Pope Francis’ Dec. 7 consistory where he will create 21 new cardinals touches on sensitive points on the geopolitical chessboard.  

Three particular situations are worth monitoring: the relationship with Serbia, which also considers a possible relationship with Moscow; the Ukrainian question, on which Pope Francis has sent a signal, and the Middle Eastern context.  

Serbia 

Giving the red hat to Belgrade Archbishop Ladislav Nemet strengthens the Catholic hierarchy in Serbia, a country with a majority Orthodox population. Serbia’s first cardinal could pave the way for Pope Francis’ first trip to the country. 

So far, a papal trip to Serbia has been prevented, mainly due to possible tensions with the local Orthodox Church. One of the tensions concerned the possible canonization of Croatian Cardinal Aloizije Stepinac (1898–1960), considered by the Orthodox to be a Nazi collaborator. To overcome the differences, Pope Francis established a mixed commission of Catholic-Orthodox experts, which met between 2016 and 2017 and concluded that the differences remained. Pope Francis then in 2019, returning from his trip to Bulgaria and Macedonia, closed the doors to canonization, recalling that Cardinal Stepinac was already beatified. 

Pope Francis has always emphasized his esteem for Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Irenej. Irenej died in 2020 and was replaced by Patriarch Porfirije; thus, contact between the Holy See and Serbia continued. There has been talk of a trip by the Pope to the country since 2014; in recent years, there was even talk of a committee for the trip already established, while Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister, visited the country in 2021 as did Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state, in 2024. 

Archbishop Nemet is vice president of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE), which brings together the presidents of the bishops’ conferences of 33 European states. During the CCEE plenary session in Belgrade last June, he organized a meeting of the body’s members with Patriarch Porfirije. 

In addition to signaling interest in a trip to Serbia, the appointment builds a bridge with the Serbian Orthodox Church, which would also be a step toward the Moscow Patriarchate, which has long had close ties with the Serbian Church. 

The question of the legitimacy of Kosovo remains in relations between the states. The Holy See has never recognized Kosovo, formerly part of Yugoslavia, although it maintains good relations and has established an apostolic delegate in Pristina in the person of the nuncio in Slovenia. Kosovo has recently opened a liaison office with the Holy See in Rome. This is a complex situation because Serbia could never accept formal recognition of the country. 

However, Serbian interest is strong, and there is already talk of ecumenical initiatives in Rome or Belgrade to continue the friendship and consider a first-time trip of the Pope to Belgrade. 

 Iran 

Last Nov. 20, Pope Francis, meeting the participants of the XII Colloquium of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue with the Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue of Tehran, stated, “The fate of the Catholic Church in Iran, a ‘small flock,’ is very close to my heart. And the Church is not against the government, no, these are lies!” 

The Pope’s choice to create Cardinal Josep Mathieu, archbishop of Tehran — Ispahan of the Latins — demonstrates his interest in Iran. 

The Holy See has looked to Iran’s government as an interlocutor since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza. On Nov. 5, 2023, Pope Francis had a telephone conversation with President al Raisi — who later died in a helicopter crash on May 19, 2024. 

The president himself had requested the meeting, and Iranian statements stressed that Iran had always appreciated Pope Francis’s calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

Before the telephone call between the Pope and al Raisi on Oct. 30, 2023, Archbishop Gallagher had a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Amir Abdollahian on Iranian request. The Holy See Press Office, on this occasion, took charge of the communication, underlining that “in the conversation, Archbishop Gallagher expressed the Holy See’s serious concern for what is happening in Israel and Palestine, reiterating the absolute necessity of avoiding the widening of the conflict and of reaching a two-state solution for a stable and lasting peace in the Middle East.” 

Every word of the statement was carefully considered. In particular, the reference to the two-state solution underlined that the Holy See would never accept, even as an eventuality, the non-existence of the State of Israel. 

Archbishop Gallagher and Amir Abollahian met on Sept. 25, 2023, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. On that occasion, Iran urged the Holy See to form an alliance of religions against the profanation of sacred texts.  

Archbishop Gallagher, for his part, expressed appreciation for the new dialogue in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In general, the Holy See has always favored the development of relations between the countries of the Middle East, looking favorably on the approaches between Saudi Arabia and Israel and on the so-called Abraham Accords. 

The Holy See also favored the Iran nuclear deal, which it hoped would be a model for similar deals in the Middle East. When President Donald Trump decided to abandon the deal in 2018, the Holy See expressed concern over the potential instability caused in the region by an increasingly isolated Iran. 

By creating a cardinal in Tehran, Pope Francis is not only extending a helping hand to the small local flock, which also experiences difficult situations — for example, in 2021, an Italian nun, Sister Giuseppina Berti, was refused a visa renewal after 26 years of service in the leper colony in Tabriz.  

Pope Francis also wants to demonstrate a presence in the region, balancing the forces from an ecclesial point of view. The presence of a red hat in Tehran counters the presence of a red hat in Jerusalem. In 2023, Pope Francis created the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a cardinal. His appointment added weight to the patriarch’s office, which is demonstrated by the fact that the governments of the Latin Patriarchate also celebrated his cardinalate. 

 Ukraine 

Pope Francis has never failed to appeal for peace in Ukraine. In this conference, he will create Cardinal Mykola Bychok, the eparch of Sts. Peter and Paul in Melbourne, for Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Australia. 

Eparch Bychok’s choice is peculiar. Pope Francis did not want to create the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, a cardinal, even though Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Archbishop Shevchuk’s predecessor, was. 

Pope Francis knows Archbishop Shevchuk well. Before becoming head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, he was an eparch in Buenos Aires. Archbishop Shevchuk, for his part, has always shown great respect for the Pope, reserving, however, the right to highlight some critical positions taken by the Holy Father. 

This did not happen only during the conflict in Ukraine. Archbishop Shevchuk, for example, highlighted some problems in the text of the Havana Declaration, signed in 2016 by Pope Francis and Moscow Patriarch Kirill, stressing that the declaration accepted only the Russian point of view in some passages. 

Since the beginning of the war, Archbishop Shevchuk has been on the front lines, with messages addressed to the people, first daily and now monthly. He is obviously an easy target. Many, especially the Russian side, accuse him of excessive nationalism. 

Pope Francis does not want to irritate Moscow, so he maintains a relationship with them. At the same time, he does not wish to withhold support for Ukraine. Hence, he chose Eparch Bychok, the youngest of the cardinals and leader of a very small flock of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. 

In short, the Pope went to the outskirts to pick a Ukrainian cardinal to avoid the possible conflict that would have been created in the center. 

Eparch Bychok’s creation as a cardinal allows the Holy See to continue good relations with Ukraine and, at the same time, not be under Moscow’s pressure. The downside is that Archbishop Shevchuk could lose authority at home, not so much from a religious point of view — he is a major archbishop, but it is practically as if he were a patriarch for his Church — but from a political point of view. 

How these situations develop will be interesting to watch.