| abstract
| - Cardinal bishops, or cardinals of the Episcopal Order, are among the most senior prelates of the Catholic Church. Since most cardinals are also bishops, the title of cardinal bishop only means that the cardinal in question holds the title of one of the "suburbicarian" sees — they include the Dean of the College of Cardinals — or is a patriarch of an Eastern Catholic church. The cardinal bishops are the only order of cardinals who have always been required to be bishops, and in former times when a cardinal of one of the lower orders became a cardinal bishop, and so the head of a diocese, he was consecrated a bishop. Since 1962 all cardinals have been required to receive episcopal consecration unless they were granted an exemption from this obligation by the Pope; however, since each of the suburbicarian sees are now each headed by their own bishop and not the cardinal bishops themselves, theoretically, a cardinal could now occupy any rank within the Sacred College without receiving episcopal consecration. The Dean, the head (as primus inter pares) of the College of Cardinals, is elected by the cardinal bishops holding suburbicarian sees from among their own number, an election, however, that must be approved by the pope. Formerly the position of Dean belonged to the longest-serving of the cardinal bishops, all six of whom then headed a suburbicarian see. Though these sees are now seven (Ostia and Velletri having been separated in 1914), there are only six cardinal bishops, since the Dean always adds the title of Ostia to his original suburbicarian diocese. In early times the privilege of papal election was not reserved to the cardinals, and for centuries the pope was customarily a Roman priest and never a bishop from elsewhere; to preserve apostolic succession the rite of consecrating the pope as a bishop had to be performed by someone who was already a bishop. The rule remains that, if the person elected pope is not yet a bishop, he is consecrated by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, the Cardinal bishop of Ostia. Currently the cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian diocese are:
* Angelo Sodano, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia and Albano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, former Cardinal Secretary of State
* Roger Etchegaray, Cardinal Bishop of Porto-Santa Rufina, Vice-Dean, President emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
* Giovanni Battista Re, Cardinal Bishop of Sabina-Poggio Mirteto, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
* Francis Arinze, Cardinal Bishop of Velletri-Segni, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, widely regarded as the most Papabile African
* Tarcisio Bertone, Cardinal Bishop of Frascati, Cardinal Secretary of State and Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church
* José Saraiva Martins, Cardinal Bishop of Palestrina, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints For a period ending in the mid-20th century, long-serving cardinal priests were entitled to fill vacancies that arose among the cardinal bishops, just as cardinal deacons of ten years' standing are still entitled to become cardinal priests. Since then, cardinals have been advanced to cardinal bishop exclusively by Papal appointment. In 1965 Pope Paul VI decreed in his motu proprio Ad Purpuratorum Patrum that patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches who were named cardinals would also be part of the episcopal order, ranked after the six cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian sees (who had been relieved of direct responsibilities for those sees by Pope John XXIII three years earlier). Not holding a suburbicarian see, they cannot elect the dean nor become dean. The three Eastern patriarchs who are now cardinal bishops are the following:
* Ignace Daoud, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Patriarch Emeritus of Antioch for the Syrians
* Nasrallah Sfeir, Patriarch of Antioch for the Maronites
* Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Babylon for the Chaldeans The Latin Rite Patriarchs of Lisbon and Venice, while in practice always made cardinals at the consistory after they take possession of their sees, are made cardinal priests, not cardinal bishops. Although the incumbents of such prestigious sees are usually created cardinal, no see carries an actual right to the cardinalate.
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