VATICAN CITY -- Brazilian Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves, a longtime Vatican official once considered a potential successor to Pope John Paul II, died at age 76 after a long illness.

Church officials said Cardinal Neves died Sept. 8 in a Rome clinic. No cause of death was given, but he was known to have suffered for years from diabetes and kidney problems.

The pope, in a telegram, praised the late cardinal as a faithful servant of the church in Brazil and at the Vatican. The pope planned to preside over the funeral Mass for Cardinal Neves in St. Peter's Basilica Sept. 11.

His death leaves the College of Cardinals with 173 members, of whom 117 are under age 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a papal conclave.

Cardinal Neves, born and raised in Brazil, served as auxiliary bishop of Sao Paolo, 1967-74, and as archbishop of Sao Salvador da Bahia, 1987-98. He headed the Brazilian bishops' conference from 1995 to 1998, seeking to allay tensions between some Brazilian church activists and the Vatican. He was named a cardinal in 1988.

His experience at the Vatican began in 1974 when he was named vice president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. In 1979, he became secretary of the Congregation for Bishops, where he helped oversee the appointment of new bishops around the world. He returned to head the Congregation for Bishops from 1998 until his retirement for health reasons in 2000.

Cardinal Neves helped prepare a 1986 meeting involving Brazilian bishops, Vatican officials and the pope, an encounter that looked at liberation theology and other sticking points between the world's largest bishops' conference and the Vatican.

The pope called on Cardinal Neves for help in resolving other sensitive church problems. At the 1990 Synod of Bishops on priestly formation, Cardinal Neves, recording secretary, warned the delegates away from topics that he -- and the pope -- considered unrelated to improving vocations, seminary training and post-ordination programs.

Cardinal Neves said that, because church policy is clear on the nature of the priesthood, bishops should not spend time discussing such topics as the celibacy requirement, a married priesthood, ordaining women and assigning ministerial tasks to laicized priests.

The cardinal said there were no shortcuts to solving the vocations problem and that unless bishops assure solid spiritual formation, they risk ordaining "good and nice pagans."

Cardinal Neves' own priestly formation took place in France. At age 14 he decided he wanted to be a Dominican after hearing a sermon by a French priest who belonged to the order.

Born Sept. 16, 1925, in Sao Joao del Rei, Brazil, Lucas Moreira Neves was descended on his mother's side from black slaves taken by colonialists to Brazil. The family of his father, a shoemaker, traced its roots to the Portuguese Azores.

Ordained a Dominican priest July 9, 1950, he returned in 1952 to Brazil, where he tackled a series of pastoral tasks, including work with university students and the Christian Family Movement.

As an auxiliary bishop, he represented the Brazilian bishops' conference in 1968 at the landmark meeting in Medellin, Colombia, where a course of reform and renewal was recommended for Latin America.