VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service
Cathy Lynn Grossman | Jan 12, 2014
(RNS) Pope Francis released the names of 19 new princes of the Catholic Church Sunday — none from the United States.
The list included cardinals for Burkina Faso and Haiti to show “concern for people struck by poverty,” according to Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi. And the pope created new cardinalatial sees, Perugia in Italy, and Cotabato on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines.
The consistory, scheduled for late February, will fill 13 vacant seats plus bring in three more cardinals to replace those who will turn age 80 — too old to vote in a papal election — by the end of May.
One reason the Archbishops of Philadelphia and Los Angeles may not have been elevated to red hat status is that both cities currently have cardinals under age 80. It is unusual for one cardinal see to have two electors. However, the United States, with 11 voting cardinals already compared to merely five for Brazil, is hardly slighted in electoral clout.
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