VATICAN, Jan, 21, 01 (CWNews.com) -- Pope John Paul II today named 37 new members to join the College of Cardinals. The new cardinals will receive their red hats at a consistory on February 21-- the feast of the Chair of Peter.

    The Holy Father made this announcement during his regular Sunday Angelus audience, as he spoke to pilgrims in St. Peter's Square from the balcony of his apartment.

    These new cardinals will be:

• 1. Archbishop Geraldo Majella Agnelo of Sao Salvador de Bahia, Brazil
• 2. Archbishop Bernard Arge of Abidjan, Ivory Coast
• 3. Archbishop Audrys Juozas Backis of Vilnius, Lithuania
• 4. Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina
• 5. Archbishop Louis-Marie Bille of Lyon, France
• 6. Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, the president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, from Italy
• 7. Archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima, Peru
• 8. Archbishop Desmond Connell of Dublin, Ireland
• 9. Archbishop Ivan Dias of Bombay, India
• 10. Father Avery Dulles, an American Jesuit theology from New York
• 11. Archbishop Edward M. Egan of New York, USA
• 12. Archbishop Francisco Javier Errazuris Ossa of Santiago, Chile
• 13. Patriarch Stephanos Ghattas of Alexandria, Egypt, the head of the Coptic Catholic Church
• 14. Archbishop Antonio Jose Gonzales Zumarraga of Quito, Ecuador
• 15. Archbishop Zenon Grocholewski, the prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, from Poland
• 16. Archbishop Jean Honore, archbishop emeritus of Archdiocese of Tours, France
• 17. Archbishop Claudio Hummes, of Sao Paulo, Brazil
• 18. Bishop Walter Kasper, the secretary of the Congregation for Christian Unity, from Germany
• 19. Archbishop Francisco Alvarez Martinez of Toledo, Spain
• 20. Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Washington, DC, USA
• 21. Archbishop Jorge Maria Mejia, the Vatican archivist and librarian, from Argentina
• 22. Patriarch Ignace Moussa I Daoud, the prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches (who, in taking that position, recently resigned his post as Patriarch of Antioch and leader of the Syrian Catholic Church), from Syria
• 23. Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, Great Britain
• 24. Archbishop Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, from Vietnam
• 25. Archbishop Severino Poletto of Turin, Italy
• 26. Archbishop Jose da Cruz Policarpo, Patriarch of Lisbon, Portugal
• 27. Archbishop Mario Francesco Pompedda, the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, from Italy
• 28. Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Re, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, from Italy
• 29. Archbishop Oscar Andres Rodrigues Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras
• 30. Archbishop Pedro Rubiano Saenz of Bogota, Colombia
• 31. Archbishop Jose Saraiva Martins, the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, from Portugal
• 32. Msgr. Leo Scheffczyk, of the Archdiocese of Munich Germany, a consultor to the Pontifical Academy for the Family
• 33. Archbishop Sergio Sebastiani, the president of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See, from Italy
• 34. Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe, the secretary general of the committee that coordinated the Jubilee celebration, from Italy
• 35. Father Roberto Tucci, the Italian Jesuit who coordinates advance planning for papal trips; Archbishop Geraldo Majella Agnelo of Sao Salvador de Bahia, Brazil
• 36. Archbishop Ignacio Antonio Velasco Garcia of Caracas, Venezuela
• 37. Archbishop Varkey Vithayathil of Ernaklum-Angamalay, India-- the major archdiocese of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.

    Among the new cardinals, 33 will be under the age of 80, and thus eligible to vote in a papal election. Cardinals Ghattas, Honore, Scheffczyk, and Dulles will be over 80 at the time of their elevation to the College. Cardinal Tucci will celebrate his 80th birthday in April.

    After the consistory, the number of cardinals eligible to vote in a conclave will be 128. The Pope has used his authority to exceed the normal limit of 120.

    Also, the Pope still has not revealed the identity of two cardinals named "in pectore"-- that is, secretly-- in previous conclaves.

    Since the start of his pontificate, John Paul II has named 194 cardinals, of whom 154 are alive today.

For other news stories, see

January 21, 2001
volume 12, no. 21
News from Rome

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