Twenty Red Hats

Last week Pope Pius XI, bland breaker of precedents, let it be announced that he will hold a secret consistory Dec. 16, a public consistory Dec. 19, to create 20 new Cardinals. In recent times such an act has been paralleled only by the 1911 consistory at which Pius X created 19 new Princes of the Church. The Sacred College has dwindled to 49 members--24 Italian, 25 non-Italian. The additions to be made by Pius XI will reverse the balance, 39 to 30, will bring the number to the highest point in the Church's history, only one short of its theoretical maximum. Heretofore precedent has required that three or four places in the College be left vacant.

Of the 20 red hats to be bestowed, ten will remain in Vatican City or Rome. No surprise was it that one is to go to the Pope's favorite secretary, jolly and well-beloved Monsignor Camillo Caccia Dominioni, papal Master of Ceremonies, who long ago was reported named a Cardinal in pectore--secretly "in the Pope's heart" (TIME, March 20, 1933). Others: Most Rev. Carlo Salotti, secretary of the Congregation for the Propagation of Faith (missions); Monsignor Nicola Canali, assessor of the Congregation of the Holy Office (the Church's watchdog in matters of faith and morals); Monsignor Domenico Jorio, secretary of the Congregation of the Sacraments; Monsignor Massimo Massimi, dean of the Sacred Roman Rota (the Church's trial court); Monsignor Carlo Cremonesi, papal Grand Almoner; Monsignor Vincenzo La Puma, secretary of the Congregation of the Affairs of Religious; Monsignor Frederico Cattani Amadori, papal auditor, secretary of the Apostolic Signatura (Supreme Tribunal of the Roman Curia); Monsignor Domenico Mariani, treasurer of the papal Ministries; Rev. Pietro Boetto, S. J., assistant for Italy to the General of the Society of Jesus.

Of the five non-Italian Cardinals-to-be, one is a schoolman (Monsignor Henri Baudrillart, president of the Catholic Institute of Paris), the rest Archbishops-- Monsignor Emmanuel Suhard of Rheims; Monsignor Isidoro Goma y Tomas of Toledo, Spain; Monsignor Karl Kaspar of Prague; Monsignor Santiago Luigi Copello of Buenos Aires whose election will give South America its second Cardinal and Argentina the honor it hoped to get after last year's Eucharistic Congress (TIME, Oct. 1 & 22, 1934).

Papal nunciatures which automatically lead to the College are those to Spain, France, Austria, Poland; thus red hats to their four nuncios--Monsignor Federico Tedeschini, Monsignor Luigi Maglione, Monsignor Enrico Sibilia, Monsignor Francesco Marmaggi.

Monsignor Ignazio Gabriele Tappouni, Patriarch of Antioch, becomes the first Oriental Rite prelate to be made a Cardinal since the reign of Pope Pius IX.

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