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Cardinals ready themselves for papal conclave

VATICAN CITY, April 17 (Reuters) - Roman Catholic cardinals started to move into sequestered lodgings on Sunday ahead of a conclave to elect a new pontiff, with no clear favourite in sight to succeed Pope John Paul II.

The 115 cardinals eligible to vote will all stay in a specially-built residence within the Vatican, dining together on Sunday night before entering their momentous, secretive conclave in the Sistine Chapel on Monday afternoon.

Before being shut off from the outside world, some of the red-hatted "princes of the church" held public Masses around a rainswept Rome on Sunday in which they emphasised 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," Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras said in a homily.

None of the cardinals wanted to talk about who might take over the reins of the 1.1 billion-member Church.

We don't know (who will be pope). Nobody can tell at the moment," said Mexican cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera. "I believe the Holy Spirit already knows, but he hasn't told us yet."

In the run-up to the vote, much media speculation has centred on John Paul's closest aide and arch-ideologue Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, suggesting that the German prelate might head initial balloting. Ratzinger also tops betting Web sites.

But many Vatican watchers doubt whether such a figure, whose conservative dogma has polarised 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.

COMPROMISE

That could leave the field open to a compromise candidate who could bridge the numerous factions that have risen up within the largest religious organisation in the world during John Paul's high-profile 26-year pontificate.

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 in 1978.

The cardinals are due to hold a public Mass on Monday morning in St. Peter's Basilica. At 4:30 p.m. (1430 GMT) 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 Italians Dionigi Tettamanzi and Angelo Scola, Brazil's Claudio Hummes, Nigeria's Francis Arinze and the Honduran Maradiaga.

Before Wojtyla's election Italy had held the papacy for 455 years. Many Italians hope they will now be able to reclaim it and fear that if they do not they may have lost their privileged position for good.

Among the major issues facing the Church are the growing spiritual poverty of Europe, the material poverty of the third world and the centralised workings of the Vatican bureaucracy.

Critics of John Paul said he focused too much power in the hands of the Vatican and smothered theological debate.

MEDIA MUZZLE

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 workers have 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, choose someone who will guarantee the freedom and openness of the Church," Swiss theologian Hans Kueng, one of the Church's most prominent liberal dissenters, said in an article in La Stampa newspaper.

"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," This is why I do write G-D do know person G-D is G-D pray good friend pray Thank you

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