POPE Francis named Kalookan Bishop Pablo David, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), and former UST grand chancellor Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. cardinals on Sunday, Oct. 6.
The appointment of new cardinals was announced by the Pope during his Sunday Angelus at the Vatican.
David and Radcliffe were later listed among 21 new cardinals to be officially created during a solemn consistory on Dec. 8, the Solemnity of Immaculate Conception.
A consistory is the formal meeting of the College of Cardinals, the usual event when new members of the college are appointed.
As cardinals, they are now the highest-ranking prelates after the Pope and will be eligible to vote in a future conclave that chooses Pope Francis’ successor.
David joins Cardinal Luis Tagle, pro-prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization, and Thomasian Cardinal and current Manila Archbishop Jose Advincula as those who are still eligible to elect the next pope. The two other Filipino cardinals, Gaudencio Rosales and Orlando Quevedo, have already passed the age limit of 80 years old.
David is the tenth Filipino elevated to the cardinalate and the third to be named by Pope Francis.
A native of Pampanga and one of the country’s leading biblical experts, David was elected CBCP president in 2021 and reelected in 2023.
He was appointed Bishop of Kalookan in 2015.
David is a staunch critic and leading church voice against former president Rodrigo Duterte. At one point, Duterte called David a “son of a b***h” for his condemnation of the extrajudicial killings in the war on drugs, most notably the killing of Kian delos Santos in August 2017 in Caloocan.
Prior to his post as Kalookan bishop, David served as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Fernando since 2006.
He studied at the Dominican-run École Biblique et Archéologique Française (French School of Biblical and Archeological Research) in Jerusalem.
David is in Rome leading the Filipino delegation to the Synod on Synodality, where nearly 400 delegates will vote on a set of recommendations that will be submitted to Francis for his approval or rejection, involving some of the most contentious issues facing the Catholic Church.
Radcliffe, meanwhile, served as the Master of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001, which made him the ex officio grand chancellor of UST.
A renowned theologian, Radcliffe won the 2007 Michael Ramsey Prize, a UK-based award for “the best contemporary theological writing throughout the Church,” for his book “What Is the Point of Being A Christian?”
He served as director of the Las Casas Institute of Blackfriars, Oxford, a Dominican institute at the University of Oxford that promotes Catholic Social Teaching, from 2014 to 2015.
In 2015, he was named a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, a now-defunct Vatican department for the promotion of justice, peace, and human rights.
He was chosen to lead the opening retreats for the participants in the Synod on Synodality.
