New Cardinal from Melbourne is not from Australia
Pope Francis has surprised the Australian Catholic Church with the appointment of a new Cardinal from Melbourne because the new Cardinal is neither from Melbourne nor Australian.
Pope Francis has surprised the Australian Catholic Church with the appointment of a new Cardinal from Melbourne because the new Cardinal is neither from Melbourne nor Australian.
In Rome on Sunday, Pope Francis announced the number of the College of Cardinals will expand to 256 – 141 of whom will be “Cardinal electors”, that is qualified to vote for the next Pope – and they will include a new swathe of Cardinals from Japan, the Philippines, Africa, South America, Italy, Canada and Bishop Mykola Bychok, the bishop of the Eparchy Saints Peter and Paul of Melbourne of the Ukrainians.
At 44, Cardinal-elect Bychok will be the youngest member of the College, to whom Francis has appointed 21 newcomers, including the Archbishop of Tehran, Dominique Joseph Mathieu.
There is a balance-of-power shift occurring within the College of Cardinals with Pope Francis seeking to gain an advantage for “progressives”.
Bishop Bychok, a redemptorist priest, was born in Ukraine in 1980 and has served in Lviv in Ukraine, Poland and later in Serbia (Russia), later serving in the US and Canada.
In 2020 he was appointed by Pope Francis as the Ukrainian Bishop in Melbourne and was “enthroned” by Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli, Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Melbourne in 2021.
Australia has been without a Cardinal since the death of Cardinal George Pell, after an operation in Rome in January 2023, at the age of 81 years, after years of a campaign to discredit and convict him of claims found to be false by the High Court of Australia.
Cardinal Pell had already retired as a “voting” cardinal because of his age and as the Vatican’s “treasurer” after successfully pursuing corruption within the Holy See which ultimately led to revelations and prosecutions of criminal activity within the Catholic Church.
Since Cardinal Pell’s death there has been an expectation that Australia, with a population of 25 million people, would receive the Papal recognition of a red cap – a cardinal’s appointment.
But despite strong claims from Sydney’s Archbishop Anthony Fisher, Melbourne’s Comensoli and Hobart’s Julian Porteus, who has since resigned because of age restrictions – he turned 75 – there has been no announcement from the Vatican.
Instead, on Sunday, Pope Francis announced the new Cardinals and did not include an “Australian” Cardinal but named Bishop Bychok as a Cardinal from Australia.
With rising speculation that the Pope’s ill health could lead to his death and a vote for a new pope at any time, the balance of the College of Cardinals is extremely important from a global and ideological balance.
But the decision is not only a puzzle for Australian Catholics, it is also a curious message for Ukrainians who had expected that if a Ukrainian was appointed as Cardinal for the deeply Catholic nation it would be the archbishop of Kyiv, Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
Melbourne’s Bishop Bychok is regarded as a solid representative of Ukraine and his elevation to Cardinal in Australia in December could mean he is voted into the chair of the Australian Bishops’ Conference – on seniority – but the Pope’s decision has created confusion.
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