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TRANSCRIPT
Hello! Quick note before we get started, first off, sorry that my voice is going to sound a little bit off for these next few cardinals, when I started the recording session, I was fine, now I am DEFINITELY feeling it, and am congested as all get out. But! The show does go on. Also, for those of you wondering what happened to the September edition of our worldbuilding episodes, well, it’s still September, cool your jets! In the end, what happened is my episode on the Gospel of John got to mammoth proportions and is basically going to be a double episode. I took to Patreon to see whether I should split it up in two to keep it released on time, or keep it as, you know, one Gospel, one episode, and the vote was one Gospel, one episode. So, mega, you know, two-hour long episode on the Gospel of John will be coming later this month. With that, let’s go!

*THEME*

Welcome to Cardinal Numbers, a rexypod ranking all the Cardinals of the Catholic Church we can get our hands on, from the Catacombs to Kingdom Come.

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.

Matteo Maria Zuppi was born on October 11, 1955 in Rome, Italy. I don't yet know whether for sure whether Rome is the most popular birthplace for Cardinals as one might suspect--, but I’ve got a growing certainty and it at least has to be up there. Accordingly, I want to start doing something a little different when we have cardinals born in Rome: let's assign them one of the 140 statues that top the collonades that frame Saint Peter's Square. Now, it's entirely possible that there might be more than 140 Rome-born Cardinals in history, and actually I can now update that to say I *know* that there are more than 140. And given that, we'll just simply find other statues in Rome after that, they're not exactly hard to come by.

Matteo's statue is Saint Leonard of Noblac, a 6th century founding abbot and hermit whose 10 foot 4 statue is probably a bit beyond lifesize and whose expression amused me enough that I immediately reached out to Pontifacts for comment.

But wait, Gregg, you say, because you are very observant, yes, good job, Matteo actually isn't our first Rome-born Cardinal, because, well first off he's not a Cardinal yet in our narrative he was literally just born but apart from that one of the very first Cardinals we talked about, Cardinal Lojudice, was also born in Rome. Which is why I assigned Matteo the *second* statue on the big list from stpetersbasilica.info, which, like every other link you might desire, can be found in the show notes. St Gallicanus was an early 4th century Roman senator, and possibly the first Christian Consul. His relics are at Rome in the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle.

Anyways, Matteo is the fifth of six children, and is the Great-grand nephew of Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri, who was elevated to the Cardinalate by Pope John XXIII a few months after his election in 1958. Though this is the first time we've had someone who we can confirm is a relative of another cardinal, it certainly won't be the last–the Roman Curia basically invented nepotism, after all.

That's not to say, by any means, that Matteo himself is lacking in credentials, as we'll see. While he was a high school student, he came across fellow Roman male Andrea Riccardi, who, at the venerable age of eighteen, founded a lay association dedicated to community service. In 1973 when Matteo came in contact with them the community had just moved into the Church of Sant'Egidio in Rome, which would give them their name: the Community of Sant’Egidio. From homeless children to AIDS patients to the elderly, from immigrants to addicts to prisoners, the Community of Sant’Egidio serves the poor and marginalized, and it's fair to say Matteo fell in with the right crowd in his youth.

After his first batch of higher education at La Sapienza University in Rome, where he specialized in Literature and Philosophy, Matteo entered into seminary studies with the Suburbicarian Diocese of Palestrina. I don't know that I've really gone into what a Suburbicarian Diocese is yet but the “suburb” part is a big hint, it's a diocese centered on one of the communities on the outskirts of Rome, in this case, Palestrina, and yes, that's the hometown of a famous composer if that rings a bell.

His se minary studies also included work at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, and then after his 1981 ordination he did yet further study at yet *another* institution of higher education in the Eternal City, this time obtaining a doctorate in letters and philosophy from the University of Rome with a thesis on the History of Christianity–a man after my own heart.

As a priest, Matteo–now Fr. Zuppi–served as vice-pastor of Santa Maria in Trastevere for nearly two decades until he became that parish's full-on pastor in 2000, a role he held until 2010. Of course this is the story of a future Cardinal who I've already told you is plenty qualified, so it won't surprise you to know that that's not all he was doing, not by a long shot. He simultaneously served as Rector of the church of Santa Croce alla Lungara from 1983 to 2012, and continued his association with the Community of Sant’Egidio, which had added the related fields of peacemaking end ecumenism to their portfolio–not as an afterthought either, but as a strong emphasis, as in Fr. Zuppi and the Community were instrumental in negotiations that ended a long civil war in Mozambique in 1992. As in, he was made an honorary citizen of that country by way of thanks, alongside Sant’Egidio founder Andrea Riccardi, popping up again.

While he was originally a priest of the Suburbicarian Diocese of Palestrina, astute listeners may have already noted that, much like the universities, all the parishes I've mentioned, including Sant'Egidio, are in Rome. It's fine, it's fine, he was incardinated into the Diocese of Rome back in ‘88, a sentence which gives me the opportunity to go on both a tangent about how the word inCARDinate is tied to the word CARDinal, both having a fundamental sense of a stationary position around which other things move, and also allows me to note that yeah, it's weird to call Rome a Diocese but in the end yup, officially Rome is a Diocese, rather than an archdiocese or Patriarchate or whatever you might expect. Of course it still acts as a metropolitan and as the principal see, but I expect it's tied to the whole first shall be last humility themed angle, servant of the servants of God sort of thing. And that’s not to say that bishops of Rome aren’t jealous of their status as the principle See of the entire world.

Anyways, Fr. Zuppi might be a good person to ask more about how all of that works, if you can get ahold of him with all else he has going on, because in 2012 his white phone rang and Pope Benedict made him an Auxiliary Bishop of Rome and titular bishop of Villanova. Rome has a bunch of auxiliaries, currently 7 by that specific title, presumably because the Church loves her numerology, and a few more bishops that help run things at something of a higher level with titles like Vicar General and Viceregent. Bishop Zuppi would not stay in the Diocese of Rome for much longer though, because in 2015 he was made the new Archbishop of Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of what I think it's fair to call central north Italy.

As a pastor, Father–scratch that–Bishop–scratch that–Archbishop Zuppi has continued along the lines of emphasis he honed working with the Community of Sant’Egidio, focusing on real Pope Francis style stuff like the poor and marginalized. He authored books published in 2010, 2013, and 2019 on what I am told are “pastoral themes”, so stuff like that, but he's best known because of his personal involvement in one of the most hot-button of hot-button issues in the modern Church: LGBT issues. In 2017 American Jesuit priest Father James Martin wrote a book called Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity, which is pretty much what it sounds like. The next year, it was none other than Archbishop Zuppi who wrote a forward to the Italian edition, saying it was, quote “useful for encouraging dialogue, as well as reciprocal knowledge and understanding, in view of a new pastoral attitude that we must seek together with our L.G.B.T. brothers and sisters". He also noted that it would quote "help L.G.B.T. Catholics feel more at home in [I accidentally said “with”, my bad] what is, after all, their church", end quote, and it's worth noting that that second quotation was actually Archbishop Zuppi quoting Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, so it's not like he was a lone voice in praising Father Martin's work.

Of course, I called this a hot-button issue, so praise was not universal. Many see Fr. Martin's work as an attempt to undermine Catholic teaching on gender and sexuality, despite Fr Martin's assurances that it is no such thing, and I admit Father Martin is even more comfortable pushing boundaries than I am, which is saying something. We'll see more conservative takes on this topic as we go, don't worry, this is not the last time we'll talk LGBT+ issues in the Church, but I've accidentally made this the longest episode of Cardinal Numbers to date so we should move on.

In 2019, Pope Francis made Archbishop Zuppi a Cardinal-Priest, assigning him a very special newly minted titular church, Sant’Egidio.

Since his elevation to the cardinalate, Cardinal Zuppi has gained more hats! In 2020 he was made a member of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, and i n 2022, Pope Francis selected him as head of the Italian Bishop's Conference. In 2023 he was appointed as a justice of the Vatican City State Supreme Court, which took effect earlier this year, that’s 2024 for archive listeners. And that's before we get to the Dicasteries, which we're just going to have to save for another day.

Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2035.

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!

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