CARDINAL. - Cardinals are the highest collaborators and counselors of the pope in the government of the universal Church.
The body of cardinals is called the Sacred College, which is often regarded as a kind of senate of the Church (cf. can. 230) and is a juridical person; but it must be noted that the cardinals never have deliberative powers with respect to the pope, but only consultative ones, since their decisions can never have value against the sovereign will, neither in the sense of being able to bring about a measure not willed by the pontiff, nor in the sense of being able to prevent one willed by him.
I. - Like the other bishops, the Roman pontiff was assisted in the government of the diocese by the group of presbyters (presbyterium), who cooperated with him and, when necessary, even replaced him, in the liturgical ministry, in preaching and in government. To them were added the seven deacons, also charged with liturgical duties, but above all assigned to the administration of temporal interests. As regards the exercise of his universal or regional primacy, at least from the 3rd century, the pope was assisted by the bishops gathered in councils, periodic or extraordinary according to the circumstances and the gravity of the cases that arose. However, the seven bishops, whose dioceses surrounded the Roman diocese on every side, without leaving their sees (suburbicarian), at least from the 5th century began to perform a regular weekly liturgical service in the papal cathedral, the Lateran basilica of the Redeemer; that is, they were incardinated to it. And so too the priests placed over the 25 tituli (later 28) established within the city of Rome were charged with the weekly liturgical service in the major basilicas of St. Mary Major, St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Lawrence, without leaving their title; they were in this way incardinated to them. Thus to the College of the seven deacons were entrusted the seven ecclesiastical regions into which pope Fabian (d. 251) had already divided the city as regards the exercise of their duties of charitable assistance.
However, while the seven suburbicarian bishops are called cardinals from the 8th century onward, only toward the end of the 10th century do the titular priests regularly add to the name of their title also the qualification of cardinal. When later in the 11th century, beginning with St. Leo IX, the popes gradually introduced foreign elements into the clergy of Rome, and the work of ecclesiastical reform was carried forward with all energy throughout Europe, the cardinals also began to be less bound to the original task of liturgical and pastoral service in the churches of Rome and more to be the direct coadjutors of the pope in the government of the universal Church. From this moment the seven deacons called palatine, to whom had recently been added another 12 called regionary, because the politico-administrative regions of the city were by then twelve (in reality they were then 18 in all, not 19), were also included among the cardinals; and they began to bear this title. They did even more; to make themselves in all things like their colleagues they took the title of one of the deaconries which in the 7th and 8th centuries had been founded in the city to provide for public assistance and were in some way under their supervision. With this last step the College of Cardinals assumed the appearance that still remains to it; for not even the reform later introduced by Sixtus V changed its essential constitution.
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II. - As a consequence of this historical development, even today the Sacred College is divided into three classes, called orders. In fact the cardinals, whose total number (full membership of the Sacred College) has, since the time of Sixtus V (const. Postquam, 3 Dec. 1586), been fixed at no more than seventy (before Sixtus V there was no established number, and in ancient times the cardinals were generally fewer, so much so that during the 13th century they were reduced even to fewer than twenty), are divided into: cardinals of the order of bishops (six), who are the bishops of the suburbicarian dioceses, namely Albano, Frascati, Palestrina, Porto and S. Rufina, Sabina and Poggio Mirteto, Velletri and Ostia (the latter always united with that of which the cardinal dean is bishop, that is, the most senior among the cardinal bishops); cardinals of the order of priests (fifty), titulars of ancient Roman churches (cardinalitial titles); cardinals of the order of deacons (fourteen), titulars of other churches of Rome, that is, of cardinalitial deaconries (can. 231). In his own title or deaconry the cardinal has very ample powers (can. 240, §§ 2-3).
However, notwithstanding the names of the three aforesaid orders, at present all cardinals are at least priests (can. 232, § 1); the cardinals of the order of bishops, and for the most part also those of the order of priests, are bishops.
III. - The appointment of cardinals is made freely by the Pope, through the publication of the names in the secret consistory (v. CONCISTORO): the requirements established in can. 232, § 2 have a purely directive value, although they are always observed, save in exceptional cases. Sometimes the pontiff announces in consistory the appointment of one or more cardinals, without revealing their names, which will then be published in one of the subsequent consistories: such cardinals (who are called reserved in pectore) acquire seniority, for the purposes of the order of precedence, as if they had been appointed in the consistory in which they were reserved in pectore, although all the other effects of the appointment are produced only from the day on which it is published (can. 233).
At the moment of appointment each cardinal is assigned either to the order of priests or to that of deacons, receiving respectively a title or a deaconry. By option, made in the secret consistory and approved by the supreme pontiff, they may pass from one title to another that is vacant, or from one deaconry to another that is vacant; cardinal deacons, after ten years from the publication of the appointment, may also, by option as above, pass to the order of priests provided there are places available.
The passage to the order of bishops always takes place by option on the part of cardinals of the order of priests, according to seniority (can. 236).
IV. - At the head of the Sacred College is the cardinal dean, primus inter pares, who is the one who has been longest in the order of bishops (can. 237); he has various prerogatives: for example, it is he who asks the one elected pontiff whether he wishes to accept or not; and it falls to him to ordain and consecrate the pope, should the elect not be a priest or bishop.
The most senior of the cardinals of the order of deacons has the privilege of announcing to the people the election of the new Pope, and of crowning him.
The goods of the Sacred College are administered by the cardinal camerlengo of the Sacred College (not to be confused with the cardinal camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church), appointed by the pope in secret consistory, from among the cardinals resident in Rome. The functions of secretary of the Sacred College are exercised by the assessor of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation.
V. - The participation of cardinals in the government of the universal Church takes place in various ways (v. also CONCISTORO).
Many of them, resident in Rome (cardinals of the Curia), are members of one or more of the Sacred Congregations, which, like a kind of Ministries, have, always subordinate to the Pope, the direction of great branches of the ecclesiastical order and life.
Other cardinals are placed at the head of, or are members of, organs of the Holy See other than the Sacred Congregations: such as, for example, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Sacred Penitentiary, the Secretariat of State, the Apostolic Chancery, the Apostolic Chamber and many pontifical Commissions. It may be said that of all the central organs of the Church (that is, those which constitute the Roman Curia) the only one of which no cardinal is a member is the Tribunal of the Sacred Roman Rota.
Moreover, to the Sacred College, as such, is entrusted the government of the Church and of the State of Vatican City, during the vacancy of the Holy See, limited however to urgent affairs or those of ordinary administration. And it is exclusively the cardinals who since the 11th century elect the supreme pontiff by a majority of two thirds plus one, in a secret assembly called the conclave (cf. the constitution Vacantis Apostolicae, of 8 Dec. 1945). By decision of Urban VIII (10 June 1630) the title of Eminence belongs to the cardinals.
VI. - However, the part that cardinals have in the government of the universal Church does not prevent them from having other attributions as well. Thus those of the order of bishops are also bishops of their diocese, although, unlike other bishops, they reside for the most part in Rome, and govern their diocese normally by means of an auxiliary or suffragan bishop.
A part of those of the order of priests are also bishops of some important diocese; indeed there are some dioceses whose bishop is traditionally invested with the cardinalitial dignity; such are, for example: Turin, Milan, Venice, Florence, Naples, Palermo; and, outside Italy, Paris, Westminster, Toledo, Lisbon, Munich, Cologne, Esztergom, New York. Moreover one of the cardinal priests, the cardinal vicar, is the pope's vicar for the government of the diocese of Rome. And many cardinals have the office of "protectors" of various religious Orders and Congregations, especially female ones.
VII. - Cardinals enjoy various privileges, especially honorary and liturgical ones, among which is the right of precedence over every other ecclesiastical dignitary; and furthermore they have broad faculties regarding Confession, the conferral of Confirmation and of minor Orders, the granting of indulgences, and in various other matters (cf. can. 239).
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Pio Ciprotti
C. VICAR
He is the cardinal invested with episcopal character who represents the pope and acts in his stead in the government of the diocese of Rome with ordinary jurisdiction. However, only after the 12th century did the figure of this co-operator and substitute of the pontiff take shape. As cardinal vicar there were sometimes appointed the suburbicarian bishops, sometimes abbots, sometimes bishops and even cardinals. Nevertheless, only Paul IV in 1558 established that the office of cardinal vicar should belong for life to only one of the cardinals.
The duties of the cardinal vicar are the same as those of a bishop in his diocese. Except for the closer and more immediate subjection to the supreme pontiff and respect for the frequent exemptions in force in Rome more than in other places (titular churches, pontifical jurisdictions, etc.), he enjoys the fullness of the free exercise of the power of order; he is the ordinary judge of Rome and its district, and he does not cease from his office during the vacancy of the Holy See.
His organ of the Curia is the vicariate, which since the apostolic constitution Etsi nos of Pius X of 1 January 1912 has been divided into four offices: the first for divine worship and for the apostolic visitation, the second for the discipline of the clergy and of the Christian people, the third for judicial acts, the fourth for the administration of property: at the head of the first and second offices stand two secretaries, the first of whom is secretary general of the vicariate, the second deputed to religious institutes and schools: at the head of the third office (judicial acts) stands the official who at present (after the motu proprio Qua cura of 8 December 1938) is also head of the Regional Tribunal for cases of nullity of marriage and therefore handles in first instance the cases of all Lazio and on appeal those of the Campanian and Sardinian regions: finally the administration is governed by an economist. Recently, with the apostolic constitution In Lateranensi Pacto, 20 May 1929, Vatican City was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the vicariate. The cardinal vicar is by necessity of things almost always also president of the "Pontifical work for the preservation of the faith" and for the provision of new churches in Rome, instituted by Pius XI with the motu proprio In allocutione of 5 August 1930: he is also grand chancellor of the Pontifical Lateran Athenaeum, president of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, etc. As cardinal vicar he has audience with the pope twice a month. He has under him, with ordinary vicarious jurisdiction, Msgr. vice-gerent.
Vittorio Bartoccetti