Handicapping the mother of all elections

Hi, we're back after a wild Mercury retrograde, and wanted to offer our predictions for this week in Rome, keeping in mind that it is extremely difficult for anybody to say who, or what, the new pope will be--it is much easier to say who it will not be.

It will obviously not be Ratizinger, because he was the first name mentioned by the Italian press, which is a sure sign he has enemies. The proverb holds: "Whoever goes in a pope, comes out a cardinal." As it was, the Italian press spent the rest of the week airing the case of Ratzinger's opposition. And it won't be Martini either (his name's been bandied about in opposition to Ratzinger). But we've known that for a long time.

It should not be anybody who wants the job, and it would be surprising if it went to somebody who did. The reasons for this are not only theological and existential, but also classical.

It will not be an American, a point which was already obvious. Stalin's remark about the Vatican, in a way, missed the point: the pope should not have any divisions in Stalin's sense of the term. However, nobody really realized Stalin was wrong until Wojtyla had been pope a while. For that matter, it's not mere coincidence that the most important American diplomats of the 1970s were Central Europeans.

There are two things not to be underestimated about the conclave (1) how much influence Ratzinger still has; and (2) how much power Ratzinger does not have. He is presently nothing but the Dean of the College of Cardinals. Compare that position the position of the typical Dean at a typical mid-sized American college, considered vis-a-vis its professors. Now consider that the boss who appointed him is gone, and Dean will be losing his job at the next convenient opportunity. It's just not a very efficacious position.

OK, so beyond the typically rarefied method of bickering in the Holy Roman Church, here's what we thing the necessary qualifications for the office clearly are:

The next supreme pontiff:

• Should be a polyglot. He'll need to speak Italian (obviously) and Spanish, and probably English as well. There is no need for him to know French, but German or a Slavic language would be a plus. We'd love to have a pope with facility in Arabic, but there aren't any likely candidates this time.
  
• Will need to know Latin, for purely litugical reasons: the Cardinals shouldn't want to intentionally start a dispute about the form of the liturgy, since these keep breaking out anyway.
  
• Should be willing to dress down the formerly so-called Leader of the Free World, when possible and necessary. Hence, the importance of understanding and speaking English.
• Needs to be willing to work on Palestinian-Israeli issues, a/k/a "Peace in the Middle East." (After all, we do still refer to it as "the holy land." )
  
• Needs to have the ability to exhort and persuade one billion people and their leaders that World Peace is a virtuous and worthy goal to strive for.
  

That is all. Any other qualifications are purely accidental to the papacy. You'll notice that the requirements are defined by functions and not by ideas. This is because only functions can be correlated to actual social facts. Remember, the Pope is nothing but a prince, who also happens to be a bishop. Or perhaps, he is a bishop, who also happens to be a prince.