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Although the primary responsibility of the College of Cardinals is to elect a pope (see the earlier section “How the pope gets his job”), cardinals have many other responsibilities as well. The Roman Curia is the whole group of administrators (Cardinal Prefects) who head up their departments (congregations, tribunals, and so on), working together as the right hand of the pope. The pope governs through the Roman Curia, something like cabinet members who assist the president or department ministers who assist the prime minister. For example, a Cardinal Secretary of State represents the Holy See to foreign governments, because Vatican City is the world’s smallest independent country. And you can find a different cardinal heading up each congregation, such as the Congregation for

 Doctrine of the Faith

 Bishops

 Catholic Education

 Causes of the Saints

 Clergy

 Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments

 Evangelization of Peoples

 Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life

 Oriental Churches

A different cardinal also heads up each of several commissions and councils, as well as three high courts of the Catholic Church: the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Apostolic Signatura, and the Roman Rota, all of which deal with canon law (see Chapter 11) and its application and interpretation.

Cardinals who don’t work in the Curia run an archdiocese, mostly functioning as an archbishop would — ordaining, confirming, and doing the day-to-day business of being chief shepherd of the archdiocese. These cardinals are also often the metropolitans, which means that they supervise the province of two to several dioceses, usually all in the same state or region. (We define archdiocese and diocese in the next section.) A metropolitan doesn’t have immediate authority over neighboring bishops or their dioceses even though they’re within the cardinal archbishop’s province as metropolitan.

A metropolitan does report to Rome, however, if one of the bishops in his province is derelict in his duties, commits scandal or crime, and so on. Often, the apostolic nuncio, the papal ambassador to that country, consults with the cardinal when vacancies appear in his province, as in the case of a bishop dying or retiring. For example, the Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia is the Metropolitan for Pennsylvania, which incorporates the eight dioceses of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Harrisburg, Scranton, Allentown, Greensburg, and Altoona-Johnstown.

The pope personally selects the men who become cardinals. The ceremony where new cardinals are created is called a consistory, and it usually occurs every few years to replace those who have retired (or will soon retire), as well as those who have died since the last consistory. This way, the goal of 120 cardinal electors is more likely achieved should the pope die, in which case a conclave is called to elect a new pope. Since the pontificate of St. John Paul II, a concerted effort has been made to have a diverse spectrum of cardinals from all continents and from both Latin and Eastern Catholic Rites.