Vatican city: Pope Francis continues to make his mark on the group of churchmen who will choose his successor by announcing on Sunday that he has chosen 21 new cardinals, including prelates from Jerusalem and Hong Kong, where Catholics are a small minority.

During his weekly public appearance in St. Peter's Square, the pope made his selections known and stated that the ceremony to formally install the churchmen as cardinals will take place on September 30.

The pope recently appointed the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, 59, to head the Holy See's potent office for ensuring doctrinal orthodoxy and overseeing the processing of allegations of sexual abuse against clergy members worldwide. He is one of several prelates who currently hold or are about to assume major Vatican posts.

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The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Monsignor Pierbattista Pizzaballa, 58, and Hong Kong Bishop Stephen Sau-yan Chow, 64, are also among the new cardinals. Pizzaballa is the Vatican's top representative in the Middle East.

Those two clergymen lead flocks in geopolitical regions that the Vatican takes very seriously.

Pope Francis expressed hope that Israeli and Palestinian authorities would engage in "direct dialogue" to stop the "spiral of violence" on Sunday during remarks that came before he read out the list of new cardinals. He was making a reference to recent deadly clashes.

Francis has frequently brought up the struggles faced by the Middle Eastern Christian minority in recent years.

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Pizzaballa, an Italian prelate and the top Catholic churchman in the Holy Land, claimed in an interview with The Associated Press in April that the region's 2,000-year-old Christian community has come under increasing attack as a result of the most right-wing government in Israel's history emboldening extremists who have been harassing clergy and destroying religious property at an increasing rate.

Regarding China's insistence that it has the authority to name bishops and its imprisonment of priests who declared their loyalty to the pope, there have been tensions between the Vatican and China for decades, which have been followed by periods of improved relations.

The Jesuit bishop of Hong Kong, like Francis, made the country's mainland for the first time in nearly 30 years earlier this year.
The appointment of cardinals from different parts of the world, according to Francis, "expresses the universality of the Church that continues to announce the merciful love of God to all men of the Earth."

The pontiff receives advice from the cardinals on matters of administration and instruction, including the scandal-plagued finances of the Vatican. But their most important task is coming together in a covert conclave to choose the new pontiff.
In his ten years as pope, Francis has now named nine batches of new cardinals. 

He had already chosen the vast majority of those under 80 who were eligible to vote for the next pope before this most recent group. There are currently 137 cardinals who meet that requirement as of the most recent appointments.

That means that, in the event of Francis' resignation or death, more and more churchmen who support his values, priorities, and viewpoints and who share his outlook on the future of the church will vote for whoever succeeds him.

On the continent of Africa, where the Church has seen recent expansion, three of the churchmen selected to receive the cardinal red do their work. They are Monsignor Protase Rugambwa, 63, co-adjutor archbishop of Tabora, Tanzania; Monsignor Stephen Brislin, 66, archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa; and Monsignor Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, 59, archbishop of Juba, South Sudan, where the pope paid a visit earlier this year.

Francis chose Fernández to fill the position of a cardinal, which is customary. However, it was notable how quickly the La Plata archbishop was named a cardinal — eight days after the appointment — and it emphasises the importance the pontiff places on that position.

Francis made a "troubling" choice in selecting the Argentine archbishop, according to a US-based organisation that monitors how the Catholic hierarchy responds to claims of sexual abuse by clergy. That archbishop refused to believe victims who accused a priest in that archdiocese of abusing boys in 2019.

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The pope's selections on Sunday also included two other individuals who hold significant positions at the Vatican. They are Monsignor Claudio Gugerotti, an Italian, who is in charge of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, and Monsignor Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago native who oversees the Dicastery for Bishops. Additionally included are:

Another name on the list was Monsignor Americo Manuel Alves Aguiar, an auxiliary bishop from Lisbon, Portugal, where the pope will travel later this month for a Catholic youth festival. He is an unusually young cardinal at the age of 49.

Bishop of Penang, Malaysia, Monsignor Sebastian Francis, 71; Monsignor Francois-Xavier Bustillo, 54; Archbishops of Bogota, Colombia, Monsignor Luis Jose Rueda Aparicio, 71; and Lodz, Poland, Monsignor Grzegorz Rys, 59; all are Franciscans and are bishops of Ajaccio, on the French island of Corsica.

The first non-Italian to hold the position of papal ambassador to Italy and San Marino is Monsignor Emil Paul Tscherrig, a 76-year-old Swiss prelate; Monsignor Christopher Louis Yves Pierre, a 77-year-old Frenchman; and others.

The Rev. Angel Fernández Artime, 62, a Spaniard who serves as the rector major of the Salesians, a religious order of priests present in 133 nations, Monsignor Jose Cobo Cano, 57, and Monsignor Angel Sixto Rossi, 64, a Jesuit who serves as the archbishop of his native Cordoba, Argentina.

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In order to participate in a conclave, three of the new cardinals—out of the total of 21—must be 80 years old or younger. They are Luis Pascual Dri, 96, a Franciscan priest famous for hearing confessions in the pope's native Buenos Aires, Agostino Marchetto, 82, an Italian prelate who served as the top Vatican diplomat in Belarus, Madagascar, Mauritius, and Tanzania, and Monsignor Diego Rafael Padron Sanchez, 84.