Writing to new cardinals, pope urges them to be compassionate shepherds

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis asked the new members of the College of Cardinals to cultivate a sense of prayer and closeness with God's people, so they remain at the service of the church and their flocks.

In a letter addressed to the 21 new cardinals, who will receive their red hats at a consistory Dec. 7, Pope Francis asked that they "make every effort as a Cardinal to embody the three attitudes with which an Argentinean poet -- Francisco Luis Bernárdez -- once characterized Saint John of the Cross," namely: "eyes raised, hands joined, feet bare."

The cardinals must raise their eyes because "your service will require you to lengthen your gaze and broaden your heart, in order to see farther and to love more expansively and with greater fervor," the pope wrote in the letter dated Oct. 6, the day he announced the new cardinals, and made public by the Vatican Oct. 12.

He asked the new cardinals to have their hands joined in prayer "to be able to shepherd well the flock of Christ."

"Prayer is the realm of discernment that helps me to seek and discover God's will for our people, and to follow it," he wrote.

The pope then encouraged the new cardinals to keep their feet bare so that "they touch the harsh realities of all those parts of the world overwhelmed by the pain and suffering due to war, discrimination, persecution, hunger and many forms of poverty; these will demand from you great compassion and mercy."

Pope Francis thanked the new cardinals for their generosity of spirit and wrote that he prays that the title of "servant," received by all ordained ministers in the diaconate, "will increasingly eclipse that of 'eminence,'" referring to the formal title used for cardinals.

The 21 cardinals-designate hail from 18 nations. Eight of the cardinals come from Europe, five from Latin America, five from Asia, two from Africa and just one from North America -- Archbishop Francis Leo of Toronto. They range in age from 99 to 44 years old.