VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul appealed for Christian unity on Thursday at a mass with 44 new cardinals, and suggested again that the papacy's role might be changed in the future in order to improve ties with other religions.
At a ceremony in St Peter's Square the 80-year-old Pontiff, who appeared in good form, gave the new cardinals their rings of office and asked them to work for the goal of reaching Christian unity in the millennium that has just started.
"How can we not remember that the ministry of Peter (the papacy), the visible source of unity, constitutes a difficulty for the other Churches and ecclesiastical communities?" he said.
Speaking to thousands of people he said Christians had to return to the unity of the first millennium, before Christianity was split by the east-west schism of the 11th century and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th.
"I would like today, along with you, to pray to the Lord in a special way, so that the new millennium into which we have entered shall soon see the overcoming of this situation and the recovery of full communion," he said.
In his homily, the Pope was repeating a theme he wrote about in his 1995 encyclical "Ut Unum Sint" (May They All Be One), in which he said he was willing to seek an accommodation with other Christian denominations on the future role of the papacy.
There are differences between Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans and Orthodox on the role of the papacy in an eventually re-unified Church.
The non-Catholics want the papacy to be more of symbolic nature rather than one of supreme authority.
The Pope created the 44 cardinals at an initial ceremony on Wednesday, putting a lasting stamp on the elite group that will choose the next Pope, and greatly increasing the probability that his successor will be another non-Italian.
Forty of the new cardinals are under 80 years old and thus qualify to enter a secret conclave to elect the next Pope from among themselves after the death of the Polish-born Pontiff, who is suffering from a series of ailments.
The new appointments revolutionised the make-up of what is sometimes called the world's most exclusive men's club. It also greatly increased the chance that the next Pope could come from the developing world.
The number of "cardinal electors" has risen to an unprecedented 135, all but 10 of them, or 92.5 percent, appointed by the current Pope.
This increases the possibility that the next Roman Catholic leader will be a theological conservative in his own image.