If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.

Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.

Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.

John RIBAT was born on February 9, 1957, in Volavolo, archdiocese of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. As you may know, Papua New Guinea is an island nation, making John our fourth island-born Cardinal in a row, though Volavolo isn't actually on the island of New Guinea, instead, it’s on the northern end of New Britain, the nation's second largest island.

Ecologically, New Britain is that classic Oceanic mix of tropical rainforest and volcanos, to the extent that Rabaul, the provincial capital where John went to high school, now by and large sits under several meters of volcanic ash after a 1994 eruption. Don't worry, John was class of 70-something.

After a bit of minor seminary preparation, John signed up with the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (M.S.C.)., a religious order founded in 1854 by a French priest. Of course, France is on the other side of the world from New Guinea, but “Missionaries” is right there in the name, and Rabaul and its volcano destroyed high school was actually their first oversees mission in 1882.

John did his first vows in 1979, and was ordained a priest for the Sacred Heart Missionaries in 1985. He did pastoral work for the next six years, then started serving as a master of novices after some supplemental training. He alternated those roles through the 90s, and in the year 2000 he was called up from his work- now in Fiji- to serve as the Auxiliary Bishop of Bereina on the main island in Papua New Guinea. In 2002 he dropped the Auxiliary part and became the full-on bishop of Bereina.

Spiritually, a strong majority of Papua New Guineans identify as Christian, with the Roman Catholics representing between a quarter and a third of the total population, depending on who you ask. Various forms of Protestantism make up a larger group when viewed collectively, though Catholicism is the largest single group. Though Christianity is dominant, traditional animist customs and ancestor worship are also common in the country operating under or sometimes on the surface.

In the case of the Bereina diocese, church records suggest a higher percentage of the local population is Catholic than the national average, over ⅔. In 2006 John Ribat was transferred to the capital see, running the Archdiocese of Port Moresby. According to my 2013 data, the first readily available during his tenure, the Archdiocese had 204,186 Catholics and, drumroll please, *six* diocesan priests. But old hands looking for a catch here have probably already called it, the keyword there is *diocesan* priests, as the Archdiocese also had a healthier total of 82 priests belonging to religious orders. Considering Archbishop Ribat is from a religious order himself, it's not too surprising, but it does draw attention to New Guinea's history as a significant focal point of the sort of missionary activity that missionary religious orders specialize in in recent years.

Things are shifting in a logical pattern–in 1990 religious priests outnumbered diocesan in New Guinea four to one. Twenty-seven years later, they reached parity, and since then diocesan clergy have been gradually outpacing religious clergy in a trend that I expect to continue, though of course predicting the future is hard and honestly I don't have deep enough data at the moment to be especially confident, a statistical breakdown of clergy by religious order is on my to-do list here.

Getting back to Archbishop Ribat, he was president of the Episcopal Conference of Papua New Guinea and Salomon Island from 2011 to 2014, and from 2014 to 2018 he was president of the Federation of the Conferences of the Catholic Bishops of Oceania (FCBCO).

In 2016, Archbishop Ribat was made a Knight of the British Empire, which took me by surprise since I had it in my head that the Papuans had rejected the British monarchy at independence, but nope, turns out they're a commonwealth country with Charles III as their Head of State and God Save the King as their Royal Anthem.

2016 was also the year when Archbishop Ribat became eligible for this episode, with Pope Francis elevating him to the College as a Cardinal-Priest with the title of San Giovanni Battista de’ Rossi–and yes that's a name church archeology fans will recognize but it's actually a 18th century priest and not the 19th century archeologist. I do seem to recall there is a connection between the two this time but I admit I've forgotten exactly what it was if so, either way I'm going to do a deeper dive on the titular churches and deaconries eventually so I'll get into that in more detail when we get there.

Cardinal Ribat is the first Cardinal from the Sacred Heart Missionaries and also the first Cardinal from Papua New Guinea.

In 2017, Pope Francis also added now-Cardinal Ribat to the Dicastery for the Service of the Integral Human Development, a role he has filled while continuing his service as the Archbishop of Port Moresby.

John Cardinal RIBAT is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2037.

Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers, and there will be more Cardinal Numbers next week. Thank you for listening; God bless you all! Thanks Joe!

Hey quick supplemental note from Gregg in case anyone's wondering, uh, yes, this was certainly recorded before we had the announcement of Pope Francis' upcoming trip to not only Papua New Guinea but also Indonesia, Timor Leste, that's East Timor, and Singapore. So he'll be on the road from September 2nd to September 13th of this year, which I believe is going to be his longest trip of his papacy. And then he's actually also going to be doing a quick European swingover to Luxembourg and Belgium from September 26th to the 29th so keep him in prayers for safe travels if you would be so kind, or, you know, thoughts if that's your thing, he's got a busy month ahead.

Comments (0)

To leave or reply to comments, please download free Podbean or

No Comments