Can Anyone Become a Cardinal?

by Admin · August 15, 2023

Cardinals attend Pope Francis’ inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican March 19. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Question: I wonder if you could settle a dispute. A friend, also a Catholic, claims that any baptised Catholic can be named a cardinal. I say that only a priest can be appointed a cardinal, and before he is made one, he must be ordained a bishop. Who is right?

Answer: You are correct — though your friend would have been sort of right had you entered into the dispute before 1917.

That was the year Pope Benedict XV changed canon law to restrict the rank of cardinal only to men who are already priests or bishops. In 1962, Pope John XXIII added that a cardinal must be consecrated a bishop, unless he obtains a dispensation. That dispensation usually applies to appointees who are over 80 and thus ineligible to vote in a conclave.

Before 1917, men who had not yet been ordained or tonsured could become cardinals. The last lay cardinal died in 1899.

However, in theory, your friend might one day be right. It is the pope’s prerogative to change canon law, and he could decide to admit lay people to the College of Cardinals (presumably they would then have to be ordained to the diaconate).

Extending the office to women would require a whole reconstitution of the office of cardinal, and it seems very unlikely that any pope would have the appetite for that.

Asked and answered in the June 2023 issue of The Southern Cross magazine