NEW CARDINALS QUARANTINE IN POPE’S HOTEL AHEAD OF CEREMONY
10 days of isolation mandated before events today
The Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel was built to sequester cardinals during papal elections. It’s now sequestering soon-to-be cardinals in town for this weekend’s ceremony to get their red hats: A handful are in protective coronavirus quarantine, confined to their rooms on Vatican orders and getting meals delivered to their doors.
The 10-day quarantines, with COVID-19 tests administered at the start and finish, are just one example of how today’s ceremony to elevate new cardinals is like nothing the Holy See has ever seen.
“They told me it would be like this but I didn’t think it would be so strict,” marveled Cardinal-designate Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, the retired archbishop of Chiapas, Mexico.
During a Zoom call with
The Associated Press from his hotel room, Esquivel said he had thought there might be some exceptions to the lockdown for new cardinals. “No! Here, it doesn’t matter if you’re a cardinal or a pope. The virus doesn’t respect anyone,” he said.
Pope Francis today will elevate 13 clerics to the Col
lege of Cardinals, the elite group of red-robed churchmen whose primary task is to elect a new pope. It’s the seventh time Francis has named a new batch of cardinals since his election in 2013, and his imprint is increasingly shifting the balance of power away from Europe and toward the developing world.
The Vatican has said two new cardinals won’t make it to Rome for the ceremony, known as a consistory, because of COVID-19 and travel concerns: The Vatican’s ambassador to Brunei, Cardinal-designate Cornelius Sim, and the archbishop of Capiz, Philippines, Cardinaldesignate Jose Advincula.
The Vatican is arranging for them, and any of the cardinals who might not make it, to participate in the ceremony remotely from their homes. They’ll get their three-pointed “biretta” hats from a Vatican ambassador or another envoy.
For those who are participating in person, the public health crisis has posed an unusual set of challenges. Italy, where the pandemic erupted in late February, is currently in the throes of a second wave. The Vatican itself has returned to a modified lockdown in recent weeks, with the Vatican Museums shuttered and a dozen Swiss Guards testing positive.
Francis, 83, has been criticized for his lax mask usage, but he has abided by socialdistancing measures to a degree. He too lives at Santa Marta, where there has been at least one positive case reported in recent months.
Usually, consistories are full of parties and crowds: Cardinals come to town with family, friends and sometimes benefactors and parishioners who get to see the new “princes of the church” up close and then attend receptions and dinners in their honor. Under normal circumstances, the consistory would be followed by “courtesy visits,” where the new cardinals greet well-wishers and the general public from the grandeur of their own reception rooms in the Apostolic Palace or Vatican auditorium.
This year, there will be no courtesy visits, and each cardinal has a 10-person limit for guests. For Esquivel, no one other than his secretary traveled with him from Mexico, so he’s inviting some priests from the residence where Mexican clergy working or studying in Rome live.
“We don’t have contact with practically anyone. It’s total isolation, but it’s necessary,” he said.
Esquivel is one of four cardinals over age 80 who are joining the college as honorary members, named by Francis to recognize their lifetime of service to the church. The other nine are younger than 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave to eventually choose Francis’ successor.