If you'd like to 'adopt a cardinal', please consider supporting this wonderfully fun yet seriously holy initiative!

HE Cardinal Franc Rode
(c) Fr James Bradley (Flickr)
Published under a Creative Commons Licence
(source: Wikimedia Commons)

A friend contacted me yesterday to inform me that he had just spiritually adopted a cardinal! I had no idea what he meant, so he explained himself by sending me a link to a wonderful little website, called (rather appropriately) Adopt a Cardinal.

It seems this fun, yet serious, initiative was recently set up with the intention fostering promises of prayer for those members of the College of Cardinals who will soon be voting for the next Pope. The idea is not to pray for the election of the men we adopt! Rather, Adopt the Cardinal invites us to pray for a randomly allocated prince of the Church, asking that he may be enlightened by the Holy Spirit as he prepares to enter the Conclave.

Those who choose to adopt a cardinal by visiting the site and clicking on the appropriate button are quickly and indiscriminately given a member of the Sacred College to spiritually adopt. The process is quite good fun ... especially as it's all so random!

I was hoping that I would be allocated one of the two Cardinals already mentioned on this blog in recent days: Crescenzio Sepe or Raymond Burke. As it happens, though, I was asked to adopt Cardinal Franc Rodé CM from Slovenia -- who was given the red hat by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006. I must confess that I didn't know much about this man, so enjoyed reading about him on Wikipedia! (As you can see from the above image, taken by the Ordinariate's Fr James Bradley, Cardinal Rodé appears to be quite a snazzy dresser!)

At the time of writing this post, nearly 18,500 people had spiritually adopted a cardinal, promising to beg the Holy Spirit to enlighten a particular prince of the Church during the papal interregnum. So, it's good to note that Catholics are quickly warming to this holy initiative. If you would like to adopt a cardinal, now's your chance (here) ... By doing so, you'll be engaging in a wonderful act of love for the Church!