Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga yesterday became the first Honduran to become a cardinal. The South American, who is Archbishop of Tegucigalpa in Honduras, is seen as a rising star in the church and is being tipped as a strong contender for the next papacy.
At 58, the Salesian cleric is one of the youngest of the 44 cardinals named. He is less rigidly conservative than most of the other Latin Americans elevated by Pope John Paul II.
As the head of the Latin American Bishops' Council, he championed the cause of debt relief for poor countries.
Karl Lehmann, who is Bishop of Mainz in Germany, became embroiled in controversy last year when he suggested that Pope John Paul II should consider retiring.
Consequently, when his name cropped up among the 44 who were to be made cardinals, it came as a surprise.
After it was reported in January last year that Bishop Lehmann, who was then president of the German Bishop's Conference, had called on the Pope to resign, he said his remarks had been misunderstood.
Until recently he was in dispute with the Vatican over Catholic pregnancy counselling centres in Germany.
Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, the Archbishop of Lima, yesterday became the first overt member of Opus Dei to be appointed a cardinal.
Once a basketball player on the Peruvian national team, he came to worldwide attention as a mediator during the 1996 hostage crisis that was sparked when Marxist rebels seized the Japanese embassy.
In 1988 he was appointed Apostolic Administrator of Ayacucho, at that time the stronghold of the bloody Maoist "Shining Path" rebels. There he took both a strong stand against violence, which earned him several life threats, and a pastoral and social stance in favour of displaced peasants and the poor.
Dr Cormac Murphy O'Connor (68) was installed as Archbishop of Westminster only last year, succeeding Cardinal Basil Hume.
His family comes from Cork and through the work of his ministries in Britain he became a popular figure in the church.
Shortly after he was installed as Archbishop he found himself in the midst of controversy when he refused to resign over the case of a paedophile priest. But since then he has overseen the appointment of the former judge, Lord Nolan, to review church procedures for dealing with accusations against priests.
He has insisted he is neither a liberal nor a rigid fundamentalist.
Dr Wilfrid Fox Napier:
The Archbishop of Durban, Dr Wilfrid Fox Napier, was one of seven names added to the list of those to be made cardinals by Pope John Paul II at the end of January.
The first list contained 37 names but South Africa had no cardinal and Dr Napier was subsequently added to the list.
Dr Napier trained as a Franciscan in Killarney and studied at the National University of Ireland Galway in the 1960s.
In 1994 he addressed an Oireachtas sub-committee on development co-operation about the situation in South Africa and the struggle for democratic elections in South Africa.
Father Avery Dulles:
The US theologian, Father Avery Dulles, is one of only two priests elevated to the rank of cardinal yesterday.
The son of a former US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, he is a distinguished Catholic theologian and is the author of 21 books and 650 articles and essays, mainly on theological matters.
At 82, he is the oldest of the new cardinals and two years older than the Pope.
He is also the first American theologian to become a cardinal without having had pastoral responsibility. He has said: "At my relatively advanced age I will have the task of trying to learn how to look and act cardinalatial."