John Paul II Names 37 New Cardinals

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 21, 2001 (ZENIT.org).-
John Paul II named 37 new cardinals today, including 10 from Latin America and three from the United States.

Among the new cardinals, 11 are close collaborators of the Pontiff in the Roman Curia, and 21 are archbishops of prominent dioceses, including New York and Washington, D.C. The new cardinals will be created at a consistory Feb. 21, the eighth of John Paul II´s pontificate.

With the new nominations, John Paul II has now appointed all but 10 of the cardinals eligible to vote in a secret conclave to elect a pope, the Associated Press said.

He also exceeded the limit of 120 voting-age cardinals fixed by Paul VI. In an eventual conclave, 128 cardinals will elect a new Pontiff.

The Holy Father elevated five bishops and priests who are older than 80, and, hence, not eligible to vote for a pope. He made the gesture to express gratitude for lives offered in service of the Church.

For the first time, the Pope has named 10 cardinals from countries evangelized by the Iberian peninsula; today, virtually half the world´s Catholic population is in Latin America.

The list includes Argentine Archbishop Jorge María Mejía, archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church, and Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires; Brazilian Archbishops Geraldo Majella Agnelo of São Salvador da Bahia and Claudio Hummes of São Paulo; Ecuadorean archbishop Antonio José González Zumárraga of Quito; Colombian Archbishop Pedro Rubiano Saenz of Bogota; Chilean Archbishop Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa of Santiago; Honduran Archbishop Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa; Venezuelan Archbishop Ignacio Antonio Velasco Garcia of Caracas; and Peruvian Archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima.

In addition, the Pope named one cardinal from Spain, Archbishop Francisco Alvarez Martinez of Toledo, primate of the country; two from Portugal: Patriarch José da Cruz Policarpo of Lisbon, and Archbishop José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

John Paul II also named three cardinals from the United States. Two of them were anticipated: Archbishops Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, D.C., and Edward Michael Egan of New York. The Pontiff also raised Jesuit Father Avery Dulles, professor at New York´s Fordham University, to the dignity of cardinal, in recognition of his long and fruitful theological career.

Archbishop Egan, 68, took over the New York Archdiocese in June, a month after his predecessor, Cardinal John O´Connor, died. It has become traditional for New York´s archbishop to be elevated to cardinal. Father Dulles, the son of John Foster Dulles, U.S. secretary of state during the Cold War years, is 82, too old to vote for a pope.

Catholic geography is also represented in the College of Cardinals by Archbishops Ivan Dias of Bombay, India; Desmond Connell of Dublin, Ireland; Audrys Jouzas Backis of Vilnius, Lithuania; Bernard Agre of Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Louis-Marie Bille of Lyon, France; Severino Poletti of Turin, Italy; Cormac Murphy-O´Connor of Westminster, Britain; and Archbishop Major Varkey Vithayathil of the Siro-Malabaresi of India.

Among the new cardinals of the Roman Curia are archbishop Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (Italian); archbishop François Xavier Nguyên Van Thuân, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (Vietnamese); Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, president of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (Italian); and Monsignor Sergio Sebastiani, president of the Prefecture of the Holy See´s Economic Affairs (Italian).

Also receiving a cardinal´s hat are a number of archbishops of the Roman Curia, including Archbishop Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education (Polish); Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe, secretary-general of the Committee of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 (Italian); Patriarch Ignace Moussa I Daoud, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches (Syrian); Archbishop Mario Francesco Pompedda, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic See (Italian); and Bishop Emeritus Walter Kasper of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (German).

"The new cardinals come from various parts of the world," the Pope said when presenting the list. "The universality of the Church is reflected in their ranks by the multiplicity of their ministries. Along with prelates honored for service rendered the Holy See, there are pastors who spend their energies in direct contact with the faithful."

John Paul II also disclosed that he will "soon announce" the names of the two cardinals that he named secretly in the 1998 consistory for reasons of pastoral prudence.