Welcome to the spiritual life.

I'm Father Jim Martin.

On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God in their daily lives and in their

prayer.

And I'm joined by my wonderful producer, Maggie Van Dorn.

Maggie, good to be with you.

Good to be with you, Jim.

And we have a very exciting and interesting guest this week.

Yeah, I'm really excited. We're talking with Cardinal Stephen Chow, S.J. Maggie, can you tell us a little bit about him?

Yes. So Cardinal Stephen Chow is a Jesuit priest. That's the S.J. part. And he is the Bishop of Hong Kong. He was named

Bishop of Hong Kong in 2021 by Pope Francis, and then just two years later, Pope Francis created

him a cardinal. Prior to this appointment by Pope Francis, he served as the provincial superior

for the Chinese province of the Society of Jesus. Jim, is it unusual for a Jesuit to become a cardinal?

Yeah, it's a little complicated.

So we Jesuits make a public promise not to, as we say, strive for or ambition high offices in the church.

But sometimes, particularly in countries where there aren't many local clergy,

and the Pope can ask Jesuits to be bishops, right?

And then some very rare times,

those bishops or archbishops, become cardinals.

And there haven't been very many throughout church history.

There aren't very many Jesuit cardinals now.

You know, one of them was Cardinal Jorge Marie Burgolio, who became Pope Francis, of course.

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