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Pope Francis named this Saturday 21 cardinals, including five Latin Americans and two Spaniards (plus a third from the French Church and Spanish origin), who will mostly be able to choose the successor of the Argentine Jesuit.

Francis, the first Latin American pope, has taken pains to design a Sacred College less Western and more oriented towards the southern hemisphere.

The solemn ceremony, the ninth ordinary consistory since the pontiff's election in 2013, was held in the Vatican's St. Peter's Square on Saturday during a sunny morning.

The new cardinals dressed in scarlet red -- a color that evokes the blood shed by Christ on the cross -- knelt in front of the pope to receive the cardinal's cap and a distinctive ring.

"Courage!", "Cheer up!", said the Pope to encourage the new cardinals who were accompanied by the cheers of the faithful, who waved flags of several countries.

Among the new cardinals are diplomats, close advisers and experienced men, profiles that reflect the priorities set by Jorge Bergoglio, 86.

Among the 21 new prelates who will accompany the pope in the government of the Church, 18 are under 80 years old, so they will be able to participate in the conclave that will elect the next pontiff.

At the ceremony, Francis celebrated that the new cardinals come "from all parts of the world" and compared the College of Cardinals to "a symphony orchestra" where "diversity is indispensable" and each musician "must listen to others."

"Rupture"

Sensitive to the "peripheries" and minority communities, Francis seeks to promote clergy from developing countries to the highest ranks of the Church, breaking with the practice of systematically highlighting certain titular archbishops of large dioceses.

"Look for cardinals who correspond to the era. They are people who have moved away from the Church of yesteryear, who are making a positive rupture," a Holy See observer told AFP.

In the list of new cardinals, several stand out from regions where the number of faithful is growing, such as Africa, Asia and Latin America, where five of them come from, although only three could participate in a conclave.

These are the Argentines Monsignor Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Ángel Sixto Rossi, archbishop of Córdoba, and the archbishop of Bogotá, the Colombian Luis José Rueda Aparicio.

Luis Pascual Dri, also an Argentine confessor at the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, and Venezuelan Diego Rafael Padrón Sánchez, archbishop emeritus of Cumaná, will be cardinals, but not electors for exceeding 80 years of age.

Also created cardinals will be the Spaniards José Cobo Cano, archbishop of Madrid, and Ángel Fernández Artime, rector major of the Salesians. Both are electors.

Among the newly elected are clerics from two geopolitically sensitive areas: the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the top Catholic authority in the Holy Land, and the bishop of Hong Kong, key to trying to improve the Vatican's relations with Communist China.

The new list of cardinals also includes the archbishops of Juba (South Sudan), Cape Town (South Africa) and Tabora (Tanzania).

Francis' vision

The European clergy, where Catholicism is in decline, will remain strongly represented with eight cardinals, including Portugal's Americo Aguiar, 49.

Aguiar will be the second youngest member of the College of Cardinals after the apostolic prefect in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia), Giorgio Marengo.

It also highlights the distinction of three members of the Curia, the central "government" of the Holy See, close to the pope: the Italian Claudio Gugerotti, the Argentine Víctor Manuel Fernández and the American Robert Prevost.

The appointment of the cardinals will be closely watched by observers looking for clues about the direction of the Church, due to the advanced age of Francis, who moves in a wheelchair and does not rule out resigning as his predecessor Benedict XVI did if his health deteriorates.

After this consistory there will be 137 cardinal electors. Almost three-quarters of them (99) will have been created by Jorge Bergoglio, while 22% were created by Benedict XVI and 6% by John Paul II.

This distribution could weigh on the two-thirds majority needed to choose the future spiritual leader of the Catholic Church and its 1.300 billion faithful by increasing the likelihood that he shares the ideas of the current pontiff.

But the election of a new pope is always unpredictable and as an old Roman saying goes, "he who enters the conclave as pope, leaves as a cardinal."

Bolaños: "I hope we continue to reach agreements with the Church"

EUROPA PRESS

The Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Cortes and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, has shown his desire to "continue reaching agreements with the Spanish Church" in the future and stressed that Spain is "the third country that has more cardinals in the Curia".

This is how Bolaños has pronounced this Saturday from Rome, where he has traveled to attend in the Vatican, on behalf of the Government of Spain in office, the creation of the new cardinals.

In addition, the acting minister stressed that Pope Francis, in all the consistories he has held during his pontificate, has appointed Spaniards and that "Spain is already the third country that has the most cardinals in the Curia."

The ceremony was also attended by the Ambassador of Spain to the Holy See, Isabel Celaá.

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