The General Congregation of Cardinals, which met Monday for the first time since the pope’s death, marked the informal start of what amounts to one of the world’s oldest election processes.
Dressed in scarlet hats and capes, 65 of the 183 Cardinals who arrived in time gathered at the Vatican for the first session of the General Congregation of Cardinals, which will run the church until a new pope is chosen.
Only the 117 cardinals younger than age 80 will actually choose the pope at the closed-door conclave, but that won’t begin for about two weeks. In the meantime, all the cardinals will meet daily, giving them an opportunity to get to know each other, size each other up and rate the credentials of potential candidates, making this the unofficial start of the process.
It will be no ordinary election. Campaigning is frowned upon, and any cardinal who may wish to be pope would be best advised to keep that to himself. A cardinal who is seen to be pre-empting God’s will by promoting his own chances would be quickly shunted aside.
“This is not a meeting of shareholders. They are not fighting for this. They are fighting for the church,” said Saverio Gaeta, editor of the Vatican-based Famiglia Cristiana, or Christian Family magazine. “They are churchmen, and I’m sure they want what’s best for the church.”
There are candidates, however, and potentially a large number because any baptized Roman Catholic male may be chosen. In practice, cardinals typically choose one of their own, and most Vatican watchers have reduced the likely number to a list of about a dozen.
The information age
The element of surprise may have been reduced somewhat by modern technology. In days gone by, the General Congregation would have provided a first opportunity for cardinals from far-flung places to meet and learn about each other’s positions on various issues.
But in the age of jet travel and electronic communications, all the cardinals already have met at least once and are likely to be somewhat familiar with each other’s reputations and policies, decreasing the likelihood that a dark horse candidate would emerge, as was the case when John Paul II was chosen.
Some cardinals have Web sites, especially those who head dioceses, on which they post their pictures, writings and biographies, making it easy for cardinals to read about each other.
The Web site of the archdiocese of Milan, for example, contains more than 120 pictures of Archbishop Dionigi Tettamanzi, one of the most frequently mentioned favorites for the job.
The powerful Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who as the dean of the College of Cardinals will be in charge of organizing the conclave and is expected to play a key role in brokering the selection, has his own Web site on which his extensive theological writings are posted. There also is a fan site on which admirers can purchase T-shirts, beer mugs and buttons emblazoned with Ratzinger’s most important pronouncements.
That Web site is unusual and is unlikely to have been authorized by Ratzinger, said Gerald O’Collins, a theologian at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.
“This isn’t going to be like a political campaign,” he said. “We aren’t going to see bumper stickers.”
But there is no doubt that cardinals will quickly get down to the business of discussing among themselves, probably informally and on the sidelines of their main meetings, the question of what the next papacy will look like.
More than individuals, issues are likely to dominate these early discussions, O’Collins said. Cardinals will focus first on what they believe are the most crucial issues confronting the Roman Catholic Church, and then later start sizing up the candidates.
There is unlikely to be substantial disagreement on what the core issues are: the drift toward secularism in Europe and the challenge to Catholic values posed by medical advances are likely to be high on everyone’s agenda.
Different priorities
But cardinals will prioritize the issues differently, with European ones likely to place a premium on a candidate with the ability to arrest the waning influence of Catholicism in Europe, and those from developing countries favoring candidates who will promote issues of development and social justice on behalf of the majority of Catholics–those living in the poorer parts of the world.
Personal characteristics also will count. Among those who believe Italian cardinals will seek to reclaim the papacy, after ceding the office to a non-Italian for the first time in 455 years in the case of John Paul II, Tettamanzi is considered a front-runner.
But if the next pope is an Italian, other Vatican watchers rate higher the chances of Angelo Scola, the patriarch of Venice, because he speaks English and several other languages, said Keith Pecklers, a Pontifical Gregorian University professor.
“After Pope John Paul II, can we ever imagine going back to a pope who doesn’t speak English?” he asked.
By no means will all the cardinals want to be chosen, according to John Allen, the Vatican correspondent of the National Catholic Reporter. The life of a cardinal is a comfortable one–they retire at 70 and can choose between living out their days in a Vatican-provided apartment in Rome or, if they have spent many years in service abroad, they may prefer to return home.
Being pope, however, is a huge responsibility from which there is usually no release until death, as John Paul’s final days of struggle so painfully illuminated. The issue of whether incapacitated popes can be compelled to retire also is likely to be discussed.
“Anybody who wants the job must be either sleep-walking or out of his mind,” O’Collins said. “And, the best candidates are least likely to want it because they will be aware of their own limitations.”
But no cardinal chosen would fail to feel honored, Gaeta said.
“It is true that not every cardinal wants to be pope. In human terms, a pope is just a prisoner of the Vatican. You have no personal life, even your holidays are public, and when you are dying, the whole world is watching,” he said. “But even though the pope is a prisoner, he is a prisoner of God.”
