VATICAN CITY-In a parade of red hats and sashes, the modern princes of the Roman Catholic Church will file into the frescoed Bologna Hall of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace Monday for the first meeting of the College of Cardinals since the death of Pope John Paul II.
Officially, their purpose will be to set the date of John Paul's funeral, most likely Thursday or Friday. Unofficially, they will begin the Vatican's election season, a two- or three-week burst of politicking.
Before the death of a pope, any discussion by the cardinals of the next supreme pontiff is forbidden. The rule dates back nearly 1,500 years, to the reign of Pope Felix IV, who created enormous resentment by trying to engineer the election of his successor.
Fifteen to 20 days after the pope's death, the 117 cardinals who are younger than 80 years old will enter the Sistine Chapel to start voting for a new pope under the utmost secrecy, after a cry of \Extra omnes!"", or Latin for ""Everyone else out!""
In the interim, during the brief period between the pope's death and the conclave to choose a replacement, all 183 members of the College of Cardinals- including 66 who are too old to vote ??will meet daily in formal sessions known as General Congregations.
Summoned to Rome as soon as John Paul died Saturday night, cardinals began flocking here over the weekend from 65 countries on five continents.
The selection of a new pope follows timeworn rules, but less than a handful of the 117 voting cardinals have participated in the process before. Most will be learning as they go, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington told reporters last week.
Moreover, all of the cardinals know some of their colleagues, but few, if any, know everyone. Since they do not share a common language, their conversations are likely to take place in a mixture of Italian, Spanish and English, Mahony said.
Accounts by participants in previous papal elections, as well as suggestive comments by key figures in the upcoming one, make clear that major issues for the future of the church are at stake-just not the ones that some U.S. Catholics might hope for or imagine.
Rather than birth control, clerical celibacy or the ordination of women, the questions that seem to be foremost in many cardinals' minds are what to do about rising secularism in Western Europe, the challenge of Islam and reforming the church's bureaucracy. Some have signaled these concerns in speeches in recent years.
Long dominated by Italians, the College of Cardinals has been thoroughly internationalized over the past 35 years.
Italians still comprise the largest national contingent, with 20 cardinals, or 17 percent of those under 80. The United States is second, with 11. But developing countries and former Soviet bloc states are also strongly represented. There are 21 Latin Americans, 12 Central Europeans, 11 Africans and 11 Asians.
This means there is a fair chance that John Paul, who was the first non-Italian pope in 450 years, will be followed by one from the Third World, such as Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze.
Asked about the possibility of an African pope, McCarrick said, ""I'd have no problem with it. I think the Lord is colorblind.""
-The Washington Post
