Dr Jules Gomes, the Rome correspondent of Church Militant, joins Dr Gavin Ashenden for this eighth episode of our Merely Catholic podcast series for the Catholic Herald. They reflect on the new appointments to the College of Cardinals which mean that almost two thirds of its members have now been appointed by Pope Francis.

Dr Gomes identifies the workings of a politically-radical reformist agenda in the appointments and says that the new generation of “clone” cardinals will seek the consolidation and advance of the changes of the Bergoglian era at any forthcoming conclave to elect Francis’s successor. That would be the time, he says, to “watch out for rainbow-coloured smoke”.