop of Quito, also primate of Ecuador.
Still, neither Benedict XVI nor Francis made Quito’s Archbishop Fausto Trávez a cardinal, and Francis has not made his successor in Quito, Archbishop Alfredo Espinoza, a cardinal either.
In short, the country has not had a voting-age cardinal since Cardinal Raúl Vega turned 80 in 2014. An Ecuadorian cardinal was long overdue, which made Guayaquil’s Cardinal-elect Luis Cabrera, OFM, a relatively safe pick for an elevation to cardinalate.
Cabrera entered the Franciscan novitiate in 1975 at 19 years old, made his solemn vows in 1982, and was ordained a priest in 1983. He was named Archbishop of Cuenca in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI and then became Archbishop of Guayaquil in 2015.
He serves as the president of the Ecuadorian bishops’ conference and Pope Francis made him one of the nine conference president delegates to the synod on synodality.
“He’s close to his people, and a very humble, kind, and uncomplicated priest,” a local priest told The Pillar. “Doctrinally, I’ve never seen him say or do anything that shows any major heterodoxy,” he added.
Last year, Cabrera welcomed Fiducia supplicans, albeit with some reservations.
“It is very clear that marriage is only recognized as a union between man and woman, nothing else. Many things have been distorted [about what Fiducia supplicans says] (...) but there’s no marriage between man with man and woman with woman,” he said.
“The pope’s declaration is clear, it says there can be no simulation [of a sacrament]; there will never be a celebration, nor a liturgy or an adoration. It’s just a general blessing, [but] the Catechism is clear, we must embrace and respect [LGBT] people, we cannot scorn them,” he added.
Cabrera has been a strident critic of gender ideology in Ecuador. In 2017, he supported a lay initiative to march in favor of the family and life, in opposition to initiatives aiming to legalize abortion in Ecuador and to incorporate gender ideology in the school curriculum.
In late 2023, when abortion due to rape was legalized in Ecuador by a judicial decision, Cabrera said that the Supreme Court judges who voted in favor of legalization had incurred latae sententiae excommunications.
For his part, Cardinal-elect Fernando Chomalí of Chile is perhaps one of the most accomplished intellectuals in the consistory.
Ordained a priest in 1984, he received a licentiate in moral theology from the Lateran University in 1993, a doctorate in theology from the Gregorian University, and a master’s in bioethics from the John Paul II Institute. In 2006, he was ordained as an auxiliary bishop of Santiago and in 2011 he became the Archbishop of Concepción. Chomalí was appointed as the Archbishop of Santiago in October 2023.
Chomalí was tapped by the pope to help the Church regain its credibility after the abuse scandal due to the Karadima case, which ended up with all of the Chilean bishops tendering their resignation to Pope Francis.
Chomalí’s own role in the scandal is still unclear to this day, as some of the victims linked him with the cover-up.
However, Chomalí was the spokesman of the Chilean bishops in 2015, when the conference aimed to demonstrate to Pope Francis that Bishop Juan Barros had covered up the abuse of Fernando Karadima, who was friends with the pope.
His predecessor, Cardinal Celestino Aós, decided to take a low profile in a difficult time for the Church, after his own predecessor, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, resigned over his role in the scandal.
The abuse crisis put secularization in Chile on a fast track. The country has fewer than 100 seminarians and only 45% of the population identify themselves Catholic, of which only 4.5% regularly attends Mass on Sundays.
Chomalí decided to take a different approach from his predecessors.
He is well-known for his presence on social media, where he defends the Church's positions on social issues rather directly—and plainly.
“He has a solid moral formation and, as a bioethics expert, he is a clear defender of life against abortion,” a local priest told The Pillar.
“With abortion and euthanasia laws, the force of reason gives way to the reason of force. It’s inhumane to solve complex human situations with violence. Both laws eliminate innocent human beings. Everyone loses: The defenseless, Chile, and the rule of law,” he said on X in June amid the debate on abortion and euthanasia laws in the country.
Chomalí has often said he wants to make the Church relevant in Chile again. He has met various times with the Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, and is regularly seen meeting with businesspeople, political leaders, and civic officials.
Many in Chile believe that the Church should soften its approach to social issues, but Chomalí seems convinced that the Church needs to uphold its traditional teachings.
In 2011, when a common law marriage law was passed in Chile, Chomalí said that “marriage has been dissociated from love and sex. Today, a lot of people are available for an active sex life, but fewer people are available for a life-long commitment.”
“[This law] is saying that just living together is the same as being married, which it’s clearly not. One of the fundamental values of the family is the stability required to develop it, [it’s also not the same] because it does not promote values such as commitment among people,” he added.
In a recent op-ed, Chomalí said that “the family has suffered a great deterioration in Chile. Marriages have decreased, separations and divorces have increased, the birth rate has fallen (...) We need to strengthen the Chilean family. To decisively promote marriage as the irreplaceable source to create it. This will only be possible if families that have known how to be faithful to the promise made are shown.”
“Today, it is fundamental to recognize marriage as a beautiful vocation; for Catholics, it is a vocation to holiness,” he added.
The ‘question marks’
Two of the new Latin American cardinals have made only a few public statements, or and given few media interviews. Sussing out much from their public profiles isn’t easy.
The first is Archbishop Jaime Spengler, OFM, from Porto Alegre, Brazil. Spengler was made an auxiliary of the same diocese in 2010 and then its archbishop in 2013. In April 2023, he was chosen as the president of the Brazilian bishops’ Conference, and in May, he became president of CELAM, the Latin American confederation of episcopal conferences.
Spengler has hardly made any public statements outside of institutional channels, so it is difficult to know where he stands on theological and pastoral issues.
In Brazil, the archbishop signed off an episcopal conference statement supporting a federal bill that would consider abortion a form of homicide — and the archbishop has criticized abortion in many other statements.
After Fiducia supplicans was published, he offered carefully worded support for the document in an interview, saying “we cannot deny [a blessing] but we can’t support a behavior that goes against our fundamental values.”
In a recent press conference during the synod on synodality, Spengler was asked about both married priests and the controversial prospect of an Amazonian liturgical rite — in both cases, Spengler’s answers were carefully noncommittal.
Spengler noted that the possibility of married clergy is “very delicate” and “related to the discipline of the Church, not to theology.” He said that it is a “reality that truly needs deepening.”
Regarding the possibility of Amazonian liturgical rite, Spengler said “Talking about the Amazon, how many people do we have there? How many cultures and different languages? (...) I think that it could be easier to find ways to inculturate the Roman rite, rather than the other solution.”
With 2.5 million Catholics, Spengler’s Porto Alegre is one of the largest sees in Brazil, but not a traditionally cardinalatial see, meaning that Spengler’s appointment might follow Francis’ tendency to make cardinals from non-traditional sees or it could simply be a recognition of Porto Alegre’s size.
The other bishop without a broad public profile is the Argentine Archbishop Vicente Bocalik, CM, from the Archdiocese of Santiago del Estero.
Bocalik, the son of Slovenian migrants to Argentina, entered the Vincentian novitiate in 1970, making his perpetual vows in 1976, and being ordained a priest two years later.
He was an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires under then-Cardinal Bergoglio from 2010 to 2013, when he became the bishop of Santiago del Estero.
Santiago del Estero was elevated to an archdiocese, and the primatial see of Argentina earlier this year, because it is the oldest city in Argentina, founded in 1550, and the first diocese in Argentine territory, erected in 1570 under the name of “Córdoba del Tucumán,” with Santiago del Estero as the bishop’s residence.
Bocalik has mostly refrained from media interviews, but according to various Argentinian sources, he is known for his sympathies with Peronismo, the nationalist, third-way movement that has impacted most of Argentine history since the post-war period and founded by Juan Domingo Perón, president of Argentina in two different periods.
Although the movement has had various ideological iterations, the current Partido Justicialista is widely understood as a left-wing political movement, and is close to the Venezuelan and Cuban regimes.
Bocalik is reportedly popular among his clergy and the Argentinian bishops, as he is well-known for being a bishop close to his flock.
His appointment could have various explanations. Some believe that it is a recognition of Santiago del Estero as the primatial see in Argentina. Others, on top of that, see that Francis wanted to have another Argentine cardinal with a similar pastoral style, so he picked the one he knew personally.
A ‘German’ bishop?
Initially, the appointment of Archbishop Carlos Castillo seems uncontroversial — Lima is the primatial see of Perú, one of the largest in Latin America, and a traditionally cardinalatial see.
If anything, Castillo’s appointment was long overdue, as he had been made archbishop of Lima by Pope Francis in 2019.
But while the appointment of Timothy Radcliffe as a cardinal has raised controversy in conservative circles, Castillo’s is perhaps even more controversial.
Castillo was ordained a priest in 1984. He used to teach at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru but was suspended by Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani in 2013 amid allegations of heterodoxy and “attacks on the ecclesiastical hierarchy.”
But the university and Castillo did not obey the orders: when Castillo was given a pastoral assignment, he refused it and continued teaching at the university.
Castillo, a pupil of Gustavo Gutiérrez, OP, one of the fathers of liberation theology, has made many controversial statements during his tenure.
In a 2019 interview, he said that “abortion is the destruction of a life” but that “it was problematic when [authorities] want to pass [abortion] laws and the Church tries to get on their way (...) I think people should reflect and decide freely,” he said.
Also in 2019, he asked the Vatican for permission to “appoint families, couples or groups of spouses or lay older people to lead parishes.”
In a January 2020 lecture, the archbishop criticized Pope Francis for saying he had converted by praying in front of the Tabernacle.
“I’m sorry, but no one converts with the Tabernacle. We convert through the encounter with people who question us and human dramas through which we can encounter the Lord,” he said.
While his predecessor engaged in a decades-long fight with the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru for its endorsement of abortion, gender ideology, and allegedly heretical teachings, Castillo has allowed the university to continue its works without any criticism, although the university continues to promote sexually explicit workshops and is regularly accused of heretical teachings
A local priest told The Pillar that an international comparison might best describe Castillo. The cardinal elect is a “very ‘German’ bishop,” the priest said, as he seems to support most of the progressive causes in the Church.
Castillo has six years until his 80th birthday, which means it’s quite likely he’ll vote in the next papal conclave.
