Amid the crowd in St. Peter's Square, new cardinal hears his name

Published: 2007-10-17

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- U.S. Cardinal-designate John P. Foley, a Philadelphia native, was standing in the middle of St. Peter's Square among a sea of 30,000 pilgrims when Pope Benedict XVI named him a cardinal. Though he knew the previous day he was going to be one of 23 people to receive a red hat, the Oct. 17 announcement was going to fall on the same morning he had a follow-up visit with his eye doctor. "I didn't get back in time to be there at the beginning of the audience and I didn't have my glad rags on," meaning his formal clerical dress, so he said he just snuck inconspicuously into the middle of the crowd. He told Catholic News Service he never expected to be the second new cardinal listed after the senior Vatican prefect, Cardinal-designate Leonardo Sandri. When the pope "started the list there I was No. 2 on the list and that was a surprise," Cardinal-designate Foley said. He said a pilgrim standing next to him asked him if he knew any of the men the pope had just named to be cardinal. "I said 'Yes, I know quite a few of them.' And I said 'I am one of them,' Well, I don't think he believed me," he said laughing.

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