New cardinals say Europe is becoming the Catholic Church’s new ‘peripheries’

Vatican City, Oct 8, 2024 / 14:00 pm

Cardinals-designate from three continents said Tuesday the Church in the global south has a lot of nonmaterial gifts to share with the West, including the richness of priestly vocations and a joy-filled faith.

“When the Holy Father is talking about peripheries, I think the peripheries are moving. ... Maybe the peripheries are moving towards Europe,” Tokyo’s Archbishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, SVD, said in response to a question from CNA during a press briefing on the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 8.

The Japanese bishop’s comments on the contributions of the Church outside Europe were echoed by Archbishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo of Korhogo, Ivory Coast, and Archbishop Jaime Spengler, OFM, of Porto Alegre, Brazil, who also participated in the press briefing. 

All three men are participants in the synod and will be made cardinals at a consistory on Dec. 8, as announced by Pope Francis on Sunday.

The cardinal-designate from the Ivory Coast, Dogbo, said the Synod on Synodality discussed the theme of the exchange of gifts on Tuesday morning.

“We who come from African dioceses, we can say that they seem to be poor from a material standpoint, but spiritually these dioceses are so rich. And faith is lived with joy,” he said. “And this is something we must share with the universal Church.”

He also mentioned the great grace of many priestly vocations in the Church in Africa.

Kikuchi of Tokyo also pointed out the large number of vocations to the priesthood coming from countries in Asia, though he remarked that Japan is unfortunately not included in this.

“There is a point in [the synodal assembly] in which we discussed the exchange of gifts from one Church to the other — those who have and those who don’t have. Formerly it was understood as rich Churches, those who have money and resources, who support the poor countries like in Asia and Africa,” Kikuchi said. 

With more priestly vocations coming from Asian and African countries, however, “the exchange of gifts is changing ... from the developing countries to the developed countries,” he said.

Spengler, president of the Brazilian bishops’ conference and president of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM) since 2023, said Brazil and other Latin American countries are celebrating the anniversary of the arrival of immigrants from Germany, Italy, and other countries to the continent.

“Somehow [these immigrants] promoted a process of evangelization in Latin America in a historical context other than our own, and they did this so well,” he said. “Today, if we have a Christian tradition that is strong and lively [in Latin America] we owe it to immigrants.”

The archbishop said the immigrants were brave to leave their own countries and cross the ocean, in some cases more than 200 years ago, to a continent where there was little at the time. But most importantly, he added, they brought the Catholic faith with them.

He said today’s challenge for the Church in traditionally Christian countries is understanding how to present the faith to the next generation.