c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ When Pope John Paul II chose 31 new cardinals in 2003, he kept the identity of one of them secret. The mystery surrounding the name remains unsolved days after the pontiff’s death.

“Up to this moment we don’t know who he is,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said at a Vatican briefing on Tuesday (April 5).

Navarro-Valls said it is possible the mystery cardinal will be identified in the pope’s “spiritual testament” or other papal documents still to be read by members of the College of Cardinals meeting daily at the Vatican.

If he is under the age of 80, he would become the 118th cardinal eligible to vote for the next pope at a conclave expected to open next week.

There is a complication, however. It is unclear whether he would still qualify for a cardinal’s red hat after the death of the pope who nominated him.

When the pope withholds the name of a prelate he intends to create as a cardinal, the nominee is known as a cardinal “in pectore” in Latin or “in petto” in Italian, meaning that the pope keeps the identity in his breast.

This is usually done if disclosing the prelate’s name would endanger his life or mission.

John Paul named three other “in pectore” cardinals whose names he later revealed. All lived in countries under communist rule at the time they were nominated.

They were Marian Jaworski, now archbishop of Latin rite Catholics in Lviv, Ukraine; Janis Pujats of Riga, Latvia; and Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei, a Chinese bishop imprisoned for 30 years in China where he was part of the underground church loyal to the pope.

Canon law says cardinals “are created by decree of the Roman pontiff,” and the decree must be “published in the presence of the College of Cardinals.”

The question that would have to be settled by the College of Cardinals with the advice of canon lawyers is whether a letter from a pope read to the cardinals after his death meets that requirement.

Speculation as to the identity of the mystery cardinal has centered on the pope’s longtime secretary and friend, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, but it is considered more likely that the prelate is a bishop currently under persecution in China.

KRE/RB END POLK