Red Hats for Six Continents

With some surprises, the Pope names 18 new Cardinals

Joseph Bernardin, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, was visiting his 77-year-old mother at a home for the aged run by the Little Sisters of the Poor when the news was announced. "Have you heard?" he asked. "Yes," replied his mother, "you're a Cardinal. I love you very much. Do good, darling." Bernardin promised he would try.

Bernardin is the only American among the 18 clerics who will be elevated to the Sacred College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II at a special consistory on Feb. 2. Although the Archdiocese of Chicago is traditionally headed by a Cardinal, Bernardin was not awarded a red hat until four months after he succeeded the late John Patrick Cardinal Cody. The appointment firmly establishes Bernardin, at 54, as a leader of the U.S. hierarchy, which is becoming more outspoken on social, if not doctrinal, issues. To some Vatican observers, the Pope's honoring of Bernardin so soon after he was named head of the nation's largest archdiocese was also a sign that John Paul approved of the criticism of U.S. nuclear arms policy by a panel led by Bernardin; the panel's draft of a pastoral letter is scheduled for final approval by the U.S. bishops' conference in May.

The most striking political aspect of the Pope's choices is that five of them live under Marxist regimes. Bishop Julijans Vaivods, 87, who has been acting head of the Archdiocese of Riga, is the first Latvian and the first resident of the Soviet Union ever to be made a Cardinal. Jozef Glemp, 54, who succeeded Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski as Poland's Primate, was also elevated, a move that could strengthen his hand in delicate dealings with the Communist regime.

John Paul showed his support for the war-weary Christians of Lebanon by giving them a Cardinal, Antoine Pierre Khoraiche, 75, Patriarch of the Maronite Rite. Thailand and the Ivory Coast got their first Cardinals, and Oceania was represented by New Zealand's Thomas Stafford Williams. If the Pope chose a progressive archbishop in Bernardin, he also picked a conservative: Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, 47, of Medellin, Colombia, is president of the bishops' conference in Latin America and an outspoken foe of priests who have become active in leftist politics.

Jean-Marie Lustiger, 56, who was appointed Archbishop of Paris by John Paul in 1981, is the first Jewish convert to join the College of Cardinals in modern times. The other French appointee to the college is not a bishop but a Jesuit priest: Theologian Henri de Lubac, 86, who was suspended from teaching under Pope Pius XII because of his then radical views on such subjects as other religions and atheism but who emerged as an influential force at the Second Vatican Council. Italian Jesuit Carlo Maria Martini, a brilliant Bible scholar named Archbishop of Milan in 1980, is now, at age 55,papabile, considered to be a candidate for Pope some day.

The omissions from the Pope's list were equally interesting. As chief administrator of the Vatican City, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, 60, would have been an almost automatic choice. The Pope, however, is waiting for the results of a joint Vatican-Italian investigation of scandals involving the Institute for Religious Works (the Vatican bank), headed by the Chicago-born American. John Paul also passed over several leading U.S. archbishops. But with his urge to internationalize the college and his intention to keep the number of Cardinals eligible to vote for a Pope at 120, John Paul decided that several prospects must wait for the honor. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.