Canada’s Gen X cardinal-elect says younger red-hat cohort brings ‘perspective of engagement’

John Lavenburg/Crux • October 23, 2024 at 4:30 pm

While Cardinal-elect Francis Leo’s upcoming promotion from Archbishop of Toronto isn’t necessarily a surprise – a cardinal has led the Archdiocese of Toronto for all but eight years since 1934 – one thing that’s unique about his elevation is his age.

When the 53-year-old Canadian archbishop officially becomes a cardinal on 8 December, he will be one of the nine youngest in that position among a total of 256 cardinals – eight of whom were born in the 1970s. Leo said that those eight bring to the College of Cardinals a unique worldview from growing up in that decade and then through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

“What went on in the world at that time has influenced our lives and our faith journey,” the cardinal-elect says. “Be it growing up with the Pontificate of John Paul II…the advent of computers, technology and the internet, for example, and the world village [aspect] and the interconnectedness that we grew up with; I think it brings a perspective of engaging with the world.”

It also brings, he adds, a perspective of not being scared of the world, and not kneeling before the world; but instead “humbly with gospel boldness dealing with matters and the challenges of a secular culture in which we were born and raised in”.

The cardinal-elect said that he wasn’t given any heads up that he could be selected to become a cardinal, admitting he found out after a wave of congratulations messages led him to search his name online, where he ultimately saw confirmation of the news.

Right after that, Leo said, he went to pray.

“My initial reaction was shock, surprise and then going through my mind what this means for my ministry here in Toronto and for the universal Church, and so I did an act of faith to the Lord, reaffirming my desire to serve him all of the days of my life and to serve him in this new way now,” he says. “It’s an honour, on one hand, but it’s really a service that we’re called to give, and our whole life is one of service…and this is just another dimension of our life as servants of the Lord and of the Church.”

Leo said his first priority remains the Archdiocese of Toronto and serving the people there, though he expects he will be busier with his role as an advisor to Pope Francis. Beyond himself, he said his elevation signifies the archdiocese’s closeness to Rome.

“There’s an even greater dimension to who we are as Church in Toronto since we are now profoundly linked, even in this way, through the cardinalate to the rest of the world, to the rest of the dioceses, and with Rome. There’s a universal aspect, and there’s a unity with the Apostolic See aspect,” Leo said.

His elevation continues what has been a meteoric rise through the episcopacy. 26 years after he was ordained a priest in 1996, Leo’s episcopal ordination to serve as an auxiliary bishop of Montreal occurred in 2022. The next year, he was appointed and installed as the Archbishop of Toronto, succeeding Cardinal Thomas Collins who had led the archdiocese since 2007.

Of the 21 new cardinals, Leo is the only one from North America.

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Leo said he has received no explanation on the reason for his elevation, but noted that Toronto almost always has a cardinal, and that it’s Canada’s largest diocese. He also speculated that his elevation is “perhaps a vote of confidence for the Canadian Church that Pope Francis wanted to highlight”.

“It’s hard to read the mind of the Holy Father because no explanation was given, but Toronto is the biggest diocese in the country, and it is a multicultural reality where the face of Catholicism is changing thanks to the new Canadians and how fervent they are,” Leo said.

Toronto, like many other cities in Canada and the United States, has experienced a demographic shift in recent years amid an influx of immigrants from many different countries. In fact, according to a report from the Toronto Metropolitan University this past summer, Toronto’s population is the fastest growing of any city in Canada and the United States.

Leo said the response to immigrants is one of the biggest challenges the Canadian Church faces. Other challenges the cardinal-elect cited, which are common across the west, include homelessness in certain areas, addiction, the breakdown of the family unit, abortion and “overall how Catholics are living their faith”. Euthanasia in particular is another challenge that the cardinal-elect cited.

All of the above fall in one way or another under the umbrella of what he said is the ultimate challenge in Canada, as well as a global challenge for the Church: secularism.

“Though the Church has always been such a great part of my life, nonetheless, we live in this very secularised culture, and that sort of colours how you proclaim Christ to the world today, knowing that the world is secular, and therefore [takes] ‘x, y, z’ in its stances,” Leo said.

He added that this has also led to “beautiful things”, by “[g]rowing up [through this] age in a Church where we have come to understand on a deeper level the vocation to holiness, the universal call to holiness thanks to Vatican II, the place of the laity in the Church to collaborate and be co-responsible with the clergy, for example”.

Combating secularism, Leo says, means getting back to the basics of the gospel of Jesus and living a life of service.

“Authenticity, fidelity to the gospel, to holy mother Church. Humility. Not fear because we rely on the Holy Spirit who is the soul of the Church. The gift of self. Every day we are called to go beyond and keep making our lives a gift to the Lord, to the world, to others,” Leo says.

“Attentive to what the world is saying, and trying to respond with the greatest gift we have, that of faith and that of Jesus.

“Avoiding the trappings of polarisation, divisions, but bringing the beauty of the gospel, the truth and the goodness of God, and building communion, never division.”

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Photo collage: Images of Cardinal-elect Francis Leo in his role as Archbishop of Toronto; screenshot from archtoronto.org.