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| Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer arrives to celebrate mass in the Sant' Andrea al Quirinale church, in Rome, Sunday March 10, 2013. Cardinals from around the world gather this week in a conclave to elect a new pope following the stunning resignation of Benedict XVI. In the secretive world of the Vatican, there is no way to know who is in the running, and history has yielded plenty of surprises. Yet several names have come up time repeatedly as strong contenders for the job. Scherer, the Archbishop of Sao Paulo, is among those considered to have a credible shot at the papacy. |
VATICAN CITY
(AP) -- The Vatican insists that the cardinals participating in the
upcoming conclave will vote their conscience, each influenced only by
silent prayers and reflection. Everybody knows, however, that power
plays, vested interests and Machiavellian maneuvering are all part of
the game, and that the horse-trading is already under way.
Can
the fractious Italians rally behind a single candidate? Can the
Americans live up to their surprise billing as a power broker? And will
all 115 cardinals from around the world be able to reach a meeting of
minds on whether the church needs a people-friendly pope or a hard-edged
manager able to tame Vatican bureaucrats?
This
time there are no star cardinals and no big favorites, making the
election wide open and allowing the possibility of a compromise
candidate should there be deadlock.
While
deliberations have been secret, there appear to be two big camps forming
that have been at loggerheads in the run-up to the conclave.
One,
dominated by the powerful Vatican bureaucracy called the Curia, is
believed to be seeking a pope who will let it continue calling the shots
as usual. The speculation is that the Curia is pushing the candidacy of
Brazilian Odilo Scherer, who has close ties to the Curia and would be
expected to name an Italian insider as Secretary of State - the Vatican
No. 2 who runs day-to-day affairs at the Holy See.
Another
camp, apparently spearheaded by American cardinals, is said to be
pushing for a reform-minded pope with the strength to shake up the
Curia, tarnished by infighting and the "Vatileaks" scandal in which
retired Pope Benedict XVI's own butler leaked confidential documents to a
journalist. These cardinals reportedly want Milan archbishop Angelo
Scola as pope, as he is seen as having the clout to bring the Curia into
line.
The other key question to resolve is
whether the pope should be a `'pastoral" one - somebody with the
charisma and communication skills to attract new members to a dwindling
flock - or a `'managerial" one capable of a church overhaul in a time of
sex-abuse scandals and bureaucratic disarray.
It's hard to find any single candidate who fits the bill on both counts.
Italy
has the largest group of cardinal electors with 28, and believes it has
a historic right to supply the pope, as it did for centuries. Italians
feel it's time to have one of their own enthroned again after 35 years
of "foreigners," with the Polish John Paul II and the German Benedict.
But
Italians are divided by which Italian church groups they have been
affiliated with, and which leaders they follow. A dispute that pitted
the followers of the archbishops of Genoa and Florence is said to have
cost them the papacy in 1978 after 455 years of Italian popes.
Andrea
Riccardi, a founder of the Sant Egidio community and minister of
cooperation in the Italian government, says Italian cardinals should get
the first look.
"The pope is bishop of Rome,"
Riccardi said. "Only if the selection of an Italian becomes impractical
should it be the case to look in another direction."
From
one point of view, the Italians have already suffered a setback. The
selection of Tuesday for the conclave to begin is considered a victory
for the "foreigners" who had sought more time to get to know get to know
one another amid pressures to begin voting as early as Sunday.
And
the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which polled experts
on Saturday, found Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley topped their list of
papal favorites - ahead of both Scherer and Scola.
Two
other Americans - Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Cardinal
Donald Wuerl of Washington - also emerged as potential popes in the
survey. That was a surprise since Americans had largely been written off
because of potential negative perceptions of electing a superpower
pope. Vatican watchers have also noted that an American pope would
likely have difficulty dealing with anti-Christian violence and
persecution in the Islamic world.
But there
are 11 American cardinal-electors, second in number only to the
Italians, and they are being talked up for their perceived managerial
skills.
The American reputation may have been
boosted by the Vatican's decision to silence their daily pre-conclave
news conferences. The American eagerness for transparency has been well
received among Catholics - and cast in sharp contrast to the
secrecy-prone Italians.
There is one more camp, which presumably commands enough votes to influence the election.
It
is the "Benedict faction," the 67 voting cardinals who owe their red
hat and presence in the conclave to the most recent pope. They make up
more than half of the voters.
Their loyalty to
Benedict could damage the ambitions of any cardinal thought to have
damaged his papacy and been part of the "divisions" that Benedict
lamented in his final addresses.
Who might that be? Their names are presumably listed in a secret report prepared for Benedict about the "Vatileaks" scandal.
Only a few people have seen that report. None of the cardinals who will be voting are among them.
