In a surprise move, Pope John Paul II yesterday named seven new cardinals, just a week after he had nominated a record 37 for the forthcoming consistory on February 21st.
Smiling broadly, the Pope announced the new appointments during his traditional Sunday Angelus address in St Peter's Square. He did not offer any explanation as to why they had not been named last week.
The new cardinals are Mgr Lubomyr Husar, the newly appointed Archbishop of Lviv, Ukraine; Johannes Joachim Degenhart, Archbishop of Paderborn, Germany; Julio Terrazas Sandoval, Archbishop of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia; Wilfrid Fox Napier, Archbishop of Durban, South Africa; Karl Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz, Germany; Marian Jaworski, Latin rite Archbishop in Lviv, Ukraine; and Janis Pujats, Archbishop of Riga, Latvia.
All under 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a papal election, the cardinals come from Germany (2), South Africa, Bolivia, Ukraine (2) and Latvia. Archbishops Jaworski and Pujats were actually appointed at the 1998 consistory, but their nominations were held in pectore (literally, in the heart) or undisclosed, presumably because of the delicate nature of relations with the Orthodox Church in the former Soviet Union.
The announcement of two names for Ukraine seems particularly significant. First, it comes just five months before the Pope is scheduled to travel to that country, despite reported objections to the visit from senior figures in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Second, the Ukraine and Latvian appointments are by way of honouring the Catholic churches in those countries, as the Pope himself explained yesterday, saying: "Especially in the course of the 20th century, [those churches] have been severely tried and have offered to the world the example of so many Christian men and women who knew how to pay witness to their faith amidst suffering of every kind, not rarely culminating in the sacrifice of their life."
Of the other appointments, perhaps the most intriguing is that of the German bishop, Karl Lehmann, who last year suggested that 80-year-old Pope John Paul II should consider retiring.
With yesterday's appointments, the Pope has now named 125 of the 135 cardinals who currently have the right to vote in a papal election. Yesterday's nominations also further break the 120 limit set on cardinal electors by Pope Paul VI in 1975.