Seven new cardinals named

Seven new cardinals were named by Pope John Paul II on Sunday in addition to the 37 announced last week. Three of them are from countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc. Speaking from his balcony above St Peter's Square, the Pope said the suffering of Roman Catholics under Communist oppression was a motive for elevating three of their leaders. Pope John Paul has increased the number of voting cardinals well above the limit of 120 set by Pope Paul VI in 1975, raising it from 128 with last week's appointments to 135 now. "This is a pope who has a sense that things ought to be done, and that the rules can be adjusted," said George Weigel, author of "Witness to Hope; the Biography of John Paul II" (Harper Collins 1999). The new cardinals are: Julio Terrazas Sandoval, 64, archbishop of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in Bolivia; Wilfrid Fox Napier, 59, archbishop of Durban, South Africa, an outspoken critic of apartheid in the 1970's and 80's; Lubomyr Husar, 67, a Ukrainian native whose family fled in 1944 and who has American citizenship. He returned to Ukraine after Communism collapsed and was appointed archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, by the local synod just last week; Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz, 64, president of the German bishops' conference and Archbishop Johannes Joachim Degenhardt of Paderborn, 74. Two others named were actually made cardinals in 1988 but their names were kept secret because they lived in areas where their lives could be at risk if the news were public. They are: Janis Pujats, 70, archbishop of Riga, in Latvia and Marian Jaworski, 74, the Polish- born Roman Catholic archbishop of Lvov, Ukraine, near the Polish border. Archbishop Marian has been a personal friend of John Paul II since they were young priests.