They were impressed when the young soon-to-be-cardinal of Manila, Luis
Antonio Tagle, told bishops gathered for a momentous synod in Rome last
October that the church should listen more and admit its mistakes. They
took note a year ago when Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York
delivered a winning address on evangelization to the College of
Cardinals, the day before the pope gave him the red hat of a cardinal.
They deemed Cardinal Marc Ouellet a gracious host on their visits to the
Vatican, where he guides the selection of bishops, but some said he
practically put the crowd to sleep during his talk at the International
Eucharistic Congress last June in Dublin.
These impressions, collected from interviews with a variety of church
officials and experts, may influence the very intuitive, often
unpredictable process the cardinals will use to decide who should lead
the world’s largest church.
The cardinals will gather on March 1, one day after Benedict steps down
and departs for Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer home in the hills
outside Rome. The cardinals will meet every morning to discuss where the
church is headed and, over lunches and dinners, take the measure of one
another’s characters, talents and experiences, based on personal
relationships and observations. But undoubtedly they will also consider
geography, doctrinal approach and style.
By the time the 117 cardinal electors enter the conclave to choose the next pope, they must be ready to vote.
According to church rules, the conclave could begin on March 15, but the
Vatican spokesman said Saturday that it may start even earlier. The
cardinals, eager to finish the process by Palm Sunday on March 24, could
reinterpret the mandatory 15-day waiting period, the spokesman, the
Rev. Federico Lombardi, said.
The waiting period was intended to allow time for cardinals to gather
after the death of a pope, but because Benedict’s resignation has
already been announced, the cardinals have advance notice and, in fact,
many have already begun discussions by phone and e-mail.
“People are reluctant to speak about themselves,” said Cardinal Francis
George of Chicago, who voted in the conclave that elected Benedict in
2005. “So you go to a friend and say, Can you tell me about cardinal
so-and-so?”
“The questions are usually about the qualities you want to see in a
pope. Is he a man of prayer, is he deeply rooted in the apostolic faith,
can he govern, is he deeply concerned about the poor?” Cardinal George
said in a telephone interview. “It matters far less where he happens to
be living or where he’s from.”
The auditions begin in earnest on Sunday when Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, an Italian who is president of the Pontifical Council for Culture,
is scheduled to preach the weeklong papal Lenten retreat, attended by
Benedict and many of the cardinals and bishops who work in the Vatican.
Preaching the Lenten retreat is a high honor, one bestowed on Karol
Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger before they became Pope John Paul II and
Pope Benedict XVI.
“It’s not only going to be seen as a sign of papal favor, but it will
give him a platform,” said John Thavis, the retired Rome bureau chief
for Catholic News Service, a church-affiliated news agency, and author
of “The Vatican Diaries.” “People will be listening very carefully.”
“The way candidates come to the fore is generally not by what they’re
doing in their local archdioceses, which is what matters most to their
own people,” he said. “It’s what they do at the center of the universal
church.”
The case of Cardinal Ravasi exemplifies the way the cardinals will sift
and weigh a candidate’s attributes against the church’s needs. Church
leaders now say their greatest challenge is to confront a rising wave of
secularism in Europe, the United States and even Latin America, and
Cardinal Ravasi has energetically engaged nonbelievers across Europe
with high-profile events in cities like Stockholm; Paris; Tirana,
Albania; and Bucharest, Romania.
At a time when many prelates say the church must learn to use social
media to evangelize, he has more than 35,000 followers on Twitter.
However, to the cardinals and bishops in the Vatican, according to
Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the magazine L’Espresso, “Ravasi is
considered very ambitious and much too inclined to chase the applause
of the public.”
The other Italians who are more solid candidates, Mr. Magister said, are
Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan and a theologian who has
often addressed the challenges of secularism and Islam in Europe, and
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the archbishop of Genoa and president of the
Italian bishops conference.
Personality may be pre-eminent, but geography has increasingly been a
factor. With the church shrinking in Europe, and the majority of
Catholics now living in Africa, Asia and Latin America, many Catholics
are calling for the cardinals to turn the reins over to a leader from
the global south. The church has never had a non-European pope in the
modern era. (The last, according to Vatican records, was Gregory III, a
Syrian, who served until 741.) Benedict has actually increased the
percentage of cardinals from Italy and reduced the percentage from the
developing world. But they do not necessarily vote in geographic blocs.
The cardinals from Italy are said to be divided into factions, according
to church experts in Rome, as are those from Latin America.
For those spoken of as front-runners, granting news media interviews in
the weeks before a conclave can backfire, church observers say.
Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, already tarnished by having shown an
unforgivingly anti-Islam video at a church event last year, probably
hurt his chances recently by speaking to The Daily Telegraph of London
as if he had already been elected pope: “It is going to be a
life-changing experience, and I think that is what it has been for
Benedict and those who have gone before us.”
In the past, the cardinals with posts in the Vatican bureaucracy had an
advantage because they had spent more time with bishops visiting from
around the world. Bishops elevated to cardinal are appointed to Vatican
committees and see one another more frequently in Rome.
“The most important thing is personal contact,” said Msgr. James P.
Moroney, rector of St. John’s Seminary, in Boston, and a liturgist who
has worked in the Vatican and at the American bishops’ conference in
Washington. “Someone’s reputation is very important, but when you
establish a personal relationship, that’s when you really make up your
mind.”
Benedict has intentionally created more opportunities for the cardinals
to get to know one another before they elect the next pope, said Rocco
Palmo, a Philadelphia writer who closely follows developments in the
hierarchy on his blog, “Whispers in the Loggia.”
Benedict elevated new groups of cardinals five times during his
eight-year papacy, and on all but one of those occasions he gathered the
cardinals together for a daylong meeting before the formal elevation
rite. It was at such a meeting in February 2012 that Cardinal Dolan won
praise for his talk on evangelization, Mr. Palmo said. “The cardinals
all got the chance to size each other up and listen to one another, and
there was no seniority in terms of who could speak,” he said.
In the last conclave eight years ago, there were alliances of liberal
and conservative cardinals. But this time, the spectrum has narrowed
because 50 of the cardinals were created by John Paul II and 67 by
Benedict, both doctrinal conservatives. (Cardinals age 80 and older
cannot participate.)
“This time most of them are on the same page,” said Msgr. Anthony
Figueiredo, director of the Institute for Continuing Theological
Education at the North American College, in Rome.
“What’s going to be very key in this conclave is the person, the
personality,” Monsignor Figueiredo said. “Is he a man who can really
speak to the hearts of people in this secularized, de-Christianized
world where people, let’s face it, are leaving the church and need to be
attracted to the message?”
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