Cardinal (Roman Catholic Church)

In the Roman Catholic Church, a cardinal is a senior cleric appointed by the pope. Cardinals assist the pope in governing the universal Church and, when a papal vacancy occurs, elect his successor.

A Cardinal in Profile, 1880, by Jehan Georges Vibert

Cardinals are normally bishops, but they do not have to be. Canon law requires a prospective cardinal to be at least a priest; a priest who is not already a bishop is ordinarily to receive episcopal consecration, though a pope may dispense him from that requirement.

The word cardinal derives from the Latin cardo, meaning “hinge”. The title developed from the senior clergy of Rome, on whom the government of the Church was understood to turn.

A cardinal is addressed as “Your Eminence”. His scarlet dress and biretta have produced the expression “receiving the red hat”.

Pope Innocent IV granted cardinals the red hat in 1245, at the First Council of Lyon. The broad-brimmed red galero once used in the ceremony was discontinued in 1969, but the phrase “red hat” remains.

All cardinals together form the College of Cardinals. It is divided into three orders: cardinal bishops, cardinal priests and cardinal deacons.

Under Universi Dominici Gregis, only cardinals who have not reached their 80th birthday before the day a papacy becomes vacant may vote in a conclave. The constitution sets 120 as the normal maximum number of cardinal electors, although popes have at times exceeded it.

New York Archbishop John McCloskey became the first American cardinal when Pope Pius IX created him cardinal on March 15, 1875.

Jaime Sin, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, was made a cardinal in 1976. The coincidence of his surname and rank made “Cardinal Sin” one of the best-known titles in the Church; he was reported to greet visitors with the joke, “Welcome to the house of Sin.”

Following allegations of sexual abuse, former Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals on July 28, 2018 . It was the first resignation from the College since 1927; he was later dismissed from the clerical state.

Cardinals of the priestly and diaconal orders are each assigned a titular church or deaconry in Rome. The arrangement preserves the College’s historical connection with the clergy of the Diocese of Rome, even when a cardinal’s day-to-day work is elsewhere.

Since 1059, cardinals have held the decisive role in choosing popes. The modern College took shape in the Middle Ages from the bishops of the dioceses around Rome, the priests of Rome’s principal churches and the city’s deacons.

The historical practice of a pope making a nephew a cardinal helped give English the word “nepotism”. The role of cardinal-nephew was suppressed by Pope Innocent XII in 1692.

Pope Sixtus V fixed the College at 70 members in 1586, a ceiling that lasted until Pope John XXIII expanded the number in the late 1950s.

The most recent papal conclave, in May 2025, was the first held with more than 120 eligible cardinal electors: 135 were entitled to vote after the Vatican acknowledged that Pope Francis had dispensed with the usual numerical limit.