Incardination
Pope John Paul II surprisingly named Archbishop Degenhardt to be a cardinal, along with Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz and five other bishops, on 28 January 2001, after he had just named 37 cardinals one week earlier. Pope John Paul II himself explained his naming only one year later on the occasion of Degenhardt's death in a letter of condolence written from the World Youth Day in Toronto as follows: "With his appointment to cardinal, I wanted to make visible the faithful evidence of the Paderborn spiritual leader for the entire world church." On 21 February 2001 he received the Paderborn archbishop as a cardinal priest with the titular church of San Liborio into the college of cardinals in the largest consistory of modern church history. Degenhardt held various ecclesiastical offices, including the leadership of the Eccumenical Commission of the German Bishops Conference from 1974 to 1976.
Read more about this topic: Johannes Joachim Degenhardt, Life