Cardinals created by John Paul II

Pope John Paul II (r. 1978–2005) created 231 cardinals in nine consistories held at roughly three-year intervals.

John Paul created fourteen cardinals at his first consistory[7] and he announced he was withholding the name of a fifteenth.

[8] John Paul created 18 cardinals on 2 February 1983, including the first resident of the Soviet Union (Vaivods of Latvia)[11] and four others from countries with Communist governments.

[14] On 29 May 1988 John Paul announced he would create 25 new cardinals in 28 June, though the death of Hans Urs von Balthasar of Switzerland reduced that number to 24.

[15] This consistory took the number of cardinal electors from 97 to 121, which fell within a month to the maximum of 120, a majority of them appointed by John Paul.

[b] On 30 October 1994, John Paul announced the names of 30 new cardinals from 24 countries, scheduling the consistory for 26 November.

[20][d] On 21 January 2001, Pope John Paul II announced plans to raise 37 prelates to the rank on cardinal at a consistory in February.

[22] He followed that by announcing the names of five more on 28 January and revealed the two made cardinals secretly in 1998, Marian Jaworski and Janis Pujats.

[e] Pope John Paul II announced on 28 September 2003 that he would create 31 new cardinals in an October consistory, but withheld the name of one of them, apparently a resident of a country where Catholicism was the object of government persecution.

The correct birth date was reported in the Italian press as early as March 2004[31] and printed in the Pontifical Yearbook presented to John Paul on 31 January 2005.