Cardinal Loris Capovilla has turned 100 years of age. The man who was personal secretary to Pope John XXIII, even when the now-sainted pontiff was Patriarch of Venice, marked the milestone on Wednesday. He is more than three years older than anyone else in the College of Cardinals.

You may recall that when Pope Francis announced his first group of new cardinals on 12 January 2014, Capovilla was the first of three men over the age of eighty chosen to receive the red hat. He was already 98 at that time.

Papa Francesco wanted to honor the elderly Venetian priest (a bishop since 1967) for reasons obvious to just about everyone except, perhaps, the two popes that preceded him. In the five decades since John’s death he has been the living memory of the beloved pope that called Vatican II.

“To speak of Capovilla is to speak of Pope John, and to speak of them both is to speak of the Council – with no ifs, ands or buts,” wrote Carlo Di Cicco, then assistant editor of L’Osservatore Romano. Noting that Paul VI named him a peritus at Vatican II after Papa Giovanni’s death, Di Cicco said Cardinal Capovilla’s “entire life speaks of the Council”. Pope Francis wanted to give him the red hat, said Di Cicco, precisely because he was “such a remarkable witness of Vatican II”.

Francis’ predecessors evidently did not think so. After Pope John’s former secretary turned eighty in 1995 there were some eight consistories over a fourteen-year stretch (1998-2012). John Paul II held three of them and Benedict XVI another five. Together they gave red hats to twenty-five men beyond the Conclave voting age. But never to Loris Francesco Capovilla.

Thanks to Pope Francis we can all now say: “Happy birthday, Eminenza!”