Pope's Choice of Cardinals Scrutinised

A pope's choice of cardinals is always scrutinised closely by Vatican observers to see the sort of man who is being appointed and what this indicates about the pontiff's priorities - never more so than the 15 new cardinals installed today since they are the first to have been chosen by Pope Benedict XVI since his election 11 months ago.

The reason is that the cardinals - the so-called princes of the church, the most senior of its bishops and archbishops - are the men called together in conclave when a pope dies to elect his successor from among their number. The supposition is that popes like, as far as possible, to fix the succession by choosing men who are most in tune with their own point of view - though it does not always work out like that.

Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, in his long reign chose all but a handful of the college of cardinals who elected the former Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy last April. Ratzinger himself had been selected by Pope Paul VI in the dying days of his papacy in the mid-seventies.

Benedict's first list is not startling. It rewards loyal Vatican servants such as Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul II's devoted private secretary, who returned last year to Poland to become Archbishop of Krakow. It gives promotion to current senior church officials, such as William Levada, former Archbishop of San Francisco who now has Ratzinger's old job as the Vatican's enforcer of the faith.

And it restores the balance of cardinal numbers in some of the church's most important dioceses: for instance Sean Patrick O'Malley, the Archbishop of Boston in the US, now becomes a cardinal as holders of his office, at the heart of Irish-Catholic America, usually are. There is some suggestion that O'Malley's red hat was delayed because of the humiliating mess the diocese was in following the paedophile scandals that brought down his predecessor Cardinal Bernard Law. Otherwise, there is a balance of cardinals from the developing world, including men who have spoken out against the regimes in their areas, such as the Bishop of Hong Kong Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, a critic of the Chinese administration.

Only cardinals under the age of 80 will be called to the Vatican to elect Benedict's successor when he dies. Twelve of today's 15 are under that age and they bring the number of cardinal-electors up to 120. Given that Benedict is approaching 80 - he was one of the oldest popes ever elected last year - it is likely that the men chosen yesterday will take part in the conclave which chooses his successor.