10 May 2017

Happy 20th Anniversary!

The earliest start to the main website was early in 1997. I don't have an exact date or even copies of the earliest beginnings. At the time, it was 3 manually created pages - covering only the US.

About 5 years later, on 10 May 2002, the Feast of St. Damien de Veuster, the new domain (Catholic-Hierarchy.org) went live. Statistics are only available from that point.

There are a few points in time when the stats went down for a period of time (server overloads, etc.) - no attempt has been made to correct for those.

By the time the new domain went live, the site covered just the Americas. But that was corrected a few months later when the rest of the world was complete enough to merge into the main site.

The only major area not fully covered at this time is China - due to its unique situation. I hope that will be resolved soon.

So, in 15 years, folks have made 32.9 million visits to the site, viewing 204.5 million pages. For the geeks: that's 560.7 million hits and 3.1 terabytes of data served.

Unique visitors are always a tricky metric, but currently its over 120k a month. In the last month, there have been visitors from almost every country in the world (Google Analytics says 216).

Thank you all for the support and help along the way. I look forward to another 20 years!

23 March 2017

US Bishops at or near the retirement age

The following US bishops are either already at or reach the normal retirement age (75) in the next year. (Birthdate, Bishop, Title)

Ordinaries
Auxiliary Bishops

06 February 2017

200 million pages served

In the last week of January, the main website passed a milestone - 200 million web pages served.

While the website has been around in some form since 1997. About five years that the website acquired its name and all stats begin at that point.

So, as of last weekend, folks have made 32.2 million visits to the website, seeing a bit over 200 million web pages (552 million hits for the nerds out there). That's a bit over 3 terabytes of data served.

Many thanks to all of you that use the website!

05 February 2017

Cardinal Stats and Charts, 2017

This posts assumes that there are no deaths among the current Cardinals.

As of today (5 Feb 2017, there are be 226 Living Cardinals with 119 eligible to vote in a conclave when that should become necessary.

The average age of the Cardinals is 78.16 and the average of the electors is 71.18 years old.

The average length of service as a Cardinal is 11.27 years, 6.39 years if only considering electors.

The youngest Cardinal is Dieudonné Nzapalainga, C.S.Sp. (Archbishop of Bangui) who will turn 50 years old on 14 March.

The oldest Cardinal is José de Jesús Pimiento Rodriguez (Archbishop Emeritus of Manizales) who will turn 98 on the 18th of this month.

I've posted an updated version of the Cardinal Charts (warning: PDF format).

The charts are:
  • Number of Cardinals (1585-2027; 1915-2027; and 1965-2027)
  • Average Age (1585-2027; 1915-2027; and 1965-2027)

Cardinals Turning 80

WhenCardinal Electors
Now119
End of 2017116
End of 2018109
End of 201999
(the table assumes no deaths nor new Cardinal Electors)

For a prediction of when the next batch of Cardinals will be created, please see this post.


Cardinal-Electors as Percent of the College

With the introduction of the age limit for Cardinals to vote in a conclave, the percent of Cardinals eligible to vote has been trending downward.

Today, 52.2% are Electors.

Assuming no Cardinal deaths and no new creations, on 7 Mar 2018, Cardinal-Electors will be 50% (113 of 226). On 30 Mar 2018 it will fall below 50% for the first time ever (112 of 226).

Given that deaths of non-Electors are more likely, the dates will likely be later than those given above.

16 January 2017

Predicting New Cardinals: 2018 and 2019

As of today, there are 226 living Cardinals. Of those, 120 have the right to vote in a Conclave when one becomes necessary (aka, they have not yet turned 80 years old). These are called the Cardinal Electors.

The limit of the number of Cardinal Electors is 120, although the Pope can ignore that if he so desires.

This year (2017) only four Cardinal Electors turn 80. That makes a consistory to create new cardinals this year unlikely.

Next year (2018) is a different story - seven additional Cardinals turn 80. In an odd streak of luck, all of them fall in the first half of the year.

Assuming no deaths, that means that 11 Cardinal Elector "slots" will be available by June, 2018. So I'm predicting a Consistory to Create New Cardinals in late Spring or early Summer 2018.

With the effort of Pope Francis to de-emphasize the Roman aspect of the pallium distribution, perhaps the weekend after the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul would be a good time.

In 2019, an additional 11 Cardinal Electors turn 80. Four of those fall in October. Thus I'm predicting another Consistory to Create New Cardinals in late Fall 2019.

The weekend of Christ the King (23-24 Nov) would be an obvious choice but there are other options such as All Saints/All Souls or the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica.

(Note I had previously predicted a consistory in the "Spring of 2018" in this post back in November 2015.)

Of course, I have no inside knowledge and the creation of cardinals is at the complete discretion of the Holy Father.

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