What happened?

Pope Francis has announced 13 new cardinals, 10 of them under 80 and so able to vote for his eventual successor. In his unexpected announcement following the Angelus on Sunday, the Pope said that his choices expressed “the missionary vocation of the Church that continues to proclaim the merciful love of God to all men and women of the earth”.

The picks generated a predict­ably polar­ised resp­onse, with many praising them, while some deplored their alleged liberalism.

What the Catholic media are saying