This week, will the College of Cardinals find its voice?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 07, 2026

Through the first eight months of his pontificate, Leo XIV has been a calming presence in Rome. There have been no shocking statements from the apostolic palace to prompt sensational headlines, no dramatic policy announcements to unveil grand new plans. Vatican-watchers are still waiting to see what sort of papacy this will be. The consistory of cardinals meeting this week— his first unexpected initiative— may answer their questions.

To date Pope Leo has appeared content to continue along the path set by Pope Francis. He has lavished praise on his predecessor, and more importantly he has left the personnel of the last papacy in place, to carry out the programs that were already underway. Yet he has reversed a few of Pope Francis’ organizational reforms (the restructuring of the Rome diocese and of Vatican financial affairs). He has also shown a keen appreciation of Catholic traditions and a respect for Church law, contrasting with the iconoclastic approach of Pope Francis.

Now he has brought together his top advisers, the world’s cardinals, to help him plan his next steps. Here too his approach seems markedly different from that of his predecessor, who created a “Council of Cardinals” to advise him, rather than relying on the whole College that was established for that very purpose.

Inevitably, then, the most important topic to be discussed at this consistory—although technically it may not be on the agenda—is the very purpose of the College of Cardinals. How can these prelates, spread all over the world, effectively provide the Pontiff with their advice and counsel?

In practice most recent Pontiffs have relied on a handful of trusted advisers (who may or may not have been cardinals), while meeting regularly with the cardinal-prefects of the Vatican dicasteries (who may or may not have been numbered among those key advisers). For cardinals who were not living in Rome, and not members of the inner circle, the opportunities for advising the Pope were minimal; their responsibilities as cardinals were limited to voting in papal conclaves.

Pope Francis exhibited no great interest in hearing the cardinals’ advice. In fact he stopped the practice of bringing the cardinals to Rome for a few days before a consistory at which he appointed new cardinals, thus giving them a chance to get acquainted and to share their perspectives. The College of Cardinals has not met for several years, then, except in the highly formalized structures of the consistories for new cardinals and the papal conclave. So at this week’s consistory the most important business may take place outside the formal sessions, as the new prelates enjoy their first chance for informal conversations.

Father Daniel Gallagher, who spent a decade working in the Secretariat of State, remarked on the need to revive the advisory function of the College of Cardinals in a fine article for The Catholic Thing. He remarked that while Roman Pontiffs were creating new commissions left and right, cardinals were being left out of the loop. “I have anxious memories,” he recalls, “of escorting lost cardinals through the apostolic palace as they hopelessly tried to find whatever office they were supposed to visit that day.” (In this regard it is telling, if accurate, that a Nicarguan cardinal is not attending this week’s consistory because he says he was not invited.)

The multiplication of special Vatican commissions, Father Gallagher notes, is itself a bad omen: “Ballooning bureaucracy is a sure sign of organizational dysfunction, something the Roman Curia has suffered from for years.” So, he concludes, why not have the Pope’s advice come from the College of Cardinals: the group set up specifically for that purpose?

When he invited the cardinals to Rome, Pope Leo asked them to read two papal documents in preparation for their discussions: Evangelii Gaudium and Praedicate Evangelium. Both, significantly, were written by Pope Francis. The Pope also said that the consistory should discuss synodality, the leitmotif of the Francis papacy.

However, Pope Leo announced another theme for this consistory that was definitely not high on the agenda for Pope Francis: the liturgy. In sharp contrast with Pope Benedict XVI, who spoke constantly and lovingly about the sacred liturgy, Pope Francis rarely touched on the topic— except to excoriate priests who in his view paid too much attention to rubrics, or to criticize the liturgical traditions. Indeed in the last three years of his pontificate, Pope Francis never chose to act as the principal celebrant of the Eucharistic liturgy in public. Now Pope Leo has restored that papal role, celebrating the liturgy with reverence.

Today it is difficult to imagine how the consistory could discuss the liturgy without immediately raising the most contentious subject under that heading: the suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass under Traditionis Custodes. And in his summons to the cardinals, Pope Leo—quoting from the Vatican II document Sacrosanctum Concilium—called for an “‘in-depth theological, historical, and pastoral reflection ‘in order to retain sound tradition and yet remain open to progress.’” That sounds like an invitation to revisit the Council’s teachings, and ask whether the liturgical changes after Vatican II actually fulfilled the Council’s mandate for reform. Any honest discussion of that theme would lead the cardinals to focus on the need to “retain sound tradition,” on the “hermeneutic of continuity” that Pope Benedict sought, and ultimately on the restoration of Summorum Pontificum as the best practical, pastoral path to liturgical peace.