No Italians are listed. The italian contingent, though significant, is far smaller in number today than ever. No Americans are listed, or cardinals from any English-speaking nation (with one exception). The cardinals are sensitive to charges that the "fix is in" if an American is chosen, and they're sensitive to the global gap between rich and poor.
The cardinals listed here are between the ages of 65 and 72, not too young to assure a long pontificate like John Paul's, but not too old to restrict the grueling travel schedule that John Paul maintained.
Cardinal Geraldo Majella Agnelo
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Born: 1933 in Sao Salvador de Bahia, Brazil
Ordained a Priest: 1957
Proclaimed Cardinal: 2001
Soon after the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Agnelo predicted a short conclave to select a new pontiff. Others predict the conclave will end with Cardinal Agnelo’s election as Pope, even though he has said his “shoulders are too small” for the weight of leading the Catholic Church. But as the head of the bishops’ conference in Brazil, Cardinal Agnelo already leads 150,000,000 Catholics – about 15% of all Catholics in the world.
Cardinal Agnelo is also well aware that many of his flock live in desperate poverty. He has spoken of the Church’s responsibility to bring aid to poorest of the poor who are often overlooked by government social programs. Agnelo, along with other Brazilian bishops, firmly opposed a bill before is nation’s congress in support of embryonic stem cell research. Despite the cardinal’s opposition, the bill passed by a wide margin on March 2nd.
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Cardinal Francis Arinze
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Born: 1932 in Eziowelle, Nigeria
Ordained a Priest: 1958
Proclaimed Cardinal: 1996
Although he’s headquartered at the Vatican now, Cardinal Arinze spent years watching the ravages of civil war in his native Nigeria. A Catholic convert as a boy, Arinze entered the seminary at 15. He is keenly aware of the human toll of religious and cultural strife, and has been a strong voice for inter-religious dialogue between Catholicism and the other great faiths. That’s especially important in Nigeria, where Christianity and Islam struggle for preeminence.
But Cardinal Arinze’s openness to the value of other faiths does not extend to a greater tolerance for some cultural and social behavior. He caused a stir in 2003 during a lecture at Georgetown University when he noted that the family is “mocked by homosexuality (and) sabotaged by irregular unions.” And Arinze has been a stalwart opponent of drums as part of the celebration of the Mass, a position prompted in large part by wild drum-driven dances that have become part of the Mass in some African churches.
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Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio
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Born: 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ordained a Priest: 1969
Proclaimed Cardinal: 2001
Cardinal Bergoglio came to the priesthood later than most of his brethren in the College of Cardinals. He was ordained a Jesuit priest at the age of 33, but rose to be the leader of the religious order in Argentina in just four years. Described as a humble man, Cardinal Bergoglio often wears a simple priest’s cassock instead of a cardinal’s finery. In 2000, he made a more significant sartorial choice by ordering all priests in Argentina to wear garments of penance to atone for sins committed during Argentina’s military regime.
On Friday, Cardinal Bergoglio was named in a criminal complaint brought by a human rights lawyer who accused him of involvement in the 1976 kidnapping of two priests by the former dictatorship. A spokesman for Bergolglio called the charge an “old slander,” while an Italian newspaper described it as “an infamy.”
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Cardinal Godfried Daneels
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Born: 1933 in Kanegam, western Flanders, Belgium
Ordained a Priest: 1957
Proclaimed Cardinal: 1983
Cardinal Daneels has been a voice for more “collegiality” between the Vatican leadership and the cardinals who tend to faithful around the world. That’s code for less-centralized rule from Rome, a point of contention among many cardinals who chafed under John Paul’s habit of ruling from Rome.
Daneels, like many cardinals from western Europe and the United States, wants to see change, whether it’s more women within the church administration or an easing of the church’s view against condoms. Daneels sees the condom issue as more critical in an era of AIDS and HIV.
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Cardinal Julius Riyadi Darmaatmadja
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Born: 1934 in Muntilan, central Java, Indonesia
Ordained a Priest: 1959
Proclaimed Cardinal: 1994
From his post as the Archbishop of Jakarta in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Cardinal Darmaatmadja is on the front lines of the confrontation between Christianity and Islam. He has been a consistent voice in favor of inter-religious dialogue and tolerance. Darmaatmadja opposed the US war in Afghanistan and Iraq, earning respect from Indonesian Muslims. When terrorist violence struck Catholic churches in Indonesia in 2000, the cardinal refused to equate Islam with terrorism, and even urged Catholics to forgive Muslim extremists.
Cardinal Darmaatmadja, like virtually all bishops in the developing world, is an advocate for the poor. On Easter Sunday, his sermon highlighted the need for “the spirit of sacrifice” to promote “justice, fairness and a better quality of life” for all.
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Cardinal Ivan Dias
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Born: 1936 in Mumbai (Bombay), India
Ordained a Priest: 1958
Proclaimed Cardinal: 2001
The Archbishop of his hometown of Bombay, Cardinal Dias has spent much of his religious life on the road outside India. He was a Vatican diplomat for 30 years, traveling the world and honing his linguistic skills. Cardinal Dias is fluent in five languages, including English, and is conversant in a dozen others.
He was close to Pope John Paul II and a friend of Mother Teresa, both religious world travelers. Cardinal Dias is also socially conservative, like virtually all the cardinals in the conclave. He has been assigned to India since 1996, where he has kept a low profile. Although there are more than 18,000,000 Catholics in India, they account for less than 2% of the population, which puts a premium on the diplomatic skills of Cardinal Dias.
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Cardinal Claudio Hummes
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Born: 1934 in Montenegro, Brazil
Ordained a Priest: 1958
Proclaimed Cardinal: 2001
John Allen, the respected Vatican correspondent for the “National Catholic Reporter,” aligns the 115 cardinals participating in the conclave into four groups. The largest is the “Social Justice” category, those cardinals who see the vast gulf between rich and poor among the top issues facing the church. Allen places Cardinal Hummes, the Archbishop of Sao Paulo, in that group.
He heads the archdiocese in Latin America’s largest city, a city racked by great poverty. Cardinal Hummes has been a strong proponent of democracy, which put him at odds with Brazil’s former military dictatorship. In 1978, while Cardinal Hummes celebrated a Mass in a Sao Paulo stadium, army helicopters flew low overhead in an apparent attempt to intimidate him. It didn’t work. During another Mass, Cardinal Hummes allowed a unionist politician, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to address the congregants. Lula is now Brazil’s president.
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Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez
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Born: 1933 in Yahualica, Jalisco, Mexico
Ordained a Priest: 1957
Proclaimed Cardinal: 1994
Catholics in Juarez, Mexico are praying that the cardinals select one of their own to be the next Pope. Cardinal Sandoval was the Bishop of Ciudad Juarez before he was assigned to his current post as Archbishop of Guadalajara. An advocate of social justice, Cardinal Sandoval rose to that post in Juarez after his predecessor, Cardinal Posadas, was killed at an airport by a drug gang hit squad. Sandoval was loud in his calls for justice in the investigation, insisting that Posadas was murdered because he called attention to ties between politicians and drug lords. Cardinal Sandoval’s outspoken views may have played a role in turning Mexico’s longtime ruling party, the PRI, out of power.
Cardinal Sandoval can be blunt and outspoken when the subject is adherence to the faith. In 2001, he denounced the civil marriage of Mexican president Vicente Fox, a self-described devout Catholic. Fox married his spokeswoman Martha Sahagun. Both are divorced. Sandoval described the union as “sinful,” and said Mexicans expected “consistency” from Fox in his Catholicism.
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Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez
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Born: 1936 in Barranca, Dominican Republic
Ordained a Priest: 1961
Proclaimed Cardinal: 1991
The Associated Press says Cardinal Lopez Rodriguez has the clout to rally colleagues from the Caribbean and Latin America around a single pontifical candidate. The respect he’s earned could lead others to rally around him as the next Pope.
In an area of the world where poverty is rampant, Cardinal Lopez Rodriguez has been an advocate for higher education. He has founded three Catholic universities in the Santo Domingo area. He opposed Communists during political campaigns in the Dominican Republic in the 1990’s, insisting that class struggle ideology could not be reconciled with Catholic teaching. That rejection of “liberation theology” squares him with the view of Pope John Paul II. But Cardinal Lopez Rodriguez has been a supporter of the Church’s role as an advocate for freedom and social justice. His efforts led to the opening of a legal aid center for Haitian immigrants and Dominican peasants.
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Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino
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Born: 1936 in Jaguey Grande, Cuba
Ordained a Priest: 1964
Proclaimed Cardinal: 1994
Once held for a year in one of Cuba’s hard labor camps, Cardinal Ortega has shown gentle defiance in the face of Castro’s crackdown on freedom in general and religion in particular. He openly opposed the government’s execution of four military officials in 1989. In a pastoral letter two years ago, Ortega wrote that it was time for Cuba’s “avenging State” to become a “merciful State.”
But the cardinal has steered clear of “liberation theology,” the movement popular among many Latin American priests that political change can be sparked from the pulpit. During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II sternly lectured those who practiced “liberation theology.” Ortega, whose quiet resistance mirrors John Paul’s own experience in Poland a generation before, became Cuba’s first cardinal in 30 years when he was elevated to that high rank in 1994.
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Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo
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Born: 1936
Ordained a Priest: 1961
Proclaimed Cardinal: 2001
Cardinal Policarpo has been a voice for reconciliation and tolerance between Catholicism and the world’s other great religions. In 2000, he issued an apology to Lisbon’s Jewish community for wrongs committed against it in the 16th century in the name of the Catholic faith. His ecumenical views have earned him praise among many cardinals, and disdain among Catholic traditionalists who see their faith as the one true faith. Unlike many better-known “papabili,” Cardinal Policarpo has not traveled extensively. But being Portuguese provides him a natural link with Brazil, the world’s largest Catholic nation.
A few months ago, Cardinal Policarpo spoke at the funeral Mass for Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children who saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary in Portuguese village of Fatima. He praised Sister Lucia for being true to the mission Mary called her to in 1917 by spreading a message of “penance, conversion and contemplation.”
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Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier
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Born: 1941 in Swartberg, South Africa
Ordained a Priest: 1970
Proclaimed Cardinal: 2001
Few cardinals from English-speaking nations have much of a chance to become Pope. One possible exception is Cardinal Napier, the Archbishop of Durban, South Africa. Although not as prominent as Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu, Cardinal Napier was instrumental in the dismantling of South Africa’s apartheid racial discrimination practices. He has maintained that sort of involvement in human rights issues, focusing attention on the refugee crisis in Sudan and political upheaval in Zimbabwe. In the area of AIDS and HIV, which has ravaged Africa, Cardinal Napier has remained steadfastly opposed to condom use, urging abstinence instead.
And in what might be a first among cardinals, Napier is a fan of popular music. He says among his favorites record is a single by Creedence Clearwater Revival, with “Have You Ever Seen The Rain?” on one side and “Hey Tonight” on the other.
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