ROME – Several new cardinals elevated by Pope Francis on Saturday have said they want their service to focus on promoting peace and facilitating a return to Christ through prayer and evangelization.

Speaking to journalists after the Dec. 7 consistory Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in which he got his red hat from Pope Francis, Cardinal Francis Leo of Toronto said his appointment was a “great surprise and shock,” and that he was not expecting the news at all.

“I went to kneel in front of the Blessed Sacrament,” he said. “If this was being asked, I gave my fiat like the Blessed Mother,” he said, expressing his willingness “to serve Jesus and the Church and his kingdom.”

Asked what he believes the Church’s biggest needs are, Leo said, “We need to get back to the basics in proclaiming Jesus and his Gospel in a clear way, a loving way, to help people come to know the person of Jesus, to belong to him and to live with him and in him.”

“Everything else will flow from the relationship with Jesus, which is a walk of faith,” he said, saying the Virgin Mary is “the one who helps us most” to proclaim Jesus.

“No one knows him and loves him and follows him more faithfully than her, so taking her lead and following her footsteps, speaking to people, proposing Jesus as the way, the truth and the life, there’s nothing more. Everything else will flow from that connection, that relationship with Jesus,” he said.

Leo also touched on the issue of secularization in Canada, and in society as a whole, saying there is a need for believers to learn the various kinds of prayer in the Church, and to begin praying sincerely.

He stressed the need for “strong families and strong parish communities, with a missionary aspect.”

“We know that our faith is nourished, and we pray, but how can we bring other people into the Church? We need to keep asking ourselves that question and try to find creative ways of reaching out to others and bringing them to Jesus, bringing Jesus to them,” he said.

English Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, who preached throughout the pope’s two Rome-based sessions of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality, and who is over 80 and thus not eligible to vote in the next conclave, said he has no specific vision for his new role as a cardinal, but is waiting for God to show him how to serve.

Radcliffe, a former master of the Dominican order, told journalists Saturday that “I have to discover where it has to happen, and how it has to happen.”

“You can’t arrive with a plan, you wait and see the moments that God gives you, so you have to let yourself be surprised. You never know beforehand what it is that you’re asked to do,” he said.

In terms of how he sees his role as a cardinal, Radcliffe said he thinks it is “to create conversation in the Church.”

“The process of synodality is with us to the end, we have much to learn, we’re just at the beginning. When Cardinal [Carlo Maria] Martini was dying, he said the Church is just at the beginning,” he said.

Speaking to journalists after getting his red hat, Cardinal Mykola Bychok of the Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul of Melbourne of the Ukrainians, who at 44 is now the Catholic Church’s youngest cardinal, said he wants his elevation to send a message of peace.

A native of Ukraine who once served as a missionary in Russia and who has been posted in Australia since 2021, said that as the world’s youngest Catholic cardinal, “the pope has something in his mind” with the appointment.

“To be young is good, but on the other hand, it is a big responsibility, to be a cardinal for the Universal Church, for the Ukrainian Church, because I was born in Ukraine, as well as for the Australian Church,” he said.

Referring to his time as a missionary in Russia, Bychok said his main reason for doing so was to preserve the lasting legacy of the mass persecution of Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Soviet-era Russia, many of whom died in gulags in Siberia.

These faithful were sentenced to death, he said, because “they believed in God, because they did not agree with the Communist regime, so for that reason, many bishops, priests, religions and lay people, they were martyrs.”

Bychok said the message he wants to send to the world with his elevation as a cardinal is that Ukrainians “are looking for just peace, where Russia as the aggressor will be punished, and Ukraine, who is the victim of this war, will be justified.”

“At the end of the day, when we have a just peace, there will be peace around the world. When we find only simple peace, it will be the same as what happened after the occupation of Crimea, which means the war was frozen only for a few years, and with new forces started again,” he said.

Asked whether his appointment was a sign to Ukrainians that the pope was fundamentally on their side, Bychok said he didn’t know what the pope had in mind.

“Maybe the future will open a little bit, for which reason I was nominated as a cardinal, the youngest cardinal, and especially not only for the Ukrainian Church and the Australian Church, but also for the Universal Church. But at least there is a small light of hope in this nomination,” he said.

Pope Francis in his consistory Mass Saturday cautioned his 21 new red hat recipients to not be “dazzled by the allure of prestige, the seduction of power, by an overly human zeal for the Lord.”

“We need to look within, to stand before God in humility and before ourselves in sincerity, and ask: Where is my heart going?” he said, saying they should always put Jesus at the center of their hearts, cultivate a “passion for encounter” with others, and strive to build communion and unity.

Francis noted that among Jesus’s disciples, “the worm of competition” sought to destroy unity, “while the path that Jesus walked was leading him to Calvary.”

“On the cross, he fulfilled the mission entrusted to him, that none be lost, that the dividing wall of hostility be finally broken down, and that all might see themselves as children of the same Father and as brothers and sisters of one another,” he said.

For this reason, the pope said, “the Lord is looking to you, who come from different backgrounds and cultures, and represent the catholicity of the Church. He is calling you to be witnesses of fraternity, artisans of communion and builders of unity.”

“Love one another with fraternal love and be servants to one another, servants of the Gospel,” he said.

During Sunday’s Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, celebrated alongside the new cardinals, Pope Francis highlighted Mary’s role as a daughter, a bride, and a mother.

He urged believers to look to Mary “and ask her to conquer us through her loving Heart.”

“May she convert us and make us a community in which filial, spousal and maternal love may be a rule and criterion of life. Only then will families be united, will spouses truly share everything, will parents be physically present and close to their children,” he said.

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