Lisbon appointment shows Pope’s disregard for convention
August 14, 2023
» Continue to this story on Crux
CWN Editor's Note: Last week when Pope Francis appointed Bishop Rui Manuel Sousa Valério to be the Patriarch of Lisbon, he created an unprecedented situation in which a cardinal will report to an archbishop.
Prior to naming Bishop Sousa Valerio to the Lisbon post—where he will hold the title of archbishop—the Pope had announced that an auxiliary of the same archdiocese, Bishop Americo Aguiar, will receive a cardinal’s red hat in September.
For at least the last 300 years, the Patriarch of Lisbon has always been named a cardinal (if he did not already hold that title before his appointment). On the other hand the Vatican has traditionally avoided having two living cardinals in the same archdiocese—even if one is retired. But as Chris Altieri notes in an analysis for Crux, the Lisbon appointments show that Pope Francis does things his own way.
Another Vatican tradition holds that a cardinal never serves as a subordinate to anyone but the Roman Pontiff. But as Altieri points out, Pope Francis has already broken that rule in 2019, when he left Cardinal Michael Czerny in place as undersecretary of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development.
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