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.
Feel free to add me to the list of those who won’tr be elected...and if elected I will not serve.
Why not Odilo Pedro Scherer?
My wife wouldn’t let me take the job. She thinks that Rome is an awful city.
Jerry Sandusky but only because he’s busy.
I am almost positive that I will not be pope.
I am also positive that Obama will believe he should have been pope, even though he is less qualified to be pope than me.
John Kerry’s probably kicking himself that he just took the Secretary of State job.
Who will NOT be pope is anyone who is politically conservative by Free Republic's standards.
Thinking of the mainstream media makes me want to vomit. Their attacks on Christians in general, and Catholics in particular go on and on.
Up and down the tv networks, NPR, the major dailies, Catholics are openly despised.
And this is just the beginning...there will come a time in the not too distant future when churches will be attacked. Worshipers will have to practice in secret...I’m sure about this.
The networks are laying the ground.
Hillary is available these days.
I am going to put a marker on Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna.
He is young, and was editor of the Catechism published in 1992.
While I know God will handle it, it is fun to make a prediction.
Here is link to his profile on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Sch%C3%B6nborn
The current Prefect? 8)
Me neither. Red shoes make me look fat.
It will most likely be a cardianal in either his 50’s or 60’s, no older Popes or transitions Popes.
Malcom Cardinal Ranjith of Sri Lanka is more likely than Tagle of Manilla.
And Arinze is possilbe,despite his age. Not likely, but possible. Would get “gotta elect a black pope” monkey off our backs while electing someone who’s as conservative as Benedict was, with a new vote before long, when they can return to electing Italians.
Schoenborn is a loose cannon and everyone knows it. Not a chance he’ll be pope until pigs start flying.
late 60s or 70s, not 50s. Someone in his 50s could be pope for 30 years and no one wants that.
If they keep picking on you, you will qualify as an honorable Israeli.
I would consider this Cardinal from Argentina a favorite — Leonardo Sandri.
Sandri, 69, left for Rome at 27 and never came back to stay in Argentina. Initially trained as a canon lawyer, he reached the No. 3 spot in the church’s hierarchy under Pope John Paul II, the zenith of a long career in the Vatican’s diplomatic service ranging from Africa to Mexico to Washington.
As substitute secretary of state for seven years, he essentially served as the pope’s chief of staff, running the central office at the heart of the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Curia.
Sandri remains a consummate Vatican insider. Benedict promoted him to cardinal and named him to the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal, which provides the second-to-last word on church law, after the pope. Sandri also is one of very few cardinals in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the rule-making bastion Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) led for many years before becoming pope.
The Catholic faithful probably best remember him as the “voice of the pope” who delivered papal speeches when John Paul II became too infirm, and it was Sandri who announced the beloved pope’s death to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, adding the memorable observation that “we all feel like orphans this evening.”
One strike against Sandri -— He has never led a congregation, this will be a disadvantage for cardinals who want the next pope to have pastoral experience.
Use guys don’t want the job? I’ll take it!
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