Princely Promotions

Pope Paul VI is a leader who loves to spring a surprise or set a new record. Last week he did both by announcing that he intends to create 35 new cardinals--the largest number ever named at one time--thereby raising membership in the Sacred College to an alltime record of 136. In his six years as Pope, Paul has elevated 89 prelates to the college, more than any other pontiff in history.

The 33 named last week*--to be formally elevated at a consistory April 28--are from 19 different nations. Eight are Italians, but the four Americans chosen raise the number of U.S. cardinals to ten--another record. The U.S. appointments to a degree reflect the spectrum of the Pope's selections: three moderate conservatives, one progressive liberal; two of them were chosen primarily because they head sees traditionally ruled by cardinals, two others presumably because of personal accomplishment.

Inner-City Programs. Archbishop Terence J. Cooke has been an all but automatic choice since he succeeded the late Francis Cardinal Spellman as head of the New York archdiocese last March. Similarly, Archbishop John J. Carberry of St. Louis was considered in line for promotion to the college as soon as he took over that see last year; his two immediate predecessors were cardinals. Both Cooke and Carberry are cautious on theological matters--both have firmly defended the Pope's birth-control encyclical--but are advocates of aggressive inner-city programs in their racially explosive archdioceses.

The only outright progressive among the new cardinals, Detroit's John F. Dearden, has encouraged widespread lay participation in the internal affairs of his big archdiocese, and has been remarkably successful as president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the U.S. Pittsburgh's Bishop John J. Wright, one of the most articulate theologians in the U.S. hierarchy, played a significant role in shaping several documents of Vatican II. He will return to Rome to an as yet unannounced post in the Curia.

Elsewhere, the choices were a similar mixture of predictability and surprise. In Paris, liberal Archbishop Franc,ois Marty joined a long roster of Parisian cardinals despite recent rumors that he had turned down the red hat. In Africa, where the Pope will visit next July, there was now a third black cardinal--Archbishop Joseph Malula of Kinshasa, the Congo--as well as Jerome Rakotomalala in the nearby island republic of Malagasy. Presbyterian Scotland got its first resident cardinal in four centuries, Archbishop Gordon Gray of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. And Western Canada was given its first cardinal ever--popular, liberal George Bernard Flahiff, 63, Bishop of Winnipeg.

Too Young. Almost as interesting as some of the appointments were some of the omissions. An anticipated red hat for rigidly conservative Archbishop Paul Philippe, number-two man in the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, did not materialize. Likewise bypassed was Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, the Pope's celebrated "Prime Minister" (TIME, March 14), who at 47 is probably still too young.

But another Curia official, Bishop Jan Willebrands, the brilliant Dutch prelate who long served the late Augustin Cardinal Bea in the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, is among the new cardinals and will likely succeed Bea as head of the Secretariat in name as well as in fact. The selection of men like Willebrands may help mollify some Catholic liberals who had hoped to see a synod of bishops eventually take over the functions of the College of Cardinals--a development now hardly likely with the promotion of so many princes.

* Two names were held by the Pope in pectore ("in the heart"), not to be revealed even to the candidates themselves unless and until the Pope chooses to do so. Usually the secret cardinals are from nations with authoritarian regimes, men to whom promotion might mean even more harassment. Pope John XXIII named three and died without disclosing their identities.

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