Pope Elevates Cardinals, Pleads for Church Unity

With a schism in the church looming only two days away, Pope John Paul II elevated 24 churchmen from 17 countries to cardinal today and pleaded anew for unity in the Roman Catholic Church.

The 24 included two Americans, Archbishops James Hickey of Washington and Edmund Szoka of Detroit.

The Pope used the occasion to appeal to followers of rebel French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who appears set to provoke the first break in the church in more than 100 years.

Addressing members of the College of Cardinals during a closed-door ceremony to approve the new cardinals, the Pope said the rupture with Lefebvre now seems inevitable.

Lefebvre, an ultra-traditionalist who rejects many of the reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, has threatened to consecrate four bishops Thursday without the Pope’s permission, a move that would mean excommunication for the 82-year-old prelate.

Without referring to the French prelate by name, the Pope told the cardinals gathered in the frescoed Consistory Hall of the Apostolic Palace:

“We are very saddened by the news of which we are all aware that one of our brothers in the episcopate . . . wants to . . . ordain bishops and thus to break the principle of unity of the church, taking with him a large number of his followers into schism.”

Addressing Lefebvre’s followers, the Pope added, “We pray and exhort them that they remain in the paternal home and that they see that it is there where the real truth of faith and correct behavior is found.”

The remarks, made in Latin, were released by the Vatican.