New Red Hats

In a sudden but not unexpected move last week, Pope Paul VI named 30 new cardinals whom he will elevate to the office in a special consistory March 5. The new Roman Catholic princes will bring the number in the College of Cardinals to a record high of 145. Three of the new cardinals are Americans: Archbishop Luis Aponte Martinez, 50, of San Juan--the first Puerto Rican cardinal ever; Archbishop Humberto S. Medeiros, 57, of Boston; and Archbishop Timothy Manning, 63, of Los Angeles. The new appointments take up the electoral slack left in the college when Pope Paul decreed that cardinals over 80 may not vote in papal elections. Twenty-nine of the present cardinals are past that age.

The appointments include a number of other firsts: the first Polynesian (Bishop Pius Taofinu'u, 49, of Apia, Western Samoa), the first Kenyan (Archbishop Maurice Otunga, 50, of Nairobi), the first from the Congo Republic (Archbishop Emile Biayenda, 45, of Brazzaville). But the Pope did not "internationalize" the college as much as some progressives had hoped he might. Eight Italians are among the appointees, bringing the total number of Italian cardinals to 41. France follows with 13, the U.S. with twelve, an all-time high. France, Spain, Australia and Brazil each got two new cardinals, and there was one each for Germany, Portugal, Pakistan, Colombia, Poland, Argentina, Mexico and Japan. The Polish nominee--Archbishop Boleslaw Kominek, 67, of Wroclaw--brings the number of Polish cardinals to three, a sign of the Vatican's appreciation of Polish Catholics' devotion.

At least two of the three new U.S. cardinals were no surprise. Boston and

Los Angeles are by now traditional sees for U.S. cardinals, and Archbishops Medeiros and Manning were considered shoo-ins for the red hat. Medeiros, who was born Portuguese in the Azores, came to the U.S. at the age of 15. When he was Bishop of Brownsville, Texas, he often traveled with migrant farm workers and joined their battle for better wages. Since his accession in Boston in 1970, he has aligned himself with Boston's poor as well, assailing suburban Catholics for their failure to aid the inner city. A critic of the Viet Nam War, he condemned the bombing of Hanoi in his Christmas morning sermon.

Manning, born in Ireland, is a traditionalist who insists on the need for ecclesiastical authority. But he wields it much more gently than his predecessor, James Francis Cardinal Mclntyre. Manning has cooled off the disputatious Los Angeles archdiocese by visiting widely among its parishes, supporting its large Mexican-American community and listening patiently to suggestions from his priests.

Puerto Rico's new cardinal, Luis Aponte Martinez, is the son of a poor mountain-country couple, the eighth of 18 children. Archbishop of San Juan since 1964, he is an amiable, moderate conservative who often puts in a 16-hour day but stays out of the island's political battles. One name was notably missing from the five other Latin Americans to get red hats: Brazil's famed prelate of the poor, Dom Helder Pessoa Camara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife. But Dom Helder did not go unrewarded. The same day the papal list became public, he was chosen for an honor of a different kind. For his work in behalf of social justice and peaceful change in Brazil, nine members of the Swedish Parliament nominated Dom Helder for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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