Dionigi Tettamanzi

VATICAN CITY -- Throughout his steadily rising church career, Milan Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi has had a knack of being in the right place at the right time.

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The outcome of the secret conclave of cardinals to elect the next pope will tell if that pattern still holds for Tettamanzi, the favorite of many of those who think the papacy will return to the Italians after the 26-year tenure of a Polish pope broke their 455-year hold on the papacy.

A 71-year-old theologian whom John Paul II often consulted, Tettamanzi is a moderate, but his staunch defense of the pope's teaching against abortion and euthanasia and other moral positions could win over conservatives.

Tettamanzi's first bishop's post, in the Adriatic town of Ancona, was in a diocese near the Loreto shrine so dear to John Paul that the pontiff visited it five times.

Later Tettamanzi was cardinal in Genoa -- boldly questioning the impact of globalization on the working class -- when that port city came under the world spotlight during the riot-scarred G-8 summit in 2001.

And as the moment nears for cardinals to size each other up and decide who should shepherd the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics, Tettamanzi leads Italy's high-profile archdiocese of Milan.

John Paul appointed him to the post in July 2002, four years after elevating him to cardinal's rank.

Tettamanzi moved quickly up the church's power ladder, once he had his foot on the first rungs with his appointment to the Ancona-Osimo diocese in 1989.

"He was a theologian the pope consulted often," recalled Monsignor Paolucci Bedini, now the diocese's vicar-general and a priest there during Tettamanzi's year-and-a-half tenure. "He was always running back and forth between Ancona and Rome."

Tettamanzi specializes in moral theology, especially social doctrine.

He received a doctorate in 1959 at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, a prestigious academic address in the Vatican's world.

Tettamanzi worked on two of John Paul's most important encyclicals, and is considered among the ghostwriters.

One of encyclicals, the 1993 "Splendor of Truth," defended absolute morals against liberal theologians.

The other was the 1995 "Evangelium Vitae" in which the pope denounced a "culture of death" and delivered the church's most forceful condemnation of abortion, euthanasia and experimentation on human embryos. It also restated the Vatican's ban on birth control.

Tettamanzi's help in projecting an unwavering Vatican defense of traditional teaching on moral issues might turn off progressive thinkers among the voting cardinals, although, with most of them appointed by conservative John Paul, his staunch defense of church teaching would likely gain him many points.

John Paul championed labor rights, including his ringing defense of the Solidarity free trade movement in his homeland which figured in the demise of Soviet bloc communism. He also repeatedly warned of dangers of unbridled capitalism.

For cardinals looking for a pope who might follow those lines, Tettamanzi could be their man.

The cardinal's moment came during the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa, which drew hundreds of thousands of people to protest what they denounced as unequal distribution of wealth in the world's globalized markets.

The city was trashed by rioters and a protester was shot dead by police as President Bush and other leaders of the world's richest nations held talks in a sealed off section of Genoa's historic center, including the cathedral.

"We are witnessing a clear contrast between capital and work," Tettamanzi wrote in Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian bishops conference, in the run-up to the summit.

"In the bazaar of the global village, paying the price is not the industrialists but the working men and women" Tettamanzi wrote in an article that some dismayed Italians saw as fueling the anger of protesters descending on the city.

The then-Genoa cardinal added: "Profit isn't the absolute value of man." He also denounced "ethical shortcomings in those holding power."

Tettamanzi, born in 1934 in Renate, a working-class town near Milan, is seen by some observers as lacking charisma. That quality, in a pope who will have to follow dynamic, crowd-pleasing John Paul, will likely be high on the cardinals' checkoff list in the conclave.

Short and plain-faced, Tettamanzi doesn't cut a particularly memorable figure, and his world travels are less extensive than some candidates. But he is credited with knowing how to reach his flock.

"I'm the first one to forget a speech, but I never forget a handshake," Milan daily Corriere della Sera quoted him as saying.