One is a polymath, saxophone-playing radical from South America who defends the rights of workers and is loved by the anti-globalisation movement. The other is a tennis-playing black African, who has described homosexuals as making a mockery of the family.
And between Oscar RodrÃÂguez Maradiaga, the 62-year-old head of the Roman Catholic Church in Honduras, and Cardinal Francis Arinze (72) of Nigeria, a multitude of names, spanning the entire religious and political spectrum, are now being touted as the next pope.
RodrÃÂguez Maradiaga, who speaks seven languages and holds master’s degrees in moral theology and clinical psychology, is the favourite of the liberal camp. His campaign to rid Latin America of debt has earned him a reputation as a radical.
Arinze, who was charged by the late pope with strengthening the links between Catholicism and Islam, is considered to be a conservative in the John Paul II mould.
But predicting who will become the spiritual head of the Catholic Church is a notoriously difficult exercise. History shows that the church has a tendency to overlook the favourite candidates. John Paul II himself was a rank outsider before being elected in 1978.
One thing, however, is certain: following the pope’s demise, the church will find itself at a crossroads. It could aim for the long term and appoint a pope who could help shape the future direction of the church. Or it could accept that the structure John Paul II presided over needs urgent repair and appoint a ”short-term fixer”.
”There are a whole load of issues that need sorting out,” said John Haldane, professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews and an expert on the Catholic Church.
”There are problems in South America with church governance, Africa has been tainted by corruption. There’s the big opening up of China; it’s conceivable that it could have 300-million Roman Catholics in the future, we just have no idea. There’s huge growth in south-east Asia, but the South Koreans don’t have enough priests.”
Such issues were never properly addressed under John Paul II, critics say. A firm believer that the church’s role is an evangelical one, in which its chief job is to recruit and reach out to its followers, it is alleged that the pope eschewed modern notions of organisational management.
Instead, he favoured a centralised church structure that removed the autonomy of local churches. While the structure was effective in disseminating John Paul’s partly conservative philosophy, it meant many local issues were never been properly addressed.
Critics say the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the American Catholic Church was allowed to fester because United States cardinals ”kicked it upstairs” to the Vatican, which in turn failed to deal with it effectively.
These concerns will be looming large in the minds of the 120 cardinals now gathering to elect a new pontiff in a secret ballot, a process that will take between 15 and 20 days. During this period they will reflect on where the church needs to be in the 21st century.
”The Catholic Church does not think in terms of the next four or five years,” Haldane said. ”The church thinks in terms of centuries. The basic question the cardinals will be asking themselves now is not whether they want someone from the northern or southern hemispheres, it will be, ‘Do we want a church governor or a church man for the world?’
”If they want a short-term governor, then they will probably go for someone in Rome. If they are looking for someone who will provide Christian leadership in the world, then the question of who they will go for becomes really quite different.”
Along with Arinze and RodrÃÂguez Maradiaga, names mooted in the latter category include Claudio Hummes (70), Archbishop of São Paulo, and Jaime Ortega (68), Archbishop of Havana. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (77), the German-born theological adviser to the late pope and a hard-line conservative, is considered a clear favourite if the cardinals opt for a short-term appointment.
What all commentators agree is that the next pope cannot be an American. Such a move would be viewed as giving tacit endorsement to US foreign policy.
And neither will he be too young. John Paul II’s reign — the third longest of any pontiff — was double the length of the average pope and there is a widespread feeling in the church that this was too long.
”People feel John Paul II has had the opportunity to impose himself upon the church, and the longer he has been in the role, the more this feeling has grown,” Michael Walsh, author of a biography on the Pope, said before the pontiff’s death.
The pope’s longevity allowed him to shore up his philosophical position as few of his predecessors had been able to do. No fewer than 97% of the cardinals eligible to elect his successor were appointed by John Paul, leading Vatican-watchers to predict that the next pope will be equally conservative in ideology.
One unspoken agreement among the cardinals is that whoever becomes the next pope faces a gargantuan task, one that in some ways was not helped by the late John Paul’s success as a global statesman. — Guardian Unlimited Â