2 cardinal electors, from Spain and Kenya, will not attend upcoming conclave

Vatican City, Apr 30, 2025 / 09:43 am (CNA).

The archdioceses of Spanish Cardinal Antonio Cañizares and Kenyan Cardinal John Njue on Wednesday both confirmed the two prelates will not participate in the upcoming papal conclave to elect the successor to Pope Francis.

The Archdiocese of Valencia told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that Cañizares “will not travel to Rome for health reasons.”

Sources in the Archdiocese of Nairobi, meanwhile, on Wednesday confirmed with ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, that due to health reasons the African prelate will not travel to Rome to elect the Church’s next supreme pontiff.

Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, had stated at an April 29 press briefing that two cardinal electors would not participate in the conclave due to health reasons, but the Vatican did not reveal their names at the time.

Born in 1945, Cañizares was ordained a priest in 1970 in the Archdiocese of Valencia. The Spanish prelate has been archbishop emeritus for the Archdiocese of Valencia since 2022, after serving as archbishop there from 2014 to 2022.

Pope John Paul II appointed Cañizares the bishop of Ávila in 1992, where he remained until his appointment to the Archdiocese of Granada in 1996. In 2002, he was transferred to Spain’s primate Archdiocese of Toledo.

Cañizares was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in the March 2006 consistory. From 2008 to 2014, he served as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments from 2008 to 2014 before returning to Spain.

Njue, 79, is the second Kenyan prelate to be elevated to cardinal. Ordained a priest in 1973 by Pope Paul VI in St. Peter’s Basilica for the Kenyan Diocese of Meru, Njue received his episcopal ordination in 1986 — at the age of 40 — after Pope John Paul II appointed him first bishop of the Diocese of Embu, where he remained until 2002.

Before being created a cardinal in 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI, Njue served the Church in Kenya as coadjutor archbishop of Nyeri and apostolic administrator of Isiolo.

The African prelate also served two terms as president of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops from 1997 to 2003 and from 2006 to 2015.

The Vatican recently updated Njue’s birth date record in the latest Pontifical Yearbook to Jan. 1, 1946, meaning the archbishop emeritus holds the right to vote in a papal conclave until Jan. 1, 2026. He is currently a member of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization.

With the absence of Cañizares and Njue in the upcoming conclave, a total of 133 cardinal electors are eligible to cast their vote in the conclave.

At least 89 votes, a two-thirds majority, are required by the Church to elect the new pontiff and successor of Pope Francis to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.