“Generation X”, often described as the forgotten generation between “Boomers” and “Millennials”, is generally considered to include those born between 1965 and 1980. In secular terms, they are characterised by relative wealth, having bought homes before the steepest price rises of the 2000s and 2010s, and by confidence with technology which stops short of the digital nativeness of millennials. Leonardo DiCaprio, Elon Musk and Justin Trudeau are some of the better-known inhabitants of the age bracket, with JD Vance just missing the boat and describing himself as a “geriatric millennial”.

In the Church, they are the men who entered the post-Vatican II seminaries, marked by a steep decline in attendance. But their formation for the priesthood also came at the end of the liturgical experiments of the 1970s and 1980s, which erroneously attempted to capture the vision of Sacrosanctum Concilium. They were also the first generation to be raised almost entirely with the 1969 Mass of Paul VI and were, in some ways, the test run for the expected fruit which the Council might bear.

In all likelihood, the next conclave, whenever that may be, will elect a cardinal from this generation of priests. Currently, just 17 members of the College of Cardinals were born after 1965. Amongst those, some are making a meteoric rise through the hierarchy and whom we can expect to see much more of in the coming years.

For example, Cardinal George Koovakad, born on 11 August 1973 and sitting comfortably in the middle of Generation X, is probably the most senior cardinal from the Eastern Churches and the second youngest among the group after Cardinal Mykola Bychok. A priest of India’s Syro-Malabar Church, he was ordained in 2004 before entering the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 2006.

Elevated to the cardinalate directly from the rank of priest, he was made an archbishop after the announcement of his elevation. He became known as the “travel agent” of the Francis era, arranging the complex itinerary of one of history’s most travelled popes. In 2025 he was appointed Prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, becoming the first prelate from the Syro-Malabar Church to head a curial department.

Another is Cardinal Francis Leo. With both the current pontiff and his predecessor’s name, his story is one of meteoric rise. In 2022 he was made Auxiliary Bishop of Montreal before being appointed Archbishop of Toronto less than a year later. Pope Francis made him a cardinal in the December 2024 consistory. Cardinal Leo is a renowned Mariologist and founder of the Canadian Mariological Society. He has also served as secretary general of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and has an impressive record in the Holy See’s diplomatic service.

At the most recent conclave, the Portuguese-speaking bloc was significant. Portugal, a country with just 10 million inhabitants, had four voting-age cardinals, while Brazil had seven. Combined with two Portuguese-speaking Africans, the total was 13, just under 10 per cent of cardinal electors. 

Among them, Cardinal Américo Aguiar was the youngest. Tasked with organising the 2023 World Youth Day in Lisbon, which was widely seen as a huge success as well as financially profitable, it was announced that he would be made a cardinal before the event. As Auxiliary Bishop of Lisbon, Cardinal Aguiar’s appointment was unusual. The move was made even more so by the fact that, by the time he officially received his red hat in the September 2023 consistory, a new Patriarch of Lisbon had been appointed, Archbishop Rui Valério, who has to this day not been made a cardinal. Cardinal Aguiar’s effectively higher rank than his superior is made even stranger by the apparent ignoring of the long-established tradition of the Patriarch of Lisbon being made a cardinal.

Cardinal François-Xavier Bustillo is a Generation X cardinal emblematic of what Pope Benedict XVI called “the new evangelisation”, the missionary effort to re-Christianise those parts of Europe that have been lost to secularism. Joining the Franciscans at the age of just 17, he was ordained a priest in 1994 and, that same year, founded the convent of Saint Bonaventure in Narbonne, with a mission to re-evangelise a town where 19th- and 20th-century anti-clericalism had been particularly strong. 

In 2021 he was appointed by Pope Francis as Bishop of Corsica and, in 2022, the late pontiff arranged for copies of Cardinal Bustillo’s book, Testimoni, non funzionari (Witnesses, Not Officials), to be handed out to priests attending the Chrism Mass in St Peter’s Basilica. A year later he was made a cardinal and became a member of the Dicastery for the Clergy.

Cardinal Bustillo was recently tasked with helping with the formation of Spain’s priests, in a country which remains a centre of priestly formation, with more than a thousand men in training.

“Generation X”, by the standards of Church hierarchy, has relative youth on its side, and these men, alongside their colleagues in the College of Cardinals of the same generation, represent the next wave of leadership. While the voice of a prince of the Church always deserves attention, these are the figures we can expect to hear more from. By listening to them closely, we may gain a clearer sense of the direction the Church will take in the coming years.