Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of oldest living Catholic bishops and cardinals


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 23:46, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

List of oldest living Catholic bishops and cardinals
Previous AfDs for this article:


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The last deletion discussion was more than a decade ago, and opinions about longevity lists have shifted quite a bit in that time, so perhaps we'll find a consensus this time. Similar to Articles for deletion/List of living former members of the United States Cabinet and other recently deleted lists, this is a non-encyclopedic cross-categorization of longevity, career, and liveness. Unlike that page, most of these people haven't retired, but that's unsurprising since it's a lifetime appointment. There's no attempt to explain why longevity among bishops and cardinals is notable, nor why those alive today are of particular interest.

The list also fails WP:V as it's unclear how one might validate that that there are no older bishops amongst those currently living. Would an editor need to collate the ages of nearly 6,000 bishops and cardinals?

It's not even clear that the members of this list are individually notable, as WP:NCATHOLIC (an essay) appears to only grant presumed notability to certain high-ranking bishops.

Finally, the list includes a smidgen of WP:OR where the editors decide to omit Phocas Nikwigize because they think he's probably dead. (This could be corrected through editing; the other problems are fundamental.)

In summary, this page of trivia fails WP:INDISCRIMINATE, WP:LISTN, WP:N,WP:LISTPURP and WP:V. pburka (talk) 22:14, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. pburka (talk) 22:14, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. pburka (talk) 22:14, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 22:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete Bishop is a lifetime appointment with no particular incentive to retire, so it's not surpring a lot of the 5000+ bishops are in their 90s. Since there's no particular difference between a bishop who has lived to 88 or 98 within the Church's leadership, I'm not sure what the purpose, notability, or usefulness of this list is supposed to be. We have lists like List of Catholic bishops in the United States, which I feel like could include when the bishops were appointed, but age just isn't a defining factor. List of youngest living Catholic bishops should be deleted as well. Bishops can be appointed as young as 35, so it's not that unique, defining, or notable that 100 of those appointed in the last decade happen to be under 50. Reywas92Talk 01:43, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * To be clear, most of these bishops have retired from the active service of being in charge of a diocese, as they are required to submit their resignations at age 75 (although the Pope can allow a bishop to remain in office beyond that age). They still retain the title and status of being a bishop notwithstanding. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:07, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment per WP:LSC list elements could be all notable, all non-notable, or some combination. And yes, Roman Catholic bishops are notable by "virtue" of being bishops: there's no such thing as a modern Catholic bishop who doesn't have multiple RS coverage somewhere, even if that coverage is in another language and offline.  Having said all of that, no, I don't think lists of youngest/oldest anything are particularly encyclopedic in that they are dynamic. If there was a list of centenarian bishops, regardless of whether they were living or dead, that might be an encyclopedic topic, but an ever-changing "high score" list is simply not within our scope. Jclemens (talk) 03:50, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep This article simply pass WP:GNG and is in a row with another similar kind of articles, as List of oldest living Academy Award winners and nominees and List of oldest living Major League Baseball players, or List of living former members of the United States House of Representatives (B), etc. I don't know well this WP, but it seems, that these kind of lists are encyclopedic, even if not too "scientific"--Noel baran (talk) 05:42, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom, specifically WP:NLIST. There are a couple of unofficial lists unsanctioned by the Catholic Church and of indeterminate reliability, but that's about it. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:00, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment -- This is an article of a kind that is undesirable, as it will need continuous maintenance: some one is going to need to monitor obituary columns daily to eliminate those who die. If this is not done, the article will soon become unreliable.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:30, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, you are right, and you can check (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_oldest_living_Catholic_bishops_and_cardinals&action=history), that this page is permanently monitored and updated by different users (every month are dying 10-20 bishops, but these, who included in this list |more, then 92 years old| - around 1 person in 2 months)--Noel baran (talk) 17:28, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Consensus at AFD recently has overwhelmingly supported not utilizing lists of "oldest living..."; largely because such lists are constantly changing as people age and die and maintaining accuracy and verifiability is a difficult and on-going task. Many editors consider such lists not encyclopedic (because they are inherently unstable) and in contradiction to policy at WP:LISTN. I share that view which I consider now to be the standard modus operandi/precedent at AFD within the application of NLIST in these type of list discussions.4meter4 (talk) 17:32, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per the reasoning of 4meter4. Mccapra (talk) 06:42, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete mundane, arbitrary information— who cares that some lifetime appointees are currently alive and elderly? Of course they would be. Dronebogus (talk) 10:48, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per the nom. Fails WP:NLIST, as the article is just a random cross-section of age and church-post. It also fails WP:V due to being WP:OR. How is anyone to know if there are older bishops out there or if some of these men have died in obscurity? Not even the Catholic Church (at least publicly) has such a list as this. Newshunter12 (talk) 22:56, 27 September 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.