World's youngest cardinal says he comes from a young church

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Cardinal-designate Mykola Bychok said he hopes the characteristics that make him unique in the College of Cardinals will benefit the Catholic Church and the Ukrainian people.

On the eve of receiving his red hat from Pope Francis and becoming, at 44, the world’s youngest cardinal, Bishop Bychok told reporters Dec. 6 that his age is not that unusual in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to which he belongs.

Cardinal-designate Bishop Mykola Bychok, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne, Australia, poses for a photo after speaking with reporters at the Vatican Dec. 6, 2024, about the significance of his youth, his Ukrainian heritage and his role as an Eastern-rite Catholic. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

For 70 years the Ukrainian church was outlawed and persecuted under the Soviet Union’s communist regime. Bishops, priests, religious and lay faithful were martyred, jailed or sent to Siberian gulags, he said. The faithful kept the church alive in the underground, and full freedom came only with Ukrainian independence in 1991.

“For that reason, our church is a young church,” Bishop Bychok said. “Many Ukrainian bishops, they are about my age, which is not bad. I think that is good for the future of the church, because we would like to have a young church.”

The cardinal-designate has led the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne, Australia, since 2021. Before that, he spent five years at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic parish in Newark, New Jersey. A Redemptorist, he also has ministered in Siberia and in his native Ukraine.

Asked by a reporter if he sees as part of his role speaking to Pope Francis on behalf of Ukrainians, Bishop Bychok said, “The main task of a cardinal is to be close to the church, to be close to the pope, to share my experience,” which includes being Ukrainian and having family and friends living in the war-battered nation, but also includes sharing his experience of the church in Australia.

Cardinals are eligible to enter a conclave to elect a new pope until they reach the age of 80. That means Cardinal-designate Bychok, who will be 45 in February, will be eligible to vote for a new pope for the next 35 years.

With Pope Francis turning 88 years old Dec. 17, reporters asked several new cardinals what qualities they would look for in his successor.

Cardinal-designate Bychok said the most important quality is that he be “close to Christ because you know, if you are close to Christ, you are close to people.”

“The main task of not only the pope, but of cardinals and bishops is to have a really good connection with Christ,” he said. “Then after this prayer experience, there will be a really good connection with people.”

Of course, he said, popes, cardinals and bishops also must have a “strong foundation, which is the Holy Bible. Yes, we, as a church, we can proclaim the word of God in new ways, but there is a strong foundation, which is the Holy Bible, the 10 Commandments, Christian virtues, et cetera.”

At the same time, he said, the election of a pope “depends on God, because, yes, we are doing this election between cardinals, but actually God does it through us.”

The bishop also brings to the College of Cardinals his Eastern Catholic spirituality, but he is not the only one in the group of 21 new cardinals, he noted. Cardinal-designate George Jacob Koovakad, a papal diplomat who has organized Pope Francis’ foreign trips since 2021, is a member of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.

Rather than wearing a pectoral cross, Bishop Bychok wears around his neck what other Byzantine bishops do: an encolpion, which is a medallion with an icon in the center.

Meeting reporters Dec. 6, he wore an encolpion with an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The bishop is a member of the Redemptorist order, and in 1866 Pope Pius IX entrusted the ancient icon and devotion to the Redemptorists.

Having members of the Eastern churches in the College of Cardinals, Bishop Bychok said, is good for the whole church because, as “St. John Paul II said, the church breathes with two lungs, Eastern and Western.”