Pope creates 23 new 'princes of the Church'

VATICAN CITY, Saturday (AFP)- Twenty-three new cardinals knelt before Pope Benedict XVI today to accept their birettas -- square red hats -- during a time-honoured ceremony inducting them into the elite body that advises and elects popes. The 23 new "princes of the Church," of whom five are 80 or older and thus ineligible to vote in a papal election, fill out the ranks of the College of Cardinals to 201, including 120 cardinal-electors.

Iraq's Chaldean Church Patriarch Emmanuel Delly elevated with 22 other bishops to the rank of Roman Catholic Cardinals . AFP

"Dear brothers, as you enter the College of Cardinals, the Lord asks you and entrusts you with the service of love: love for God, love for his Church ... with maximum and unconditional dedication," the pope told the freshmen in Saint Peter's Basilica. Using the Latin phrase "usque ad sanguinis effusionem" (to the point of spilling blood), the pope reminded the new cardinals that their red robes signify their willingness to die for their faith.

Clad in a gold robe and the mitre of his 19th-century predecessor Pius IX, Benedict singled out the elevation of the patriarch of Babylon for the Chaldeans, which he said reflected his wish to express his spiritual closeness and affection for the Iraqi people. "I think now with affection of communities entrusted to your care and, especially, to those most tried by suffering, challenges and difficulties of various kinds," he said in his homily.

"Among them, how can one not turn one's gaze with apprehension and affection, in this moment of joy, to the dear Christian communities in Iraq?" he asked, drawing loud applause from the prelates assembled in Saint Peter's Basilica. Emmanuel III Delly, the 80-year-old spiritual leader of Iraqi Christians, said Friday that the honour was for "all Iraqis."

The cardinals, their red robes overlaid with white surplices symbolising purity, each accepted a red biretta from the pope in the solemn ritual known as a consistory.