Americans Get Attention, but Most New Cardinals are European

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

by EDWARD PENTIN
1/06/2012

VATICAN CITY — “Today is really ‘New York day’ in Rome,” said Cardinal Edward Egan. “I suppose you could call it a triple-header.”

The archbishop emeritus of New York was responding to news that Pope Benedict XVI today had named two American archbishops as cardinals, both with close links to the archdiocese: Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, and Bronx, N.Y.-born Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, Pro-Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem and former archbishop of, most recently, Baltimore, and the Archdiocese for Military Services.

They were among 22 prelates and leading clergymen who will be elevated to the College of Cardinals at a consistory in Rome on Feb. 18.

The Holy Father, who made the announcement during his Angelus address on the feast of the Epiphany, had moments earlier ordained Msgr. Charles Brown — another native New Yorker — titular archbishop of Aquileia. The new archbishop, one of only two to be ordained bishops by the Pope in St. Peter’s Basilica this morning, had been an official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1994, which included time working with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He now takes up his new position as the new apostolic nuncio to Ireland.

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