In the upcoming papal conclave we are seeing a lot of talk about “peripheral” or “Global South” cardinals—recent creations from Africa and Asia who are perceived as potential wild cards, often with eclectic views on the issues facing the Church today and mostly unfamiliar (geographically and in terms of mindset) with Rome. There has been much speculation about these cardinals, but relatively little in the way of a concerted effort in the American or British Catholic press to look in detail at what might be making them tick. I have made such an effort in recent days; what I have seen has made me optimistic that these are men who are serious about electing a Pope who will continue Francis’s example of missionary discipleship and deepen at least some aspects of his social magisterium.
Vatican News and ACI Africa have run downright effusive tributes to Pope Francis from Cardinals Nzapalainga (Central African Republic), Dogbo (Ivory Coast), Ameyu (South Sudan), and Bo (Myanmar), to name just a few. Nzapalainga’s has an especial beauty to it:
Though our hearts are heavy with sorrow, we remain hopeful. In fact, just recently, he launched the Jubilee of Hope and called Christians to become pilgrims of hope. Now, he himself walks this path of hope toward eternal life, showing us the way.
Other sources, often not in English, have similarly positive assessments of Francis and his pontificate from cardinals like Langlois (Haiti), Kambanda (Rwanda), Ribat (Papua New Guinea), Mafi (Tonga), and Sako (Iraq). Generally these focus on synodality and the idea of a primarily evangelizing as opposed to primarily institutional-maintenance charism of the papacy. Catholics in the West who care a lot about issues like women’s status in the Church and outreach to LGBT people, myself included, aren’t necessarily happy with everything these cardinals are saying (or, rather, not saying), but neither are those who want a return to a more bureaucratic, more pastorally and doctrinally “centralized” Vatican.
In some circles this is obvious—the Global South cardinal who is aligned with Francis’s ecclesiology and social magisterium but much less comfortable with his pastoral theology on issues like sexuality and gender is a recognizable and well-known “type” in Church discussions. But the issues they’re emphasizing aren’t the same ones on which otherwise similar cardinals from wealthier parts of the world might focus. For the most part these people do not seem to be rolling into Rome spoiling for a fight over Fiducia supplicans or the women’s diaconate, as indeed they didn’t at last year’s conclusion of the synod on synodality. Cardinal Ribat talks about climate change; Cardinal Sako talks about human fraternity. The rise of the “peripheral” faction in the 2025 conclave—the faction that championed the then-Cardinal Bergoglio in 2013 when their numbers were fewer and their geographical center of gravity more firmly in the New World—might well lead to another “pope of surprises” for all ideological and theological flanks of the Catholic Church in the developed West.
Image: Cardinal Nzapalainga, left, with other newly-created cardinals at the consistory of November 19, 2016. From Centro Televisivo Vaticano via Wikimedia Commons.
Nathan Turowsky is a native New Englander, an alumnus of Boston University School of Theology, and one of the relatively few Catholic alumni of that primarily Wesleyan institution. He works in the nonprofit sector and writes at Silicate Siesta.
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