The Cardinal and His Cassock

By longstanding tradition, Gammarelli -- tailor to the Popes and most of the Sacred College for the last four centuries -- permits all of one person outside the shop to see a new red-hat's robes before Consistory Morning: the cardinal-designate's priest-secretary.

Here, however, in a rare glimpse captured by Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cardinal-designate Donald Wuerl of Washington showed off the long-awaited "reds" in advance of his elevation today.

Made by Barbiconi, the tailor behind Wuerl's new threads came out of retirement to sew the new cardinal's robes -- in Wuerl's early Roman days as a seminarian and priest-secretary to Cardinal John Wright, Gino Barbiconi stitched his cassocks, returning to the task for this most auspicious of occasions:

On another "Scarlet Fever" note, in the run-up to the weekend's elevation rites, both Wuerl and the church's Wisconsin-born "chief justice" -- Cardinal-designate Raymond Burke -- gave interviews to Vatican Radio.

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