Focusing on skin color and geography as a way to select a church leader is utterly mindless and absurd.
Where is the discussion about how reliably orthodox their beliefs are?
"Where is the discussion about how reliably orthodox their beliefs are?"
Uh, see above, his remarks at Georgetown.
His orthodoxy is right. That he is dynamic, from Africa, and would help spread the Church to all parts of the world are just the icing on the cake.
Now, yeah - there will be racists, both Catholic and non-Catholic who will piss and moan (along with libs that hate that he is conservative). That would be too bad - for them.
Oh, Arinze is orthodox alright!
How would the world have been different if another Italian were selected in 1978? Maybe communism would have fallen anyway, but I doubt it.
Africa is about to be eaten up by AIDS, perhaps a pope from there with conservative moral views would turn that around. It's worth a try.
By the way, it will be quite interesting watching the first papal election since the invention of 24 hour news channels, and the Internet.