Cardinals Rebel at Second-class Status

Cardinal Achille Silvestrini celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday. Not with an official Vatican birthday cake but with the usual early rise, prayers in his private chapel and a busy day sweeping to multiple meetings in his scarlet-trimmed cardinal's robes.

Somewhere in his mind, there might be a tinge of nostalgia. For this high-flying 'Prince of the Church', once the Vatican's equivalent of a Foreign Minister, has now crossed the line and joined the 59 other cardinals who, because of their age, are denied the right to vote for a future Pope.

In 1970 Pope Paul VI ruled that when cardinals turn 80 they 'lose the right to elect the Roman pontiff and also the right to enter the conclave'. Although voting rights are a cardinal's greatest privilege, most octogenarian 'red hats' traditionally 'respect the wishes of the Church' and put on a brave face.

But after weeks of speculation over the deteriorating health of Pope John Paul II, the question of who chooses his successor has bubbled to the surface as 30 new cardinals were given their red hats last week. Disgruntled elderly cardinals are reported to have written a letter to the Pope asking him to rethink the 80-plus exclusion rule.

'Without being able to vote, we are downgraded, Serie B cardinals,' one told La Repubblica last week, equating their status to that of second division football players. 'A cardinal is [a cardinal] above all because he elects a Pope and then stands by him.'

This view is a common one. 'It is a great deprivation for cardinals. Perhaps different limits can be used in future,' Cardinal Giovanni Cheli, 85, told The Observer, adding that many octogenarians are fit and well. 'Perhaps those whose minds have gone should not vote. We all know who they are. And some of them are in their seventies.'

Adding to this discontent is the fact that, while the 1970 rule was in part designed to prevent conservative cardinals dominating the Church for too long, today's elderly cardinals are a more mixed bunch.

Yet the elderly cardinals are unlikely to win their protest. John Paul II's creation of 31 new cardinals, one of whom has not been publicly named, swells the College of Cardinals to 194, while Paul VI's recommended quota of 120 per conclave has been stretched to 134.

'There has to be a limit. You can't have nearly 200 cardinals in a conclave,' said Vatican expert Marco Politi. 'But it is paradoxical that the Pope, who is ill, does not resign, while cardinals who are fit and well are excluded.'

Yet, for those who cannot vote, there remains one final consolation: Silvestrini and his fellow over-age cardinals can, in theory, still become Pope. All 194 cardinals are papabili - potential Popes.