ITALY: Backing ante-post favourites, as the bulging satchels of bookmakers prove, can be a risky business.
In that context, caution should accompany digestion of Italian media speculation that a powerful nucleus of senior Curia figures is promoting the candidacy of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to succeed John Paul II at next week's conclave.
As the pre-conclave debate among the cardinals in their daily "congregations" begins to get serious behind closed doors, two of Italy's most authoritative newspapers, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, yesterday reported significant support for Cardinal Ratzinger.
Citing anonymous sources, Corriere della Sera claimed that Cardinal Ratzinger can already count on 40 votes, while La Repubblica suggested that those willing to back him may number as many as 50.
Given that 115 cardinal electors are expected to enter the conclave on Monday, a two-thirds majority (77 votes) is required to win the papal election, at least over the first three full days of voting. If, after three days and a further 21 votes, no successful candidate has emerged, then they may opt for a simple majority vote of 50 per cent plus one.
Cardinal Ratzinger's candidacy has reportedly received the energetic backing of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Vicariate of Rome, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, as well as three ultra-conservative, senior Curia cardinals, Spaniard Julian Herranz and the two Colombians, Dario Castrillon Hoyos and Alfonso Lopez Trujillo.
None of this comes as much of a surprise. As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and someone often referred to as the Vatican's "doctrinal watchdog", Cardinal Ratzinger played a prominent role in the pontificate of John Paul II. He regularly laid down teaching ground rules, with the blessing of the Pope, on a variety of issues ranging from homosexuality to moral relativism. He, too, regularly disciplined Catholic theologians whose teaching strayed from rigid orthodoxy.
His candidacy, while unlikely to prevail, is indicative of the way the Curia is preparing for the conclave. The Curia see him as "one of us" - experienced, doctrinally sound, deeply spiritual and, at 78, the ultimate safe pair of hands.
Many cardinals, including some of his compatriots, on the other hand, see him as too old, arrogant, inflexible and out of touch with "coalface issues".
Cardinal Ratzinger may be the stalking horse. His candidacy has been floated to make a point. It remains to be seen just how and around just which candidate those cardinals who want a different, more dynamic, non-Curia figure as Pope will organise themselves.
Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent adds:
Cardinal Desmond Connell has advised against a "fast track" canonisation of Pope John Paul. He said there was a danger the process could become over-emotional if launched immediately in the wake of the Pope's death.
"The Pope's legacy and his possible canonisation will emerge in the light of later experience of the Church. It should be given time to mature," he told the Voice Today weekly newspaper. But he expressed confidence that Pope John Paul II would be canonised and then become a Doctor of the Church. There are just 33 such Doctors among the saints.
Ratzinger: German cardinal who inspires animosity and admiration
There's a joke told about Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: he and two of the theologians he disciplined for allegedly being in error, Leonardo Boff and Hans Küng, are at the pearly gates. St Peter says God will see each separately.
Küng goes in first and comes out muttering, "how could I have been so wrong?" Then Boff goes in and soon he too emerges, muttering "how could I have been so wrong?"
Then Cardinal Ratzinger goes in. Hours pass. There are shouts, sounds of weeping and the door swings open. God comes out muttering, "how could I have been so wrong?"
There is no doubt that, in style, the German-born cardinal whose chances of succeeding Pope John Paul are being talked up is seen as frequently presuming to be more authoritative than God.
He has been described as a saint by some and by others as Rome's Bootboy. Few are indifferent to the prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for over 20 years, Dean of the College of Cardinals, and celebrant of the Pope's funeral Mass last Friday.
No figure in the Roman Catholic Church today inspires such diverse reactions.
He is regarded with what can only be described as naked animosity by those on the church's so-called liberal wing, mainly because of his starkly expressed views on women priests (no way, and no more talk about it either), homosexuality (which he has described as "intrinsically evil" and "objectively disordered"), the Reformed Christian denominations ("ecclesial communities" and not churches "in the proper sense"), other faiths ("gravely deficient"), and who said of proposals for greater decentralisation of church authority that they had "no theological depth" and reduced "its [the church's] essence to empirically developed separate communities".
But he also inspires equal amounts of admiration in those of like mind. Among the latter would be the only Irishman to have a vote in next week's conclave, Cardinal Desmond Connell, who, echoing Cardinal Ratzinger's view of the reformed church, famously described the President, Mrs McAleese's, participation in communion in the Church of Ireland as a sham.
Cardinal Connell has been a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith these past 12 years, where he is philosophically, theologically, and personally close to Cardinal Ratzinger. From Monday, when the conclave to elect a new pope begins, he will be very close to him. - Patsy McGarry