For next pontiff, daunting challenges await

VATICAN CITY -- Nearly 27 years ago, John Paul II assumed the papacy in an era when the church confronted the real prospect of nuclear war in a world divided between East and West.

Now, the man who succeeds John Paul will face the task of overseeing a church and speaking to a world increasingly divided between North and South, between rich and poor, between secular and devout.

When the 117 voting-age cardinals gather to elect the next pope two weeks from John Paul II's death yesterday, they will invoke centuries-old rituals of transition to choose the head of the billion-member church. But that new pope will face a dizzying array of modern-day challenges, internal as well as external, and with little consensus from church leaders about their top priorities.

Complete coverage on pages A20-A23 and in Section E.

In Europe, the Catholic hierarchy is threatened by an advancing secular culture and a dramatic surge of Muslim immigrants who are building mosques across the continent.

In Africa, the church faces the twin scourges of AIDS and poverty; in Latin America, it copes with the steady migration of parts of a traditionally Catholic population toward evangelical Protestantism.

And in the United States, the church is still reeling from the clergy sexual abuse crisis and grappling with a fast-changing set of moral questions provoked by advances in medicine and genetics.

''There are different issues in different parts of the world," said Harold W. Attridge, the dean of Yale Divinity School and an active Catholic layman. ''In this part of the world it's pretty obvious we have the pedophile crisis that still has to be worked through, and more largely there's the issue of leadership of the church, and how our parishes and church agencies are going to be staffed if the current vocational trends continue. In Europe, the church is challenged to show it's relevant and meaningful in a world that in some ways has moved beyond its Christian roots. And in the Third World, you have issues of the relationship of the church to the social order, and issues of poverty that are not going to go away."

Vatican officials and observers interviewed in Rome and the United States say one of the most important issues facing the next papacy is that of governance -- how much power rests with the Vatican's central bureaucracy, and how much with the bishops and dioceses around the world.

''Of all the many strengths of John Paul II's papacy, there are many cardinals who believe a weakness has been an inattention to the internal affairs of the church," said John L. Allen Jr., the Vatican correspondent for the US-based National Catholic Reporter. ''And the sex abuse crisis is perhaps the most dramatic example of what can happen with a lack of attention to detail, or a breakdown in communication within the leadership of the church over the seriousness of an issue."

Some at the Vatican say the way for the future pope to deal with this issue is to take matters into his own hands, to ''spend more time behind the desk, and less time on the road," as Allen put it. But to others, the way to deal with this issue is for the church to delegate more responsibility for running the church to local bishops and cardinals.

''There needs to be a curia that listens more closely to the reports coming from bishops and the dioceses," said the Rev. Greg Apparcel, rector of the Church of Santa Susanna, the US parish in Rome.

On a practical level, this issue has played out in the form of direct Vatican control over liturgical practices and translations around the world, and repeated crackdowns on theologians viewed as insufficiently orthodox.

''There are a number of bishops throughout the world who resented the patterns of curial intervention that took place under this pontificate, and I suspect that they will be looking for a candidate who is more willing to allow decisions to be made at the local and regional level, rather than at the Vatican," said Richard R. Gaillardetz, a Catholic studies professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

Church officials in Rome are particularly concerned about what they perceive to be a runaway secular culture in Europe that has left the church withering and frail in the very seat of Christian civilization. In Italy, Spain, France, Ireland, and elsewhere in Western Europe, pews are often empty, seminaries are seeing their numbers dwindle dramatically, and the church is under siege from a modern culture increasingly alienated from the teaching of the church.

Twelve nations in Europe have legalized gay marriage or some form of same-sex union, despite the fact that the pope referred to it as part of the ''ideology of evil." The Vatican lost its battle to have the new, proposed constitution of the European Union include a reference to ''God."

This presents the church with a choice: Does it confront the problem by being more modern and engaging in dialogue with a secular Europe, or does it retrench into a culture of conviction and hold fast to its conservative beliefs and work to preserve what one Vatican official called the ''imperiled Christian identity of Europe."

''The first major concern for the next pope is evangelization of major areas that have lost the faith, particularly in Western Europe, where in many countries the church has really become irrelevant," said Rev. Anthony J. Figueiredo, a former special assistant to John Paul II who is now an associate professor of systematic theology at Seton Hall University.

Another profound issue for the next papacy will be the relationship between Christendom and Islam. John Paul II made historic efforts to build interfaith understanding between Catholics and Muslims and Jews. But Vatican officials say that the next papacy will face rising pressure to push for what is referred to within the Vatican as ''reciprocity." There is a belief that Western societies have been welcoming to Muslim immigrants and to the religion of Islam, and that Islam must do more to treat Christians in the Muslim world with equal respect.

But if the curia in their elegant silk vestments and red caps see governance, secularization, and the relationship with Islam as the core issues for the next pope, the clerics who work as missionaries in Africa and Latin America see much more serious issues in the spread of AIDS and growing economic inequalities across Africa and Latin America, which together represent more than two-thirds of the total Catholic population.

''The church will find renewal only when it does more for the poor all over the world. The focus of the next papacy must be on this," said Jose Maria Arnaiz, a Spaniard who has worked extensively in Latin America and who is the head of the Union of Superiors General, the umbrella organization that oversees all Catholic religious orders.

For others, the most important looming issue lies on the cutting edge between science and morality. The Rev. Brian Johnstone, a professor at Alfonsiana Academy of Moral Theology in Rome, said, ''Over the 26 years of this papacy, the pace of developments in medicine and genetics have been dizzying, and the church will need to do more to keep up. A lot of these issues will be in the public forum and the church must deepen its understanding of these issues."

Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston, at a news conference at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross, was asked about priorities for the next pope.

''In today's world, the challenges are many and varied, and of course the holy father's ministry is to the entire church and to the entire world, and so his challenges are going to be very, very great," he replied. ''To try to prioritize those, I would find that very daunting."

Sennott reported from Vatican City and Paulson from Boston. Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.