On Jan. 25, the number of voting cardinals was expected to drop from 137 to 136 as Cardinal Philippe Ouédraogo, the former archbishop of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, reached the age limit of 80. But according to the soon-to-be-released Vatican directory, the Burkinabe cardinal is now listed as just 79.

That revision gives him several months of eligibility to participate in a potential papal conclave, as the Dutch newspaper Nederlands Dagblad first reported. In the 2024 edition of the directory, his birthdate was Jan. 25, 1945. The new version has been changed to Dec. 31, 1945 — 11 months later.

Vatican scrambles for answers

Why did the cardinal’s age suddenly and quietly change just before he turned 80? “It’s possible that an identification document surfaced,” Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni told Nederlands Dagblad.

The change reportedly caused a stir in the Vatican when journalists asked why the number of voting cardinals had not been updated after Ouédraogo’s supposed 80th birthday. In fact, Ouagadougou’s cathedral publicly celebrated his milestone birthday on Facebook on Jan. 25, along with many other parishes in Burkina Faso.

Created a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2014, Ouédraogo is known as a strong advocate for interfaith dialogue in Burkina Faso, a Muslim-majority country where Catholics make up about 20% of the population and religious violence is widespread. He has also opposed same-sex marriage and birth control initiatives.

A common bureaucratic practice

“It is common practice for governments to assign Dec. 31 as a birthdate when the actual date of birth is unknown,” explained Burkina Faso’s ambassador to the Holy See. Ouédraogo is not the only cardinal with an arbitrary birthdate—Kenyan Cardinal John Njue is officially listed as being born on Jan. 1, 1946.

“I was born at home in a village with no hospital or school, so I was never given a birthdate,” Ouédraogo told Nederlands Dagblad. He said he had to provide one “at random” in 1973 to enroll in a health insurance program run by a French missionary organization when he became a priest. The Vatican later adopted Jan. 25 as his birthdate, while the Burkina Faso government, following standard procedure, recorded it as Dec. 31 on his passport.

As for why the correction was made only now, the cardinal remained vague. “In Africa, birthdays don’t matter,” he said. “We celebrate community events, not individual ones. A birthday has little influence on social life.”

Unless, of course, it determines whether one can vote for the next pope.