The Vatican has raised the age of a Polish cardinal to 81 -- making him ineligible to vote in a conclave for a pope - after he acknowledged lying about his age during World War II to escape being sent to a German labor camp.
The newly published Vatican yearbook lists the birth date of Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz as Oct. 17, 1923, which is five years older than his listing in previous years.
Cardinals older than 80 are ineligible to vote for a new pope, and the change reduces the number of cardinal-electors to 119.
Gulbinowicz spoke of the age change Sunday in an interview with Poland's Catholic news agency KAI.
"It is not true that the change in my documents was made in 1944 to protect me from being enlisted into the Red Army," the agency quoted him as saying. "The correction in my birth date was made at the advice of one of the commanders of the Home Army in 1942, when the entire region of Vilnius was occupied by the Germans in order to avoid being sent as a forced laborer to Germany."
The Home Army was Poland's independent army that fought both the Nazis and the Russians. Vilnius, now in Lithuania, was part of Poland at that time.
"Changing the date of birth was a form of escape. I must add here that I was not the only one who did it. My friends of the same age, or similar age, also were able to save themselves thanks to these corrections, done by people who wanted to protect us Poles from being sent as forced labor to Germany," Gulbinowicz explained.
He said Pope John Paul II was informed of the age change before he became pontiff in 1978.
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