Politics, challenges to church to guide choice of successor

This morning, at 10:30 in Rome, the princes of the Catholic Church will file into Bologna Hall of the Apostolic Palace, still grieving over the death of Pope John Paul II, but looking increasingly toward the moment in two weeks when they will formally begin to choose his successor.

In the room will be cardinals from Italy, where many are looking to reclaim the top post in a church they led for centuries before John Paul II's election, and cardinals from the developing world, where many hope the church will look for a powerful symbolic choice as it did in choosing a Pole in 1978.

''This will be interesting, exciting, and a little scary," Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., told reporters as he prepared to leave for Rome. ''You know you're going to share with another 116 people that extraordinary opportunity and that extraordinary responsibility."

The cardinals will be in many ways united by a shared doctrinal orthodoxy -- all but three of them were appointed by John Paul II -- but differentiated by their varying life experiences, shaped in part by geopolitics and their varying roles as administrators of dioceses around the world or as heads of agencies at the Vatican.

Although many of the 117 men who will elect the next pontiff have met one another -- despite living all over the world, the cardinals meet periodically at church gatherings and ceremonies -- nearly one-quarter were named cardinals just 17 months ago and remain relatively unknown.

Over these next two weeks, the cardinals will have a chance to size one another up, meeting daily as the College of Cardinals assumes collective oversight of the global church and the Vatican bureaucracy during this interregnum.

''They're not allowed to politick directly, to speak about names, but they are encouraged to talk about problems facing the church, their perspective on the problems and priorities, and in doing so they get a very clear sense of where one another are coming from," said William J. Tighe, an associate professor of history at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.

Scholars who study papal transitions say history suggests that the cardinals will probably look for an older man as the next pope -- probably someone between 65 and 75 years old -- in order to increase the odds that the next papacy will be relatively short after the 26-year papacy of John Paul II. That is because during a long papacy, power tends to concentrate in Rome; a short papacy would allow power to devolve back to the local church and would function as a kind of transition period.

But this strategy has backfired in the past -- in 1878, at the close of the 31-year-long papacy of Pius IX, the College of Cardinals chose 68-year-old Cardinal Gioacchino Vincenzo Pecci, who was in weak health, as his successor. Cardinal Pecci, who took the name Leo XIII, served for another 25 years.

Technically, the next pope does not have to be a cardinal; any baptized man can be elected. But scholars say that to be considered papabile, or pope-worthy, one must be a cardinal, multilingual -- ideally, at least conversant in English, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish -- and comfortable with the high visibility and frequent travel that has become an expectation of a pope in the information age.

''The personality, character, the holiness, and balance of the man is the most important and determinant issue of choosing the next pope," said Robert Moynihan, editor of the Rome-based monthly magazine Inside the Vatican. ''It requires a man who can remain balanced in the face of unpredictable and difficult challenges."

But there are also geopolitical concerns. Scholars generally agree that the next pope will not be from the United States, in part because of a concern about allowing a citizen of the world's only superpower to assume the helm of the church, and in part because many cardinals view the American church as liberal and problem-plagued.

But, if there is consensus about where the pope will not come from, there is none about where he will come from.

Many Italians would like to reclaim the papacy -- the pope, after all, serves as bishop of Rome -- and some of the most frequently mentioned candidates, particularly Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the archbishop of Milan, hail from Italy. There are more cardinals from Italy than from any other country, but the number of Italian cardinals is just 20 -- far too few to elect a pope without support from many others.

''It would be preferable to have an Italian pope after a Polish one," Luigi Bianchi, 70, of Rome said yesterday as he sat with his wife in the late-afternoon sunlight, gazing at the continuous flow of people filing into St. Peter's Square. But his wife, Franca, 50, chimed in, saying, ''Even if he is foreign, it doesn't make a difference, as long as he is good like this one."

There are a handful of non-Italian Europeans who have drawn attention because of their scholarly accomplishments or other leadership in the church. They include Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a German bishop who is the church's controversial doctrinal watchdog in his role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

But many church officials and scholars are increasingly focused on the shift of the demographic heart of Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, to the developing world. Some argue that the church could strengthen its position in Latin America, Africa, and Asia by choosing a pope from one of those regions. Among the leading candidates are Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, archbishop of Sao Paulo; Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires; and Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

''We see how in the developing world the church has grown so much in the last 50 years -- the axis of Christianity is moving away from Europe to the Southern Hemisphere -- and so a pope from Africa or Latin America would be certainly a wonderful sign, but I will defer to the Holy Spirit," Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston said during a news conference yesterday at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Many Catholics from the developing world are enthusiastic about the prospect of a Third World pope -- partly out of a sense of regional pride, and partly hoping that such a papacy could call attention to the regions' concerns, just as John Paul II was able to use his role as pope to help bring an end to the Communist hold on Poland, his native country, and the rest of Eastern Europe.

''I think the next pope should be Brazilian, because Brazil is a country where there are a lot of Catholics and there are a lot of Brazilians in the United States and in Europe," Ziuda Elexandina-Moratto, 29, of Brazil said while hugging her two children with the green, yellow, and blue flag of Brazil draped over their shoulders in St. Peter's Square yesterday.

And in South Africa yesterday, Shirley-Anne Hoosen, 52, of Pretoria, hoped for an African pope as she emerged from a two-hour service at the Church of St. Martin de Porres. ''We pray for the right person," Hoosen said. ''But if he were from Africa, we would be enthralled, just like the Polish were."

Added Pretoria parishioner Francis Moloi, 40, a South African diplomat and graduate of Harvard Law School: ''It would electrify all of Africa."

O'Malley plans to travel to Rome this week for the funeral, but will not participate in the conclave because he is not a cardinal. O'Malley's predecessor, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, will be a participant in the conclave; Law, who resigned as archbishop of Boston because of the clergy sexual-abuse scandal, is now archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. Law said yesterday in a television interview that he is preparing for the conclave through prayer and reflection on the challenges facing the next pope.

''We're a very divided world," Law said in an interview on ABC's ''This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

''At times, we're a divided church," he said. ''There's a lot of anger, a lot of division, a lot of bitterness in the world. It affects families, it affects individuals, it affects nations, the relationship of nations. And what the Holy Father tried to do in his life, and what the next Holy Father will have to try to do, is be a spokesman for unity."

Charles M. Sennott of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Sofia Celeste contributed from Rome; John Donnelly of the Globe staff contributed from Pretoria. Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.