Cardinals, the bigshots of the Catholic Church. What they essentially are is a group or college of counselors who serve as electors for the papacy, since the 11th century. More than you want to know about their history, etc. here.
The pope just "created" a new group of them, including a Czech Dominican. For many people, even those who lived with it for most of their lives, like me, the Communist Bloc seems like a distant memory. In the age of the Jihad, almost quaint. But it was real and grimly totalitarian. This new cardinal lived with it until he was in his late 40's, most of his life.
He joined the Dominicans while the Communists were still in power, but shortly after his ordination, his government permission to act as clergy was withdrawn and he went to work in factories for the next fifteen years. In the early 80's he secretly started training other Dominicans but was arrested and jailed for it for two years.
All this in our lifetimes. The nightmare that was Marxism was no dream.
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