The Consistory... Starring "The Peripheries"

Even if the path to the Pope's Senate is now rather different than it's been, for another 20 designates, it's time to take that walk... past Lord only knows how many infuriated natives:


As for the makeup of the church's biggest dance-card, as no shortage of off-base speculation yet again preceded today's reveal, the lessons of the last Red Dawn apparently bear repeating... and where they weren't heeded in this run-up, well, is everything clear now?

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On another front, "clear" is one thing, but loud is another altogether.

In that light, as an unprecedented – at least, in modern times – four delegations now prepare to follow their countries' first-ever cardinals to Rome next month, the high-water mark of reaction to a new Porporato is worth recalling, from the 2010 rites....



Likewise heralded by vuvuzelas over those days, the overflow exuberance for Kinshasa's Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo clearly stuck in the mind of one key veteran in the College: just over two years later, within a month of his election, the new Pope Francis named the Congolese who heads Africa's largest diocese as the continent's member of his "super-Council" – the all-important body whose nine-man makeup could see some further tweaks once the new crop is formally invested.

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