VATICAN CITY – Cardinal-designate Juan Jose Omella of Barcelona, Spain, said his appointment isn't a job promotion but a call to be more like Jesus, who came to serve the poor and marginalized.

VATICAN CITY – Cardinal-designate Anders Arborelius of Stockholm is Sweden's only Catholic bishop and the first native Swede to hold the post since the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.

BANGKOK – Cardinal-designate Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun, who will become the first cardinal from Laos, is an ethnic Khmu, a hill tribe from northern Laos and southern China.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis announced he will create five new cardinals June 28; the new cardinals-designate come from Mali, Spain, Sweden, Laos and El Salvador.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis is often referred to as the “Pope of surprises” for many reasons. One of them is the unexpected churchmen he chooses to elevate to the rank of cardinal, as he will do with 16 bishops and an elderly priest on Saturday (Nov. 19) in St. Peter’s Basilica.

OXFORD, England – Clergy in the Central African Republic say their first cardinal will continue to work to reunite the country after years of civil war and speak up for the continent's poor.

VATICAN CITY – Being named a cardinal along with the nuncio who refuses to leave war-torn Syria, an Albanian priest sentenced to death and tortured by an atheist regime and a young African archbishop who put his life on the line to sow peace and reconciliation in Central African Republic has made Cardinal-designate Renato Corti pray and think hard.