Pope names 19 new cardinals, focusing on the poor

Pope Francis named his first cardinals Sunday, choosing 19 men from around the world including the developing nations of Haiti and Burkina Faso – selections in line with his stated belief that the church must pay more attention to the poor.

But advocates for victims of sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy said they felt let down because Francis did not unequivocally respond to their calls to not promote prelates who hadn’t made a clean break with past practices of covering up pedophile behavior.

Francis read out the 19 names to a crowd of tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square on Sunday. The men will be installed on Feb. 22. 

Sixteen of the appointees are younger than 80, meaning they would be eligible to elect the next pope, the cardinals' most important task. Pope Paul VI in 1970 set the age cut-off in part to spare older men the rigors of travel, according to the Catholic News Service.

Since his election in March as the first pontiff from Latin America, the pope has broken tradition after tradition in terms of protocol and style at the Vatican. But with the list announced Sunday, Francis stuck to the church's rule of having no more than 120 cardinals eligible to elect the next pontiff.

The College of Cardinals is 13 shy of that 120-mark among eligible-to-vote members. In addition, three cardinals will turn 80 by May. That means Francis chose the exact number of new cardinals needed to bring the voting ranks up to 120 during the next few months.

Some appointments were expected, including that of his new secretary of state, Italian archbishop Pietro Parolin, and the German head of the Vatican's watchdog office for doctrinal orthodoxy, Gerhard Ludwig Mueller. Two others named Sunday also come from the curia, as the Holy See's Rome-based bureaucracy is known.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope's selection of churchmen from Haiti and Burkina Faso reflects Francis’ attention to the destitute as a core part of the church's mission.

Francis' announcement of Les Cayes Bishop Chibly Langlois, who, at 55, was the youngest of the appointees, came as the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti marked the anniversary of the earthquake there that killed tens of thousands of people.

"Today we are marking four years since the earthquake," said a priest, Hans Alexandre, in Haiti. He said the pontiff's emphasis on the poor “touches us immensely."

In Burkina Faso, the archbishop of Ouagadougou, Philipe Ouedraogo, said he thought reporters had made a mistake when they called him about his promotion to cardinal's rank, as he had no advance word from the Vatican. He said he also embraces Francis' vision of a church toiling for those on the margins of society.

"I fully recognize myself in his vision and pastoral philosophy that, like Jesus, identifies himself with the poor and the sick," the African prelate said. Ouedraogo, very popular in his homeland, recently opposed a proposed change to the constitution to allow the country's president, in power since 1987, to run for another term.

Once again, the cardinal's red hat eluded Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin. The prelate in that traditionally Catholic country has angered some in the Vatican by strongly criticizing how the hierarchy handled the worldwide clerical sex abuse scandal.

The U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, expressed disappointment that Francis did not promote Martin.

SNAP criticized the choice of Mueller, saying that he had a "dreadful" record on children's safety.

Under the tenure of Mueller, who was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI, a fellow German, critics have accused the Vatican of mishandling of the sex abuse scandal, including letting pedophile priests transfer from parish to parish when complaints were made.

Groups such as SNAP also have criticized the Vatican's recent refusal under Francis to allow the extradition of a Polish archbishop being investigated in his homeland for alleged sex abuse.  But SNAP welcomed the fact that three high-ranking archbishops in the United States, where the sex scandal has enraged many for decades now, were not promoted to cardinal.

In Chile, those who had denounced for sex abuse a priest who had long been one of the country's most popular clerics lamented that one of Chile's church hierarchy was being promoted.

Dr. James Hamilton, the first to publicly denounce the priest, said he hoped the soon-to-be cardinal, Santiago Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, would "drown in power, boastfulness, vanity, corruption, perversion and greed," adding sarcastically, "that is a good cardinal."

Ezzati, commenting on his selection, insisted the Chilean church is "learning from its mistakes."

The Associated Press