Pope Francis has announced a Consistory to create 21 new Cardinals on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. One of the new cardinals will be Conventual Franciscan Dominique Joseph Mathieu, the Belgium-born Archbishop of Tehran. Archbishop Mathieu was ordained a bishop in 2021. Prior to that, he held the position of Assistant General for Centralis Europae Foederatio (CEF – Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland) within the Order of Friars Minor Conventual.
In an interview in March of 2021, Archbishop Mathieu said that once he became a religious, he “almost always felt affinity with the Islamic world.” He also talked about his Diocese of Teheran as territorially large with approximately two thousand Roman Catholics. “It is a small but important flock, with which we share a thousand-year-old cultural and spiritual legacy, one which encourages us to live together by praying for and helping each other.”
Pope Francis asks, “Let’s pray for the new Cardinals, that by confirming their adherence to Christ, the merciful and faithful High Priest, they may help me in my ministry as Bishop of Rome for the good of all God’s holy people.”
(To learn more about Archbishop Mathieu, please visit our Order’s website: ofm.net)
