New Pope: Italian, Brazilian are top contenders

The work to elect a successor to retired Pope Benedict XVI began in earnest this morning, with a Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The service open to the public was the last public event featuring the 115 cardinals who will choose the new spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. The cardinals held final discussions on the troubled state of the Roman Catholic Church yesterday.

The 115 cardinal-electors from 48 countries filed into the Michelangelo-frescoed Sistine Chapel at 4.30 p.m. (10.30 a.m. ET) today, praying as they go, to begin the secret election called the conclave. They were expected to hold an initial vote shortly afterwards.

The only clue the world will have of what is happening inside will be periodic puffs of smoke from a copper chimney installed over the weekend in the Sistine Chapel. Black smoke, no pope. White smoke, success.

Vatican-watchers said Italy’s Angelo Scola and Brazil’s Odilo Scherer are in pole position, but a host of other candidates from around the world have also been mentioned, leaving the secretive contest wide open. “Last time around there was a man of stature, three or four times that of any other cardinal,” French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin told reporters, in a reference to Joseph Ratzinger who was elected pope within 24 hours in 2005. “That is not the case this time around.

Therefore, the choice has to be made among one, two, three, four … a dozen candidates. We still don’t really know anything. We will have to wait for the results of the first ballot.” Vatican insiders said Scola might be best placed to understand the Byzantine politics of the church’s much-criticized, Italian-dominated administration of which he is not a part and be able to introduce swift reform. The Curia faction inside the conclave is said to back Scherer, who worked in the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops for seven years.

If he should win the vote, he would be the first non-European to become pontiff in some 1,300 years. If neither camp can drum up the necessary support, a compromise candidate might come to the fore, with Canada’s Marc Ouellet, U.S. cardinals Sean O’Malley and Timothy Dolan and Argentina’s Leonardo Sandri often cited No one in the modern era has won the necessary two-thirds majority on the first ballot, and the cardinal-electors will hold up to four ballots a day thereafter, two in the morning and two in the afternoon until they elect a new pontiff. The average length of the last nine conclaves was roughly three days and none went on for more than five days.

“There is a dynamic that takes over once they’re in the Sistine Chapel. The first vote kind of lays out the names. We will have a pope by the end of the week,” said Father Rosica.

The conclave itself is held in great secrecy, with cardinals taking a vow never to reveal the details of their ballot. Vatican staff who might come into contact with the so-called princes of the church, including caterers and cleaners, took a vow on Monday not to reveal anything they might hear in the coming days.

The cardinals will stay in a simple Vatican hotel during the conclave, crossing over to the Sistine Chapel for the twice-daily voting sessions. Smoke signals from above the chapel black for an indecisive vote, white for a new pope will tell the outside world how the ballot is proceeding.

In preparation for the election, workers hung up crimson curtains on the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, ready for the moment when the new pope makes his first appearance before crowds gathered in the vast cobbled piazza below. The 266th pope will face an array of problems from sexual abuse scandals to the dysfunctional central bureaucracy, known as the Curia. Video released by the Vatican over the weekend showed the installation of a pair of stoves inside the chapel.

One is used to burn the cardinals’ ballots after they are cast and the other to send up the smoke signal, the one that alerts the world that a vote has been taken and whether there’s a new pope. Though it was speculated that the cardinals would probably vote Tuesday, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said they don’t have to. If they do, it’s likely the first smoke might be seen around 8 p.m. (3 p.m. ET), he said. When cardinals elected Benedict in 2005, the white smoke signaling the decision came about six hours after an earlier, inconclusive vote, he said.

It took another 50 minutes for Benedict to dress, pray and finally appear on the balcony of St. Peter’s, he said. The longest conclave held since the turn of the 20th century lasted five days. On Monday, cardinals held the last of several days of meetings to discuss church affairs and get acquainted. Lombardi said 152 cardinals were on hand for the final meeting.

Stunned by the abdication last month of Pope Benedict, the red-hatted cardinals have met repeatedly this past week, sketching out the qualities of the person needed to face the huge challenge of leading the scandal-plagued church.

Church rules prevent cardinals over the age of 80 from participating in the election of a pope but allow them to attend the “General Congregations” that precede the vote. On Friday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, one of about a dozen leading candidates to become pope, said the meetings have focused less on scandals facing the church and more on spiritual matters.

“We cardinals sure are praying a lot,” Dolan wrote. Contrary to media reports, he wrote in a blog post, the focus of the cardinals’ meetings is much the same as it was two millenniums ago, namely: “How most effectively to present the person, message, and invitation of Jesus to a world that, while searching for salvation and eternal truth, are also at times doubting, skeptical, too busy, or frustrated.”

He said, “Those are the ‘big issues.’ You may find that hard to believe, since the ‘word on the street’ is that all we talk about is corruption in the Vatican, sexual abuse, money. Do these topics come up? Yes!

Do they dominate? No!” “The expectations of the new pope and his profile was a recurring theme in this morning’s interventions by the cardinals,” said Father Tom Rosica, the Vatican spokesman for the English-speaking media.