Bishop Pablo David officially becomes a cardinal
Pope Francis has elevated Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio "Ambo" David as a cardinal.
David, along with 20 other new cardinals, were formally raised in a ceremony called an ordinary public consistory on Dec. 7 in Rome.
The pope, who sported a visible bruise on his face after hitting his chin on a table, gave the new cardinals the red biretta, cardinal ring, and a document naming their titular church.
Before the ceremony, David shared a photo of his garb and talked about the significance of the color red.
"Thank God we have instituted in the Church a Red Wednesday that calls attention to the plight of persecuted Christians around the world. It is a celebration that uses the color more appropriately—the color of martyrdom, the color of fearless prophetic witnessing, even at the price of so much prosecution, or even at the price of death," he wrote.
The new cardinals come from different parts of the world, including the Philippines, Brazil, Peru, Serbia, Japan, Indonesia, Canada, the Ivory Coast, and more.
After the consistory, the College of Cardinal has 256 members—141 electors and 115 non-electors.
Cardinals under the age of 80 will participate in a conclave, a papal election, to select the next pontiff after Pope Francis. The next pope will also be one of them.
David is the 10th Filipino to be named cardinal and serves alongside two other active Pinoy cardinals Luis Antonio Tagle and Jose Advincula.
David, 65, has served as bishop of the Diocese of Kalookan since 2016 after serving as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Fernando in Pampanga.
The CBCP president made waves in 2019 when he spoke out against former president Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs in his diocese. Several killings were taking place in Caloocan, Malabon, and Navotas amid the drug war.
David is the brother of sociologist and professor Randy David and the uncle of journalist Kara David.