Pope Francis, seen here in this undated file photo, has named 19 new cardinals to the Roman Catholic Church. 2013 AFP

Pope Francis named his first cardinals Sunday, choosing 19 men from around the world including the developing nations of Haiti and Burkina Faso – selections in line with his stated belief that the church must pay more attention to the poor.

But advocates for victims of sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy said they felt let down because Francis did not unequivocally respond to their calls to not promote prelates who hadn’t made a clean break with past practices of covering up pedophile behavior.

Francis read out the 19 names to a crowd of tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square on Sunday. The men will be installed on Feb. 22.

Sixteen of the appointees are younger than 80, meaning they would be eligible to elect the next pope, the cardinals' most important task. Pope Paul VI in 1970 set the age cut-off in part to spare older men the rigors of travel, according to the Catholic News Service.

Since his election in March as the first pontiff from Latin America, the pope has broken tradition after tradition in terms of protocol and style at the Vatican. But with the list announced Sunday, Francis stuck to the church's rule of having no more than 120 cardinals eligible to elect the next pontiff.

The College of Cardinals is 13 shy of that 120-mark among eligible-to-vote members. In addition, three cardinals will turn 80 by May. That means Francis chose the exact number of new cardinals needed to bring the voting ranks up to 120 during the next few months.

Some appointments were expected, including that of his new secretary of state, Italian archbishop Pietro Parolin, and the German head of the Vatican's watchdog office for doctrinal orthodoxy, Gerhard Ludwig Mueller. Two others named Sunday also come from the curia, as the Holy See's Rome-based bureaucracy is known.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope's selection of churchmen from Haiti and Burkina Faso reflects Francis’ attention to the destitute as a core part of the church's mission.

Francis' announcement of Les Cayes Bishop Chibly Langlois, who, at 55, was the youngest of the appointees, came as the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti marked the anniversary of the earthquake there that killed tens of thousands of people.