Pope Leo confirms Cardinal Tagle as the first Asian dean of the College of Cardinals

Pope Leo XIV has confirmed the election of Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as dean of the College of Cardinals, the Vatican announced on Friday. Tagle, 69, is the first Asian and the first Filipino to hold the post. He replaces Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 92, whose resignation the pope accepted.

The cardinals of the Order of Cardinal-Bishops elected Tagle on Thursday. The dean is chosen from that small group, which currently numbers about a dozen. Tagle will take the traditional title of the suburbicarian church of Ostia while keeping the title of Albano. He remains pro-prefect of the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches in the Dicastery for Evangelization, the Vatican body that handles the Church's missionary work.

The dean is the first among equals in the college. When a pope dies or resigns, the dean summons the eligible cardinals to Rome, presides over the general congregations that precede the conclave, and delivers the sermon before the procession into the Sistine Chapel. He also asks the newly elected pope whether he accepts the office and what name he will take. The post has existed in something like its present form since the twelfth century.

Re had held the office since 2020. After the death of Pope Francis in April 2025 he organised the pre-conclave meetings, but because he was over the age of 80 he could not enter the Sistine Chapel to vote. The vice-dean was also barred by age. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, 71, therefore led the conclave that elected Leo on 8 May 2025. Tagle, at 69, is young enough to take every part of the role if a vacancy occurs while Leo is still pope.

Tagle was born in Manila on 21 June 1957. He was archbishop of Manila from 2011 to 2020 and has worked in the Roman Curia since Francis appointed him prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in 2019. After the curial reform he became pro-prefect of the corresponding section of the new Dicastery for Evangelization. He served as president of Caritas Internationalis from 2015 to 2022. During the Mass that marked the start of Leo's ministry on 18 May 2025, Tagle was the cardinal who placed the Fisherman's Ring on the new pope's hand.

He was widely discussed as a possible candidate in the May 2025 conclave. He is known in the Church for a public manner that is warmer than the usual Roman style, and for the nickname Chito. His election as dean by the cardinal-bishops, and Leo's confirmation of it, places an Asian prelate at the head of the body that will choose Leo's successor whenever that moment arrives.

The office is not permanent. Francis set a five-year term in 2019 when he accepted the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who had held the post for fifteen years. The term can be renewed. Re's long service ended with a resignation accepted on the same day Tagle was elected. The change is therefore both a retirement and a deliberate selection by the most senior cardinals of a man two decades younger and from a different continent.

Leo himself is 71 and, by the standards of recent popes, relatively young and in good health. The practical work of the dean is therefore likely to remain routine for some years: correspondence with the college, occasional representation, and the custody of the procedures that would be used if a vacancy occurred. The symbolic weight is larger. For the first time in the history of the office, the person who would lead a future conclave is an Asian.