Letter #30: The Next and the Last

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Letter #30: The Next and the Last

[2013-03-03]

[Engleză]

March 2, 2013, Saturday -- The Next and the Last

Since Pope Benedict left the papacy on Thursday evening at 8 p.m., the Catholic Church is in a period in which the chair of Peter is vacant ("sede vacante").

Cardinals will begin to meet in the Vatican on Monday morning, March 4, in less than 48 hours. A pool of five journalists will be able to attend the meetings, and to report on what occurs there.

(Wolves)

Meanwhile, there is a lot of chatting going on in the press about what will happen, what could happen, what should happen.

Lists of "papabili" (the Italian word means simply "Pope-able," that is, men who are considered qualified to become Pope, or likely to be considered by the other cardinals for election to the papacy) are being prepared and published.

In Italy, there is considerable support for the idea that the new Pope should be an Italian, after two foreign Popes, John Paul II (1978-2005) and Benedict XVI (2005-2013). In their theological outlook, the 28 Italian cardinals range from quite progressive to quite traditional. There is not yet one candidate among them who seems to have garnered a consensus.

If there is no consenus about who the leading Italian candidate is, or should be, there is even less consensus about who a possible non-Italian cardinal who could succeed Joseph Ratzinger might be.

Four cardinals being "mentioned" often are pictured in the following photo:

The four men are Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Argentine Cardinal Leonardo Sandri and Italian Cardinal Angelo Scola.

But if one goes to the influential La Stampa/Vatican Insider website, one finds a list of 21 cardinals with large photos and brief summaries about each man. Here is the link: http://cmsmultimedia.lastampa.it/multimedia/vatican-insider/lstp/181465/

(Note: The money behind La Stampa of Turin, Italy, comes from estate of the late Gianni Agnelli, the chief owner of the FIAT automobile company, one of the most influential men in Italy in the last century.)

Here is the list of "papabili" from La Stampa. Note that all four of the names on the list above are also on the list below. Note also the first cardinal mentioned, from Brazil, Odilo Scherer. Many in Rome right now are "mentioning" him, and he may very well be the "front-runner" right now, at least in the "conventional" wisdom. Again, you can see photos of all these men at the link just given.

1. Odilo Pedro Scherer, 63, archbishop of Sao Paolo, Brazil;

2. Marc Ouellet, 67, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops in the Vatican; formerly archbishop of Quebec, Canada;

3. Angelo Scola, 72, archbishop of Milan, Italy;

4. Luis Antonio Tagle, 56, archbishop of Manila, the Philippines;

5. Gianfranco Ravasi, 70, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture and formerly Prefect of the Ambrosian Library in Milan;

6. Angelo Bagnasco, 70, archbishop of Genoa, Italy;

7. Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, 56, head of the Council for Justice and Peace in the Vatican, formerly archbishop of Cape Coast, Ghana;

8. Peter Erdo, 61, archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary;

9. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 77, archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina;

10. Sean Patrick O'Malley, O.F.M.Cap., archbishop Of Boston, Massachusetts, USA;

11. Timothy Dolan, 63, archbishop of New York, New York, USA;

12. Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, 74, archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo;

13. Donald William Wuerl, 73, archbishop of Washington, D.C., USA;

14. Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, 70, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras;

15. Joao Braz de Aviz, 65, Prefect of the Congregation for Religious and the Institutes of Consecrated Life in the Vatican, from Brazil;

16. Francisco Robles Ortega, 63, archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico;

17. Tarcisio Bertone, 78, Secretary of State in the Vatican, formerly archbishop of Genoa, Italy;

18. Kurt Koch, 62, head of the Vatican's Council for Christian Unity, formerly archbishop of Basel, Switzerland;

19. Christoph Schoenborn, 68, archbishop of Vienna, Austria;

20. Leonardo Sandri, 70, Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, born in Argentina;

21. Robert Sarah, 70, President of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum," formerly archbishop of Conakry, Guinea.

Now, clearly, if all these candidates receive votes, the Conclave will be split into 21 small groups. Moreover, there are likely to be other candidates not on this list. The result would be dozens of candidates, each with one, two, or a handful of votes.

Running the numbers, if each of these 21 candidates were to receive an equal number of votes from the expected 115 electors, they would each receive either five or six votes. If there were even more candidates, then each would average about four votes, or fewer.

So the real issue becomes: what will "coagulate" four or five votes into 10, then 10 into 20, 20 into 40, and 40 into the needed 77? (Two-thirds of 115 is 77, making 77 the "magic number" to clinch an election.)

One great vehicle of "coagulation" is to make some sort of an "agreement" about the office of Secretary of State, the "Number 2" position in the Roman Curia after the Pope himself.

And many journalists are proposing scenarios in which a foreign candidate agrees to keep an Italian as the Secretary of State, and by making this agreement, gains the additional support of a number of votes.

Looking at the Conclave from the opposite perspective, if 77 votes are needed to elect a Pope, only 39 votes are needed to block the election of any candidate.

The Italians, with 28 votes, together with another 11 cardinals, could theoretically block the election of any candidate not to their liking.

These 28 Italian voters -- the largest block of votes from a single country -- may try to find some way to stay united. If they break up into seven groups of four votes each, they lose their possible influence over the outcome.

So the strategy of the Italians, presumably, will be to try to agree, in these coming days, on one candidate from the very outset, from the very first vote, in order to immediately project one candidate, with 20 or 22 or 24 votes, into a very powerful position, distancing him from all the others, who will only have four or five or six votes each.

But who will that candidate be?

No one knows.

Still, a lot of people are speculating.

The Rome-based La Repubblica today said the "new hypothesis" is of a Pope older than age 80, a strong man who will "clean up" the Roman Curia but who will not have a long pontificate. "To change the Curia, a veteran is needed," the headline says. The paper ran the photos of five cardinals over age 80:

—Camillo Ruini, 82, formerly the Pope's vicar for the diocese of Rome;

—Angelo Sodano, 86, presently the Dean of the College of Cardinals and formerly the Secretary of State;

—Jose Saraiva Martins, 81, emeritus Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, from Portugal;

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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