CITY OF SAN FERNANDO---Kapampangan Bishop Pablo Virgilio "Among Ambo" David was appointed cardinal of the Catholic Church on Sunday, October 6, 2024.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) News said Bishop David is among the 21 new cardinals of the Church named by Pope Francis.
With the Kapampangan bishop from Asia are Archbishop Tarciso Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo, Bishop Paskalis Syukur of Bogor in Indonesia, and Archbishop Dominique Joseph Mathieu of Teheran-Ispahan in Iran.
The other appointees were heads of major dioceses in South America and Europe, would help Pope Francis as the Bishop of Rome, and will one day take part in electing his successor, in a future conclave wherein 122 of the 236 cardinals under 80 years old will vote .
Bishop David, 65, will join the group of active Filipino cardinals, which includes Cardinal Jose Advincula of Manila and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who is serving in the Vatican.
The country’s other living cardinals are Gaudencio Rosales, archbishop emeritus of Manila, and Orlando Quevedo, archbishop emeritus of Cotabato.
Since both are over 80 years old, they can no longer take part in choosing a new pope, the CBCP explained in the report.
Bishop David was born in Betis, Pampanga, the same town of the first Kapampangan cardinal, Rufino Cardinal Santos of Guagua.
He was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of San Fernando in 1983.
In 2006, Bishop David was named auxiliary bishop of San Fernando, then became the bishop of the Kalookan diocese in 2015.
He was elected CBCP president in 2021 and re-elected in 2023, and in February this year was elected the next vice president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, a post he will officially assume in January 2025.
A priest for 41 years and a bishop for 18 years, Bishop David is one of the Philippines' leading biblical scholars, holding a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.
He is currently in Rome, leading the CBCP delegation at the second session of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality, which runs until October 27.
The new cardinals will be installed on December 8, 2024 at the Vatican in a ceremony called a consistory, which coincides with the Solemnity of Immaculate Conception.