Comparing Wikidata and Vatican Official Data about Cardinals

This project contains:

• A list of Cardinals obtained from Wikidata with a SPARQL query: wikidata_cardinals.csv
• A list of Cardinals obtained by scraping the College of Cardinals Dashboard (page 2): vatican_cardinals.csv
• A script to compare the two lists: compare_cardinal_lists.py

Both lists contain 252 names and most differences have been solved (see Differences below).

Script Usage

$ ./compare_cardinal_lists.py -h
usage: compare_cardinal_lists.py [-h] [--output-dir OUTPUT_DIR] <wikidata> <vatican>

positional arguments:
  <wikidata>            Wikidata data.
  <vatican>             Vatican data.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output-dir OUTPUT_DIR
                        Output directory [default: output].

The script produces up to 5 files:

• different_birthdate_wikidata_cardinals.csv, containing the pairs of cardinals with a different birth date.
• different_cardinal_start_wikidata_cardinals.csv, containing the pairs of cardinals with a different starting date for their cardinalitial tenure.
• fuzzymatch_wikidata_cardinals.csv, containing a list of the names that were fuzzy matched.
• missing_vatican_cardinals.csv, containing the names that appeaer in the Wikidata list, but are missing in the Vatican list.
• missing_wikidata_cardinals12.csv, containing the names that appeaer in the Vatican list, but are missing in the Wikidata list.

Wikidata Query

This is the query that produces wikidata_cardinals.csv.

It deduplicate results for people that have held multiple cardinal roles. It display the earliest time the person became a cardinal. It considers all the subclasses of cardinal recursively (so also subclasses of cardinal-deacon, cardinal-priest and cardinal-bishop).

SELECT DISTINCT ?cardinal ?cardinalLabel ?cardinalTypeSampleLabel ?birthDate ?birthPlaceLabel (?earliestCardinalStartTime AS ?cardinalStartTime) ?bishopStartTime ?priestStartTime WHERE {

  # Subquery: Precompute earliest cardinalStartTime per cardinal
  {
    SELECT ?cardinal (MIN(?cardinalStartTime) AS ?earliestCardinalStartTime) (SAMPLE(?cardinalType) AS ?cardinalTypeSample) WHERE {
      ?cardinal wdt:P31 wd:Q5;
                p:P39 ?cardinalPosition.
      ?cardinalPosition ps:P39 ?cardinalType.
      OPTIONAL { ?cardinalPosition pq:P580 ?cardinalStartTime. }

      # Only cardinal types (dynamic)
      ?cardinalType wdt:P279* wd:Q45722.
    }
    GROUP BY ?cardinal
  }

  # Main query
  ?cardinal wdt:P31 wd:Q5;
            wdt:P569 ?birthDate;
            p:P39 ?cardinalPosition.

  ?cardinalPosition ps:P39 ?cardinalType.
  OPTIONAL { ?cardinalPosition pq:P580 ?cardinalStartTime. }

  # Only cardinal types (dynamic)
  ?cardinalType wdt:P279* wd:Q45722.

  # Filter to only the earliest cardinal position
  FILTER(?cardinalStartTime = ?earliestCardinalStartTime)

  FILTER(?birthDate > "1900-01-01"^^xsd:dateTime)
  FILTER(NOT EXISTS { ?cardinal wdt:P570 ?deathDate. })

  OPTIONAL { ?cardinal wdt:P19 ?birthPlace. }
  OPTIONAL {
    ?cardinal p:P106 ?bishopPosition.
    ?bishopPosition ps:P106 wd:Q611644;
                    pq:P580 ?bishopStartTime.
  }
  OPTIONAL {
    ?cardinal p:P106 ?priestPosition.
    ?priestPosition ps:P106 wd:Q250867;
                    pq:P580 ?priestStartTime.
  }

  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],it". }
}
ORDER BY (?birthDate)

Differences

As of today (2025-04-27), the differences between the two lists are the following:

• The date format in the College of Cardinals Dashboard is inconsistent, sometimes DD/MM/YYYY is used, other times MM/DD/YYYY is used. In vatican_cardinals.csv we use YYYY-MM-DD. For example, Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco's birth date is 10 March 1962 (displaied as DD/MM/YYYY), but the proclamation date is 7 December 2024 (displaied as MM/DD/YYYY).

• The date of birth of Cardinal Toribio Ticona Porco (Q2444070) is unclear some sources report 1937-04-25 [1] (used in Wikidata), while other sources report 1937-05-23 [2, 3] (used in the Vatican list).

Scraping from HTML source

The data is also available in an HTML table format at Vatican Press Office. The script vatican_cardinals_from_html.sh extracts this data using web scraping techniques.

The script:

• Uses scrape-cli to extract the HTML table data
• Processes the table rows using xq (from yq) to transform them into JSONL format
• For each cardinal, extracts:
  • name
  • URL of their biographical page
  • birth date (converting it to ISO format YYYY-MM-DD)
  • type of cardinal
  • who created them as cardinal
  • country
  • continent
• Saves the output in vatican_cardinals_from_html.jsonl

Usage

Usage:
  vatican_cardinals_from_html.sh [-o OUTPUT_FILE] [--csv]
  vatican_cardinals_from_html.sh (-h | --help)

Extract the list of Cardinals in JSONL or CSV format from:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/documentation/cardinali---statistiche/elenco_per_eta.html

Options:
  -o OUTPUT_FILE,               Output file name [default: vatican_cardinals_from_html.<ext>]
  --output-file OUTPUT_FILE
  --csv                         Convert the results into CSV.
  -h, --help                    Show this help and exits.

The output is in jsonlines (.jsonl) format:

{"nome":"ACERBI Card. Angelo","url":"https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_acerbi_a.html","data_di_nascita":"1925-09-23","tipo":"Non Elettore","creato_da":"Francesco","paese":"Italia","continente":"Europa"}
{"nome":"KARLIC Card. Estanislao Esteban","url":"https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_karlic_ee.html","data_di_nascita":"1926-02-07","tipo":"Non Elettore","creato_da":"Benedetto XVI","paese":"Argentina","continente":"America del Sud"}
{"nome":"WAMALA Card. Emmanuel","url":"https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_wamala_e.html","data_di_nascita":"1926-12-15","tipo":"Non Elettore","creato_da":"S. Giovanni Paolo II","paese":"Uganda","continente":"Africa"}
...

or in CSV (.csv) format, with the --csv:

nome,url,data_di_nascita,tipo,creato_da,paese,continente
ACERBI Card. Angelo,https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_acerbi_a.html,1925-09-23,Non Elettore,Francesco,Italia,Europa
KARLIC Card. Estanislao Esteban,https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_karlic_ee.html,1926-02-07,Non Elettore,Benedetto XVI,Argentina,America del Sud
WAMALA Card. Emmanuel,https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_wamala_e.html,1926-12-15,Non Elettore,S. Giovanni Paolo II,Uganda,Africas
...

License

Authors:

• Cristian Consonni
• Andrea Borruso

The code is released under the MIT license, see LICENSE.md for details. The data is released under CC0 1.0 Universal - Public Domain Dedication.