A new year, so a good time to look ahead to what 2019 may bring. The year will undoubtedly have its share of surprises, but there are always some things we can know for sure.
Among these is the inevitable progression of time, and thus the aging out of cardinals. In 2019, ten cardinals will celebrate their 80th birthday and so lose their right to participate in a conclave for the election of a new pope, as well as any duties they may have in the curia. The umber of cardinal-electors will drop from 124 to 114. Still a sufficient number, but Pope Francis has shown that he wants to keep the electors as close to their theoretical maximum of 120 (or over it, as the case is now), so a consistory may be in the books sometime towards the end of the year, or at the start of 2020.
The cardinals aging out are:
30 January: Alberto Cardinal Suárez Inda, archbishop emeritus of Morelia, Mexico- 11 March: Orlando Beltran Cardinal Quevedo, archbishop emeritus of Cotabato, Philippines
- 8 April: Edwin Frederick Cardinal O’Brien, Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem
- 27 April: Stanislaw Cardinal Dziwisz, archbishop emeritus of Kraków, Poland (pictured at right)
- 31 July: John Cardinal Tong Hon, bishop emeritus and apostolic administrator of Hong Kong, China
- 16 August: Seán Baptist Cardinal Brady, archbishop emeritus of Armagh, Northern Ireland
- 7 October: Laurent Cardinal Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop emeritus of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
- 11 October: Zenon Cardinal Grocholewski, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Catholic Education
- 14 October: Edoardo Cardinal Menichelli, archbishop emeritus of Ancona-Osimo, Italy
- 15 October: Telesphore Placidus Cardinal Toppo, archbishop emeritus of Ranchi, India
Who may replace these cardinals among the electors is guesswork, as Pope Francis has never felt bound to pick his cardinals from the traditional places. Still, the list above could give some hints and we may assume that the Holy Father will choose cardinals for countries who no longer have any. That said, possible candidates could be Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski of Kraków, Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh and Archbishop Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa. Another source of new cardinals are the papal visits Pope Francis makes. He has made some of hosts cardinals in the past before. It may therefore be possible that we may see new cardinals from Panama, the Arabian peninsula, Morocco, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania (all confirmed visits), and perhaps Japan, Mozambique and Uganda (rumoured visits).
Closer to home, a number of dioceses will be looking forward to new bishops this year. In the Netherlands, the Diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam has just received a coadjutor bishop, although the sitting ordinary, Bishop Jos Punt, expects to remain in office until his 75th birthday in 2021. Health permitting, of course.
In Belgium, Bishop Luc Van Looy of Ghent (pictured at left) has already had his retirement accepted. At 77, he completed a two-year extension to his mandate last year. He is to remain in office until the appointment and installation of his successor. Namur’s Bishop Remy Vancottem is, at 75, also past retirement age, so the southeastern diocese may see a new bishop before the year is out as well.
In Germany, Bishop Konrad Zdarsa of Augsburg will turn 75 in June. Among the country’s auxiliary bishops, there is room in Freiburg im Breisgau where erstwhile auxiliary Bishop Michael Gerber was appointed to Fulda in December.
In the headline-making department, there is of course next month’s meeting of the heads of all the bishops’ conferences in Rome, to discuss a unified Church response to the abuse crisis. Among the participants will be Bishop Hans van den Hende for the Netherlands, Cardinal Jozef De Kesel for Belgium, Cardinal Reinhard Marx for Germany and Bishop Czeslaw Kozon for Scandinavia.
Currently gearing up in Panama, the World Youth Days will take place from 22 to 27 January. The first group of Dutch pilgrims have departed for the Central American country today, with more to follow. Among them will be Bishops Everard de Jong and Jan Hendriks. Bishop de Jong is again replacing Bishop Rob Mutsaerts, who has decided to stay at home as he is recovering from unplanned – and not further specified – surgery. Last year, Bishop Mutsaerts elected not to take part in the Synod assembly on youth and vocation in Rome. Bishop de Jong went in his stead.
In October, the Synod of Bishops will gather again for a special assembly for the Pan-Amazonian region, to discuss the specific challenges for the Church there. The expectations are high, as many assume to what will be decided there, especially on the topic of married priests, will have global consequences. Participation in the special assembly is limited to bishops from the area, which means there is a minute Dutch link, at least when it comes to language, in the person of the bishop of Paramaribo, Msgr. Karel Choennie. Bishop Choennie is a member of the pre-synodal council preparing the special assembly in cooperation with Synod of Bishops’ general secretariat.
2019 will undoubtedly bring much to be discussed in (social) media, and there is still plenty being carried over from previous years. Keeping track of everything, let alone formulating thoughts and responses can sometimes be a challenge, but it’s probably a good idea to remember that not finding words or timely responses does not mean one does not care. There are many opinions, and many eloquent ones at that, to be found everywhere. And, perhaps more importantly, there are also answers to be found in the past. After all, what was true and good in the past remains true and good now. That is something to remember when we are confronted with questions and developments which seem to challenge our beliefs, understanding and even faith. We have a deposit of faith and exegesis to fall back on, and many of today’s questions and challenges are not new ones.
Photo credit: [1] Jarosław Roland Kruk / Wikipedia, licence: CC-BY-SA-3.0, [2] kerknet.be
^Cardinal Eijk (second from the right) is seen in this still from the CTV live stream, seated between Cardinals John Tong Hon of Hong Kong and George Alencherry of Ernakulam-Angamaly. On the other side of Cardinal Alencherry sits Cardinal Marx.
^And in the end, the Pope strolled home… (photo courtesy of 
Yesterday the Holy See published the list of participants in the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family. Of course, there are the usual suspects: the heads of the Roman Curia departments, the standing members of the Synod and the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences, with the latter being default participants in an Extraordinary General Synod, which this one is. Pope Francis has had a personal touch in the selection of several participants; noteable among those are Cardinal Kasper, to all appearances a theologian much appreciated by the Holy Father, but also the vast majority of cardinals he created in his first consistory of last February.
From a local point of view it is interesting to see that no less than four participants come from Belgium, while there is only a single one from the Netherlands and a mere two from Germany. Belgium sends Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard,which was expected as he is the president of the Belgian bishops’ conference, but also his predecessor, Cardinal Godfried Danneels (pictured), as well as Father George Henri Ruyssen of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. Additionaly, Metropolitan Athenagoras, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belgium, attends as a “fraternal delegate”.
In Essen, the diocese of the Ruhr, Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck will consecrate Bishop Wilhelm Zimmermann as auxiliary bishop of that diocese. Essen’s other auxiliary, Bishop Ludger Schepers, and retired auxiliary Bishop Franz Vorrath will be co-consecrators. Also present will be Hong Kong’s bishop, John Cardinal Tong Hon.
Consecrating him is his predecessor, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, with the ordinaries of the Province of Freiburg’s other two dioceses, Karl Cardinal Lehmann of Mainz and Bishop Gebhard Fürst of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, as co-consecrators. The consecration is embedded in Freiburg’s “Diözesantag”, which began esterday with a concert and choral evensong, and continues today with midday prayers, a live program in the square before the cathedral, with music and interviews. After the Mass in which the new archbishop will be consecrated, the festivities close with a “feast of encounter”. The cathedral itself has remained closed due to the preparations for the live television broadcast, and will open only in the early afternoon, about 90 minutes before the Mass starts at 14:30.
There seems to be a general trend in the media to wonder what on Earth is keeping the five “absentee electors”. Cardinals Lehmann, Pham Minh Man, Nycz, Tong Hon and Naguib have missed the first three general congregations, although they are expected to arrive in Rome today or tomorrow. is it because they do not consider their duties in Rome very important, or because of travel distance, or something else altogether?
In a sede vacante, nothing, it seems, is permanent, not even the daily running of the Holy See. While Cardinals Bertone and Sodano, as Camerlengo and Dean of the College of Cardinals respectively, have certain specific duties, these do not extend as far as the duties that a Pope or the Curia in normal circumstances would have. We are all waiting, in this period, for normalcy to resume, but for that we need a visible head, a new Supreme Pontiff.
With the Sunday off, the Synod skipped to day eight on Monday, with Cardinal John Tong Hon (at left pictured with the Holy Father) taking up the day’s presiding duties. and 251 Synod fathers in attendance. 26 fathers offered five-minute interventions during the morning session.
Francesco Cardinal Coccopalmerio (pictured at right), president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, asked the following question: “[I]n carrying out the task of the new evangelization, would it be possible to consider some form of co-operation between the Catholic Church and the other Churches and ecclesial Communities?” adding, “I believe that an affirmative answer must be given to this question.”
Cardinal John Njue (pictured at left), archbishop of Nairobi in Kenya, pointed at that it is not enough to have faith or even the intention to be faithful.
On Thursday the Synod of Bishops was a background to the grand opening of the Year of Faith. In a 2.5-hour Mass marked with many memory’s to the Second Vatican Council, and attended by the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Canterbury, in addition to several hundred Catholic prelates of various rites, Pope Benedict XVI gave a homily in which he referred to the modern world as experiencing an emptiness:
“Our beautiful Christian faith is too complicated: the terms, their content and their explanation. We bathe in an ensemble of dogmas, of mysteries: the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, Redemption, the Sacraments (called mysteries by the Greeks).
Today’s first 
In Caelo et in Terra 