Nigerian contender: The man many Africans would like to see as Pope John Paul's successor has already swelled the ranks of the faithful in the tiny Nigerian village of mud-brick houses where he grew up.
Cardinal Francis Arinze, who has lived in the Vatican for 20 years, and who is seen as a potential successor, is the focus of the continent's still slim hopes for the first African pope in more than 1,500 years.
His story is one most people in Nigeria could identify with.
Arinze pays regular visits to the tiny farming settlement of Eziowelle in south-eastern Nigeria, where life still has a biblical quality with women seeking water from a communal well and semi-naked children playing in the dirt road.
On one visit, 10 years ago, the cardinal persuaded the last known animist to embrace Christianity, as he did.
"The last person regarded as a pagan in the village promised the cardinal when he came on one of his visits that she would convert before his next visit, and she did," said Cardinal Arinze's sister-in-law, Veronica Erusa Arinze, who is a retired school teacher. "She died a Christian about two years ago."
Arinze (72) was born into an animist family in 1932 when Nigeria was a British colony, but converted to Catholicism when he was baptised aged nine.
He sped up the ranks of the church, becoming a bishop at 32, only seven years after he was ordained a priest.
At the age of 52, he rose to cardinal, becoming one of the church's highest-ranking Africans. Now, he bears the muted hopes of a continent as people wonder whether the world is ready for an African pope. The last African pope was Gelasius I in the fifth century.
Despite two decades in the Vatican, Arinze has not forgotten life in the village.
He always leads a Mass at the local St Edward's church when he comes, and neighbours arrive with jerry cans of water for him to bless, residents said.
Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria is home to 20 million Catholics concentrated in the south-east, but it is also a major hub for other world religions.