For Cardinals in Consistory This Week: Mending Wall, by Robert Royal

By Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, January 5, 2026

Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century, Columbus and the Crisis of the West , and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

Pope Leo has summoned the world’s Cardinals to a Consistory this week, a return to normal practice that was mostly sidelined for the past dozen years in favor of “synodal” gatherings. So now that the Jubilee Year has concluded, the current pope is doing something new – and old – in any event, a departure from his predecessor’s ways, in the very first days of 2026. What might that mean?

A Consistory is an opportunity for Cardinals to be real collaborators with the Holy Father, to speak with him – and with one another – about a globe-spanning divine mission. What they discuss and how it influences Leo’s papacy can set the course of the Church over the next decade and more. And there’s much that needs saying, and let’s pray will be, beyond the tired journalistic obsessions with immigration, climate, LGBTs, women. Because a chilling question faces us, pointedly now, which a Certain Person raised long ago: “But when the Son of Man comes [again], will he find faith on earth?”…

Continue reading  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>