One was exiled to Siberia for anti-Soviet activities. One volunteered to replace one of the six Jesuits gunned down during El Salvador's civil war. One suffered a demotion in the post-9/11 era as a casualty of the Vatican's bungled Islam policy.
Pope Francis has chosen 13 men he admires and whose pastoral concerns align with his to become the Catholic Church's newest cardinals.
A formal ceremony elevating the prelates to the elite position in church hierarchy takes place Saturday.
They include 10 cardinals who are under age 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave, increasing the likelihood that a future pope might end up looking an awful lot like the current one.
With Saturday's consistory, Francis will have named 52 per cent of the voting-age members of the College of Cardinals.
Many of the pastors receiving red hats at Saturday's consistory are from far-flung dioceses in the developing world that never have had a "prince" of the Catholic Church representing them.
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That is by no means a coincidence. Francis, who is from Argentina, was elected as the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope in 2013.
He has consistently prioritised the peripheries and marginalised communities in his travels, pastoral concerns and appointments.
The pope's choices for cardinals continue to make the Catholic hierarchy more representative of the universal church, which is growing in the global south and shrinking in Europe and North America.
"Our church is lively, it's a joyful church of music and dance," Cristobal Lopez Romero, a Spaniard who serves as archbishop of Rabat, Morocco and is among the cardinals Francis is creating Saturday.
"It's a church where there are more young than old, more black than white."
"I think it's loud."
Fitzgerald, who is over 80 and unable to vote in a conclave, was diplomatic when asked about the significance of both him and his successor receiving red hats, saying it showed "continuity."
"The interrogation would last for months and months."
He said he was thankful to God "for all these years that I have had as priest, as bishop, as archbishop."