Posted on 04/17/2005 3:52:49 PM PDT by NYer
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Roman Catholic cardinals started to move into sequestered lodgings Sunday ahead of a momentousconclave to elect the successor to Pope John Paul II.
The 115 eligible cardinals will enter the secretive conclave in the Sistine Chapel Monday with no clear favorite to take over the reins of the 1.1 billion-member Church.
Some of the red-hatted "princes of the church" held publicMasses around a rainswept Rome Sunday, refusing to speculate on the vote and underlining the spiritual nature of their quest.
"People think that we are going to vote like in an election. But this is something completely different. We are going to listen to the Lord and listen to the Holy Spirit,"said Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras.
In the run-up to the historic vote, much media speculation has centered on John Paul's closest aide and arch-ideologue Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, suggesting that the German prelate might head initial balloting.
But many Vatican watchers doubt whether such a figure,whose conservative dogma has polarized the Roman Catholic world, would be able to gain the two-thirds majority needed to become the 264th successor to the first pope, St. Peter.
That could leave the field open to a less divisive candidate who could bridge the numerous factions that have risen up within the largest religious organization in theworld.
The cardinals will hold up to four ballots a day until they reach the necessary majority.
Of the eight 20th century conclaves, none took longer than five days, and two of them were completed on the second day. It took just eight ballots over three days to choose the relatively unknown Karol Wojtyla of Poland as Pope John Paul in1978.
Whereas in past conclaves, the elderly cardinals were forced to live in cramped cells inside a sealed-off SistineChapel, this time around they will sleep in the plush Santa Marta residence, built within the Vatican's manicured gardens.
The cardinals will dine together in the Santa Marta on Sunday night and hold a public Mass Monday morning in St. Peter's Basillica. At 4:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. EDT) they will file into the Sistine Chapel to start their deliberations.
In the build-up to the vote, some 15 cardinals have been promoted in the press as potential popes, including Italian cardinals Dionigi Tettamanzi and Angelo Scola, Brazil's ClaudioHummes, Nigeria's Francis Arinze and the Honduran Maradiaga.
Among the major issues facing the Church are the growing spiritual poverty of Europe, the material poverty of the third world and the centralized workings of the Vatican bureaucracy.
The cardinals themselves have taken an unusual vow of media silence ahead of the conclave, adding to a sense of uncertainty and intrigue within the male-dominated Church hierarchy.
"It's very hard to know what's going on in the church, we feel that it's a different world from where we are," Sister Emanuel, who works in Australia and is on a retreat in Rome, said as she visited John Paul II's tomb in St. Peter's.
The conclave will be like no other election in the world.
There will be no press briefings after the ballots, no spin doctors promoting their candidates, just a simple puff of smoke from the Sistine chimney -- black smoke for an inconclusive vote and white smoke when a new pope is chosen.
In preparation for an eventual decision, Vatican workershave put up red curtains on the balcony of St Peter's where the new pope will make his first appearance to the world.
In the hours leading to Monday's lock-up, leading Catholics made final public appeals to the cardinals about the sort of pope they wanted to see step onto the balcony.
"Dear brothers, chose someone who will guarantee the freedom and openness of the Church," theologian Hans Kueng, one of the Church's most prominent liberal dissenters, said in anarticle in La Stampa newspaper.
I hope it will be Ivan Dias. NOT an Italian (no issue with Italians, lovely people, it's jsut that the church MUST be more cosmopolitan), in fact, NOT a European.
Coach K for Pope. That would make it two Poles in a row.
i am sure Duke Vitale would be all for raising Coach K to the Papacy!
I guess I meant "Catholic thinker." The bar for being considered a "thinker" has been lowered considerably in religious circles lately, but I think you still have to know that there was no Pope Pius XXIII, and be able to tell the difference between John 3:16 and John 16:3.
Actually, the business about John 3:16 may be an internet legend. But adding 11 non-existent Pope Piuses is still a problem.
"it's a slam dunk baby"
That's my sole issue with Ratzinger - at 78, he would be unlikely to have a very long papacy. We need another long conservative papacy to uproot the last vestiges of liberalism.
Regards, Ivan
to hear xshub tell it, duke vitale wants to have Coach K's child....
As a follow-up to the very good answer provided by xsmommy, we UNC fans had great fun mocking Vitale all season long for his worship of Dook (the preferred spelling of that institution by Tar Heel fans); we called him "Dookie V" because of his repeated praise, ad nauseum, of everything Blue Devil-related.
So we were presented with quite a dilemma when, with the field narrowed to eight and Dook having been eliminated, Vitale proclaimed that UNC would win the title. Many of us took it as a bad omen. Personally, I took it as a sign of intellectual and analytical growth.
xshub is a HUUUUUUGE Syracuse fan, undergrad and law school, and it galled him no end that Duke Vitale has NEVER given SU it's due, even when they won the Natioal C'ship!
What amazes me is that these guys can meet and elect a Pope and still manage to lead the National League Central Division. I suspect that Baseball season is a difficult time to have to go through this process. But if they are half as good at electing a Pope as they are at winning baseball games, they should do just fine.
LOL! i can't believe that this supposedly papal thread is rife with NCCA basketball and baseball talk!!
Agree--my dad was a Syracuse grad, and big UNC fan because two of his kids attended. Vitale was a four letter word in our house.
This site is really good:
http://www.paddypower.com/bet?action=show_type_by_main_market&category=SPECIALS&ev_class_id=45&id=520
or its sister site:
http://www.popebetting.com
I dunno if I oughta admit it, but my mama went to Duke way back when (I think she graduated in '45). What's more, she played basketball back when women did the half court thing. I think her scoring record still stands (and probably will forever, unless women go back to half court ball).
Her ability was not passed on to me - I am definitely NOT tall and willowy.
That all sounds great, but you still haven't answered for why man is voting, and it's called the move of the Holy Spirit.
God simply grants permission for choosing leadership in many cases.
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