New Cardinals

The augustly red-robed College of Cardinals has one vital function: election of the Pope. Last week Paul VI named 21 new cardinals, again enlarging and internationalizing the elite electorate. When he became Pope in 1963, Italians held 28 of 80 seats. After May 24, when the new members will be installed, Italians will number only 35 of 136 cardinals.*

The appointments have stirred up new speculation about whether Paul's eventual successor might be non-Italian. Jan Cardinal Willebrands, 66, primate of the Dutch church, is, by Vatican consensus, the leading non-Italian papabile. He has gained a potential backer with the appointment of Aloisio Lorscheider, the influential president of the Brazilian hierarchy and fellow specialist in ecumenism. One of the new cardinals might later become papabile himself: England's Basil Hume (TIME, March 1), 53, who has undergone a breathtaking rise from Benedictine abbot to Archbishop of Westminster to cardinal in less than three months' time.

Naming only three Italians, Paul surprised many Vatican observers in bypassing the Vatican's top diplomat, Archbishop Agostino Casaroli, and Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, one of his closest advisers and the Deputy Secretary of State. However, promotions would have removed them from their present posts, which cardinals do not fill, and Paul may consider them indispensable. Two of the new cardinals were in pectore (in the breast), meaning that their names will be kept secret unless the Pope discloses them; these secret cardinals might be his two aides. Recent appointments in pectore have been from Eastern Europe, but Paul last week publicly named Archbishop Laszlo Lekai of Hungary, successor to the late Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty.

The new group includes ten Third World cardinals and one American: mild-mannered Archbishop William W. Baum, 49, of Washington, D.C. His election brought the number of American cardinals to an alltime high of twelve. Paul did not name Cincinnati's Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, the president of the U.S. bishops' conference. A possible explanation: Paul named as cardinals only two of the nine members of the permanent secretariat elected by the 1974 international Synod of Bishops, thus bypassing Bernardin and other likely candidates. By one Roman reading, he is retaliating against the synod, which aroused papal anxiety with its bold and critical views.

* However, 18 of these, including eight Italians, are age 80 and over and ineligible to vote.

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