By Rachel Donadio
New York Times
November 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/world/europe/21vatican.html
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| Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., was among those who became cardinals on Saturday at St. Peter's Basilica. |
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| Pope Benedict XVI waving as he left the Consistory ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on Saturday. |
ROME — Pope Benedict XVI elevated 24 new cardinals in a festive ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday, bestowing quadrangular red hats on the new members of a group that will one day elect his successor.
Two Americans were among the newly elected. Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., is seen as a bridge-builder and was greeted with waves of applause from the hundreds of supporters who came for Saturday's ceremony.
Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, a former archbishop of St. Louis, is now the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, a Vatican court, and is known for his outspoken criticism of President Obama and of Catholics who are abortion rights supporters.
Dressed in heavy golden vestments, Benedict called on the new cardinals to devote themselves entirely to humble service to the church, whose force, he said, is "not the logic of supremacy, of power according to human criteria, but the logic of bowing down to wash feet, the logic of service, the logic of the cross which is at the base of every exercise of power."
Cardinals from around the world had come to Rome for Saturday's ceremony, and on Friday they convened for a daylong meeting to discuss pressing issues facing the church, including the sexual abuse crisis, religious liberty, the liturgy and a new rite for allowing Anglicans to convert en masse to Catholicism.
At the meeting, Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the Vatican would soon issue new guidelines to help bishops deal with abuse cases, taking into consideration the need to protect children and cooperate with civil authorities.
It appears that the guidelines will be a significant step toward clarifying the Vatican's rules for handling abuse cases.
The cardinals devoted half of their daylong meeting to issues of religious liberty, a particularly pressing issue after it emerged last week that China planned to ordain a bishop without the pope's consent on Saturday, its first such ordination since 2006.
In China, Catholic worship is discouraged except in state-backed churches. In recent years, relations between China and the Vatican have improved, with quiet negotiations leading to the nomination of bishops who have the support of both China and the pope.
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