Pope, Expanding His Influence, Names 22 New Cardinals

VATICAN CITY â€”  Pope John Paul II named 22 new Roman Catholic cardinals Sunday, extending his conservative influence over the elite body of men who will choose his successor.

Two of the new cardinals are Americans: Francis Eugene George, archbishop of Chicago, and James Francis Stafford, a former archbishop of Denver who now heads the Vatican’s council on the laity.

The pope announced the appointments during his regular Sunday blessing from his window over St. Peter’s Square. He said the choice of men from 13 countries “reflects in an eloquent way the universal nature of the church.�

Cardinals, the red-hatted princes of the church, are the pope’s advisors in Rome and around the world. They wield their greatest power when their boss dies or steps down; all popes since 1059 have been elected by the College of Cardinals from among its members.

During his 19-year papacy, John Paul has named 106 of the 123 cardinals now 79 years old--the maximum voting age in the college--or younger. That huge majority is all but certain to produce as the next pontiff another conservative on questions of faith and morals. Including those 80 and older, there are now 168 cardinals.

But Sunday’s appointments could influence the next election in two other ways:

* The United States and Canada now have a record 14 cardinals among the eligible voters. To get their support, an aspiring pope would have to appear more willing than John Paul has been to listen to demands by American Catholics that women be allowed to become priests and that divorced people be permitted to remarry in the church, Vatican watchers said.

“Even the most conservative American cardinals will want someone as pope who would be sensitive to those issues,� said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Vatican specialist at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Seminary.

* For the first time since the 1960s, Italians saw their number in the college increase, raising their hopes of recapturing the papacy, which they held for 456 years until the election of the current, Polish pontiff. Seven of the new cardinals and a total of 23 with voting rights are Italian.

When John Paul’s health began to decline in the mid-1990s, Vatican watchers began compiling speculative lists of papabili, or “pope-ables,� usually based on impressions the cardinals have made on one another as potential leaders.

While there is no overt politicking, two of the new cardinals, Archbishops Dionigi Tettamanzi, 63, of Genoa, Italy, and Christoph Schoenborn, 52, of Vienna, have already been mentioned among a dozen or so such candidates.

John Paul, 77, appeared relatively well Sunday. He joked that he will need prayer not only during his five-day trip to Cuba, which begins Wednesday, but to help him get back.

Also elevated to cardinal Sunday were eight other archbishops, from Spain, Canada, Brazil, France, Tanzania, Taiwan, Mexico and Italy; seven other heads of Vatican departments, including a Chilean and a Colombian; and a Polish missionary in Zambia who spent five years in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau during World War II.

The names of two other new cardinals were not revealed, and there was speculation that they are from China and Vietnam, where the church is severely restricted by Communist regimes. Popes occasionally make such appointments “in pectore�--in secret--to shield the prelates or their local churches from political persecution.

Giuseppe Uhac, secretary of the Vatican congregation for the evangelization of people, was to be the 23rd cardinal elevated Sunday, but the pope said he died hours before the announcement.

The new cardinals, the seventh batch appointed by John Paul, will be consecrated in a ceremony Feb. 21.

Italy dominated the College of Cardinals until the middle of this century, and John Paul has generally continued the practice of diversifying it to reflect more accurately the geographical spread of Catholics throughout the world.

With two new cardinals, the United States now has 11, more than any other country except Italy.