New Cardinals Mirror Pontiff’s Vision of Church

In naming 23 cardinals Wednesday, Pope John Paul II ranged from a downtown Los Angeles pastor to discreet Vatican bureaucrats and survivors of Communist jails to find new leaders who share his own vision of the role of the Roman Catholic Church.

Most dramatic of the papal appointments was the naming of Ignatius Gong Pinmei, the 91-year-old archbishop of Shanghai, who now lives in exile in the United States.

The Chinese prelate was originally selected secretly-- in pectore --by the Pope in 1979 while Gong was jailed in China. Only John Paul knew of the gesture to an oppressed church. Released in 1985 after more than 30 years in prison, the ailing Gong now lives in Stamford, Conn., so the Pope was able to make public the secret he has kept for 12 years.

“Among the list of names, the universality of the church is eloquently mirrored,” said the pontiff after reading the long-awaited list at his general audience here at midday Wednesday. “There are bishops from every continent. . . . Some have paid with a high price of suffering for their faith to God and the church in difficult times and conditions.”

The new members of the College of Cardinals have in common doctrinal conservatism and a concern for social progress. Not surprisingly, the new princes of the church mirror the priorities of the Pope who named them. Their selection, therefore, is certain to color the choice of John Paul’s successor, since many of the new cardinals will be electors of the next Pope.

Two Americans joined the electors Wednesday: Archbishops Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, 55, and Anthony J. Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, 67. Three Latin American archbishops--from Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Argentina--also won their red hats.

In appointing 20 electors to fill vacancies left by old age and death in the 120-member College of Cardinals, John Paul was generous in rewarding service in the Curia, as the Vatican bureaucracy is called. There were six new Curia cardinals--four Italians, including Pio Laghi, 69, a former papal nuncio to the United States who now heads the Vatican congregation for Catholic education; one Australian and one Filipino.

John Paul also named new archdiocesan cardinals in the West European cities of Rome; Turin, Italy; Marseille, France; Sion, Switzerland, and Armagh, the seat of primate of Ireland. One African was named, in Kinshasa, Zaire.

As expected, the Pope made a point of filling cardinal vacancies in Eastern Europe, where the church is officially respectable and growing again after more than four decades of repression. He named a prelate from eastern Germany as cardinal of Berlin, and picked two former priest-prisoners for Romania and Czechoslovakia.

Alexandru Todea, 78, granted amnesty in 1964 after serving 13 years of a life sentence for priestly activities, becomes cardinal of Alba Julia and head of the Byzantine-rite church in Romania.

Jan Chryzostom Korec, a 67-year-old Jesuit who worked in a factory and as a librarian under Communist rule and spent eight years in jail for teaching religion to children, becomes cardinal of Nitra, in the Slovakian part of Czechoslovakia.

Cardinals generally retire at age 75 but may vote in the College of Cardinals at secret conclaves to elect a Pope until they are 80. Of the 20 new electors named Wednesday, four are in their 50s, 11 in their 60s and five in their 70s.

Wednesday’s appointments, John Paul’s fifth in a 13-year reign, fill the college to the 120-elector level established in 1975 by Pope Paul VI. The Pope is free to set his own rules, but in naming the priests who join the innermost circle of the 850-million-member church, John Paul said Wednesday that he had decided to respect the limit set by Paul VI.

After the new cardinals are formally created at a consistory June 28, Italians will remain the largest national group, with 24 electors. There will be eight American electors--the archdiocesan cardinals of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Chicago and Washington, plus two cardinals who work in the Curia. There are also two retired American cardinals over 80, and Ukrainian Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky travels on an American passport.

In addition to the exiled Chinese prelate, John Paul on Wednesday honored two other clerics over 80 for their lifelong service to the church: Archbishop Guido Del Mestri, an 80-year-old Italian who recently retired from the Vatican diplomatic corps after many years as nuncio in Bonn, and Father P. Paolo Dezza, an 89-year-old Jesuit who had served as interim leader of his religious order and was confessor to Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I.