Posted on 03/04/2013 1:36:51 PM PST by dangus
I won't pretend to know who the next pope will be (of course), but I'm getting a guess at who it will NOT be.
Cardinal Tarcisso Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, Italy. The very real banking scandal makes him look bad, and he'd be retiring in a year or two anyway, if Pope Benedict stayed healthy.
Cardinal Francois Arinze, President Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Nigeria. If Benedict was suddenly struck down several years ago, Arinze would've been the presumptive pope. Several of the betting sites thought he was the favorite, until people started realizing that he's already retired.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Ghana. His seemingly disqualifying comments to the British press probably were just journalists making controversy, but I can't help thinking that all the crowds who were so excited about a black pope mistook him for Arinze when they heard there was a black pope shoo-in years ago, and couldn't find Arinze among the papabile today; he's a rather low-ranking official. But unlike Arinze and Bertone, he's still viable.
Timothy Dolan, Sean O'Malley or any other American. But not because Rome will be biased against a super-power. It's because the American press has become very savvy and very unprincipled in generating Alinskyite ad-hominem attacks, as those against Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin, etc. And anything short of selling every possession of the Catholic church, converting it into paper bills, and throwing it off a building while shouting "Free money for anyone who will slander a priest!" will satisfy those who want not an end to the child abuse scandals, but an endless supply of heads to stick on pikes. There's no way they could "win" in the press. Witness, for instance, the way they labelled someone who risked his life to flee the Nazi Youths as a "Nazi Youth." A very dark horse candidate would be Raymond Burke, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the court of final appeal at the Vatican.
Who's viable?
Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan is the leading Italian.
Peter Erdo, Arcbhisop of Eztergom-Budapest and three-time president of the European Episcopal Conference is the leading European.
Luis Tagle, Archbishop of Manila is the leading developing world candidate.
Marc Ouellette, President of the Congregation for Bishops and former Archbishop of Quebec is the leading member of the Roman Curia (the papal "cabinet.")
George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Australia is the leading Anglophone, although even he is a very dark horse.
The Brasileiros already believe God is Brasilian. Must you encourage them?
; D
Saude!
I think Ouellet is the most papabile of the lot.
He really does cover all the bases:
1) He’s been a parish priest
2) He’s been a front-lines missionary
3) He’s been a seminary professor
4) He’s been a bishop
5) He’s led a major curial department
No, he’s not African, Latino, Italian or Asian, but he’s probably the best ‘none of the above’ option.
The odds aren’t in my favor. However, my take is that he is young, a polyglot, a “real” aristocrat, both an insider and outsider, and belongs to groups most in the spotlight:
Congregations: for the Doctrine of the Faith; for the Oriental Churches; for Catholic Education;
Pontifical Councils: for Culture; for Promoting New Evangelization;
Special Council for Europe of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
Just to name a few things...
I will only serve, IF:
1. I can NOT wear the red shoes. I do not want to look like Dorothy.
2. Popemobile must go. I want something manly.
3. Holy Water must go. Too germy. Research has said so...
4. I will not live in Rome. Dirty city. I prefer a water view.
These are my demands to the Cardinals. I will not budge.
That is an example of a cardinal who is in his 60’s, this is why I put for a cardinal in 50-60’s age range, not way too old, someone who could hand major trips to far-flung Catholic communites plus be tech savvy in this age of social media.
Plus he is from North America, our neighbor to the north, Canada.
Were I a betting man, I’d bet $5 each on Ouellet and the youngster from the Philippines, Tagle. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Antonio_Tagle)
Wrong. Jerry Sandusky’s not a Catholic, therefore not eligible. But that doesn’t fit in with your narrative, does it?
Please God, no. Schoenborn has refused to crack down on leftist/dissenting priests in Austria, so why trust him with the whole Church??
/Lexx reference
I personally agree but, by my count, only five of the top 45 oddsmaker-listed papabili are under 65. (Granted, you said "50-60s," not stopping at 65 like I did.) And two of those four are Americans (Dolan of NYC and Burke of St.Louis) generally thought to be no better than 50-to-1 shots. The other three are Ghanaian Cardinal Turkson, Quebec Cardinal Ouellet and youngster Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines.
Scherer is from a dysfunctional country although he has spent much of his career in Rome and not in Brazil.
However, he’s not conservative except by Brazilian standards. I will say that he has opposed abortion and some of the other things that are popular in Brazil, including some of their “charismatic” clergy, but he’s vague on world issues and is not up to being pope at least to some extent because his country is such a mess.
The only “Third World” people I think could do it would be Ranjith, who’s 67 (young enough but not too young), or Tagle, from the Phillipines. Arinze, who has spent much of his life in Rome, would probably be ok, but Turkson, head of the Peace and Justice Commission, is also from a dysfunctional country full of heresies and immoralities. Also, his big goal in life is a worldwide economic authority that would control everything.
Er, I don’t think so. African bishops need to do more about getting their own house in shape.
I seem to remember Schoenborn drew a public rebuke from the Vatican over an incident in the last few years. If memory serves, he reversed a local Catholic tribunal’s decision to exclude an openly gay man from serving on its board AND invited that man and his partner to lunch at Schoenborn’s palatial home. Although B16 (Ratzinger) and Schoenborn are decades-long friends, B16 felt it important to rebuke his old friend. I doubt Schoenborn can get a majority of the conclave to vote for him in light of the rebuke, whatever one makes of merits of the underlying dispute.
Sandri is a serious liberal and was on the side of Marini and Bergoglio (the rivals to Ratzinger).
Schoenborn and several others betrayed BXVI. I hope they don’t get any votes.
RE: Sandri is a serious liberal and was on the side of Marini and Bergoglio (the rivals to Ratzinger).
Just curious to know... how does one get chosen to be a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the one that oversees Catholic Church doctrine, whose offices are housed at the Palace of the Holy Office at the Vatican, when one is a liberal?
Doesn’t the Pope at least examine the person’s grasp of doctrine?
Sandri is not at CDF and never has been, but is in charge of the Oriental Churches. This is something else I would say he has not done very well, since they are in great distress because of Islamic attacks - and the entire world is just ignoring them. And what has he said?
I know i won,t be pope.
RE: Sandri is not at CDF and never has been.
It says in the Vatican website that he is:
It says in Italian ( which I can translate to English ):
È Membro:
delle Congregazioni: per la Dottrina della Fede; per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli; per i Vescovi; per l’Educazione Cattolica;
In English:
Member of:
Congregations: for the Doctrine of the Faith; for the Evangelization of Peoples, for Bishops, for Catholic Education
Why would one be allowed to be a member of the above with a liberal philosophy?
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