Observers are tipping Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl and Apostolic Signatura Prefect, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, as next in line for cardinal's red hats at the consistory expected later this year. Archbishop Wuerl, 69, was promoted to the Washington see in 2006, the Washington Times reports.
His predecessor, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired as archbishop of Washington shortly after his 75th birthday, according to custom.
"If there are two American cardinals appointed, I think it'd be Wuerl and Burke," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center.
"If there is only one, the race is between Burke and Wuerl.
"The odds are in favor of Wuerl, but the biggest problem is the 120-cardinal limit that [Pope] Benedict [XVI] is keeping to. If the consistory is towards the end of the year," and after July 7, "Wuerl will be a shoo-in. If it's in June, it'll be a close race."
Other cities whose archbishops are customarily named cardinals, with sitting bishops who are not a members of the college, are New York, Detroit, Baltimore and Philadelphia, the Times says.
But the fastest-growing Catholic areas in the U.S. are in the South and Southwest, which could encourage Benedict to give a red hat to a bishop from one of these regions.
"The pope has a good grasp of the demographic shifts within the United States," said Peter Casarella, Catholic studies professor and director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University.
"There has been a signal that the Hispanics count. The pope could choose a Hispanic archbishop [as cardinal]."
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