c. 2006 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI crowned his first batch of cardinals Friday (March 24) in a solemn ceremony that underscored the rising influence of American churchmen in the heart of Roman Catholicism.

Two of the 15 men who knelt before Benedict to receive their blood-red skullcaps and three-point birettas were Americans. The promotion of archbishops Sean O’Malley of Boston and William Levada, the former San Francisco prelate, brings to 15 the number from the United States, which now has the second-largest number of cardinals after Italy.

“It’s quite a strong voice,” Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington said in an interview after the ceremony. “There will be a real chance for the Americans to speak and give their impression of what’s going on in the church.”

In raising the profile of the United States within the church hierarchy, however, Benedict has also drawn attention to many of the challenges that have gripped its ranks in recent years, from disagreements over the place of gays in the priesthood to clergy sex abuse.

“We profoundly feel this task of great responsibility,” Levada said, addressing the pope on behalf of the newly elevated cardinals Friday. As the most senior prelate of the newly appointed cardinals, Levada was selected to deliver the address before hundreds of onlookers.

Levada currently holds Benedict’s old job as the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, making him the Vatican’s chief theologian and the highest-ranking American to ever serve in Rome.

Having led the church’s response to the sex abuse scandal, in particular, both Levada and O’Malley are now poised to become key policy advisers in the church’s response to an issue that could assume global dimensions.

Since the clergy abuse scandal exploded in Boston in 2002, an increasing number of sex abuse cases have also emerged in Latin America and Europe.

Benedict “sees North America as a major influence on the theology and pastoral life of the church. What pops out of North America is key for the whole of the church,” said the Rev. Anthony Figueiredo, the director of ministry at Seton Hall University and a former assistant to the pope.

In his new job, Levada is now responsible for the oversight and discipline of clerics accused of sex abuse. O’Malley, who took the reins in Boston after Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace in late 2002, has been battling to repair relations with the Boston Catholics while grappling with the financial burdens of ongoing litigation.

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During the pope’s address to the newly created cardinals Friday, Benedict underlined his openness to consult with the so-called “princes” of the church on a more formal basis, referring to the College of Cardinals as “a kind of Senate, called to cooperate closely with the Successor of Peter.”

That intention became clear Thursday, as Benedict convened a special session of “prayer and reflection,” calling on cardinals to discuss such touchy subjects as relations with Islam and the ongoing schism with followers of the traditionalist French bishop Marcel Lefebvre.

“He’s getting the topics out there in discussion with the College of Cardinals and bishops,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl, a moral theologian at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. “So one can see this as a decentralization while maintaining the personal authority he has as Roman pontiff.”

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Observers agree that the growing influence of Americans in the College of Cardinals could shape the pope’s agenda. But many said the American church’s greatest influence may lie in the example that it sets.

“Christians throughout the world are looking to the U.S. church as an example, and the example is not always good,” Gahl said.

The new cardinals come from 10 countries and from within the Vatican hierarchy. There are now 193 members of the College of Cardinals, 120 of whom are under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave to elect the next pope.

The other U.S. cardinals include the archbishops of Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. Two are retired archbishops of Washington and Philadelphia, three hold posts in Rome, and one is theologian Avery Dulles of Fordham University.

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Since coming to office last April, Benedict has made love and unity within the church one of the keystones of his young papacy. It is unclear, however, whether that message is resonating among the deeply divided American Catholics.

“Culturally, people see that there is a difference _ that there is this lack of unity in the United States,” McCarrick said.

Law, the former Boston prelate who now holds a ceremonial post at a major Rome basilica, was present at Friday’s ceremony and initiated an exchange with O’Malley in the square. Asked about the encounter at a press conference, O’Malley said Law offered “a word of congratulations.”

“I don’t recall the exact words,” he said.

According to Figueiredo, the pope will be looking to Boston for signs of whether the American church can recover its unity.

“The healing comes through Boston,” he said. “The morale is still not good, but by naming (O’Malley) he’s really giving him a vote of confidence.”

KRE/PH END MEICHTRY