The next pope will almost certainly be conservative like Pope John Paul II, but will have to be less authoritarian if he is to avoid a schism in the Roman Catholic Church, a group of Boston College experts said yesterday. What I’m hoping for is a weaker pope,” Sister Mary An Hinsdale, an expert on ecclesiology and women’s issues in the church, said during a panel discussion on next week’s historic papal election. Hinsdale cited the centralization of power that marked John Paul II’s 26-year papacy and that threatened to roll back some of Vatican II’s reforms. Many African bishops,...