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On Saturday, Pope Leo XIV brought an end to the second extraordinary consistory of his pontificate. Anyone expecting fireworks from the two-day business meeting of the Catholic Church’s cardinals has been very disappointed. That’s despite the fact that the SSPX – the splinter group of Catholics who are at best ambivalent toward the reforms of the Vatican Council II in the 1960s and staunchly adhere to the Traditional Latin Mass – is consecrating new bishops this week. The cardinals didn’t discuss the issue. The only real news was that Pope Leo plans on holding such a meeting of cardinals once a year and will announce the date of the 2027 meeting later this year. In his final address on Saturday, Leo said the consistory helps the pontiff to guide the Church and added it is “not a parliament [and] not a congress in which opinions or interests prevail.” The pontiff also spoke about synodality, which was the chief focus of the pontificate of his predecessor, Pope Francis. RELATED: At close of consistory, pope appeals for victims of Venezuela quake “The concluding reflection on the synodal journey has helped us reread what we have experienced over these past days,” Leo said in his closing remarks. “It seems to me that the question of synodality is not primarily: ‘Who has the power to decide?’,” Leo said. “The question is deeper,” he said: “How do we safeguard together the gift that the Lord has entrusted to his Church?” “When this question becomes the center of our discernment,” Leo continued, “then the issues of authority, co-responsibility, and decision-making also find their proper place, illuminated by the mission and our shared fidelity to the Gospel.” “Therefore,” the pontiff said, “I wish once again to entrust to you the path of implementing the Synod.” Leo urged the cardinals to support synodality and “an authentic understanding of it and encouraging everyone to take part in it.” He added that synodality “is not a series of meetings, nor a working method.” “It is a spiritual way of life,” he said, “born from encounter, grows through listening, and matures through discernment.” “The real question is not how many conversations we will be able to organize, but what evangelical quality our encounters will have,” Leo also said. “When we listen to one another with humility and freedom, making room for the Spirit,” the pontiff told the cardinals, “our conversations remain no mere exchange of ideas, but become a place of conversion, where together we grow in fidelity to the Lord.” All that may well be just what the cardinals needed to hear – whether they wanted to hear it is a separate question – but none of it is the stuff of crackling news headlines. It did show, however, that Pope Leo XIV intends to use the college of cardinals more than Pope Francis did. That raises a question: How does he intend to use it? For one thing, Leo has already held more extraordinary “business” consistories than his predecessor. As many members of the college noted before the conclave that elected Leo, the large number of cardinals – a record 133 voting cardinals took part – meaning the cardinals didn’t know each other very well and needed to meet more regularly. In 2025, several cardinals told Crux Now they were sidelined by the Synod of Bishops, given the college’s traditional role as the chief advisors to the pontiff. The other inside baseball news story was what didn’t happen: There were no new cardinals named. Right now, there are 117 cardinal electors. Another issue raised around the 2025 conclave that elected Leo was that the large number of voting cardinals made the business “mechanically” unwieldy, another issue on top of the red hats’ relative unfamiliarity with one another. Canon law says there should be no more than 120 cardinal electors, although pontiffs can put that to the side, as pretty much every pope since Paul VI has done. New pontiffs very rarely dismiss their predecessors’ Vatican officials, so Vatican watchers pay close attention to the names and profiles of the men to whom a new pontiff gives the red hat. It is often the chief way of appraising a new pope’s intentions. Since the 2025 conclave, the number of voting-age cardinals has dropped to 117. In a year’s time, Leo will have at least 9 new cardinal electors to name, in order to bring the number to 120. This year, Leo will have a lot to think about, as he considers what to do with the college and how to fill the roll – and define the role – of its members. Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome

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