VATICAN CITY: With the terrifying grandeur of Michelangelo’s Judgment Day looming over them, senior leaders of the Roman Catholic Church will begin casting their ballots inside the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday to elect a successor to Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years.
No one campaigns for the papacy, at least overtly; the surest way for a candidate to disqualify himself for the job is to let it be known that he wants it.
But various names crop up repeatedly in discreet conversations as the 115 prelates eligible to vote try to figure out who among them is best placed to lead a historic but troubled institution that claims the allegiance of 1.2 billion people.
Whoever emerges from the conclave as the 266th pontiff will inherit a global church that is continuing to grow in far-off continents but waning in the Vatican’s backyard; under challenge by other religions, notably Islam and evangelical Protestantism; unable to shake off a damaging scandal over clerical sexual abuse; and in the grip of a management crisis.
Although there is no clear front-runner, the most frequently mentioned among the papabili — potential popes — come from a number of countries and have focused on various issues facing the church today.
In picking a new pope, cardinals will be making a choice on which of the church’s problems to tackle head-on. Many Vatican watchers point to four potential candidates who reflect some of the aspects that the cardinals, the “princes” of the Catholic Church, must consider as they make their decision.
Angelo Scola
From the moment Benedict announced his intention to retire, Angelo Scola has been considered a leading candidate to assume the throne of St. Peter. Scola, 71, is one of the senior Italians in the church hierarchy. He’s archbishop of Milan, Italy’s largest diocese, and former patriarch of Venice; the two cities have produced five popes between them within the last century.
Although by no means united behind a single candidate, Italians make up a quarter of the cardinals who will select a new pontiff, more than double the number from the United States and more than those from all of Africa, Asia and Australia combined.
Gianfranco Ravasi
While Scola has fostered dialogue with other religions, his fellow Italian Gianfranco Ravasi has impressed some Vatican watchers with his engagement of atheists and agnostics and with his communications savvy.
Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture czar, keeps a blog, frequently updates his Facebook page and tweets with alacrity. Ravasi, 70, recently informed his Twitter followers that he was pondering a lyric, “Love is a losing game,” by the late singer Amy Winehouse (his verdict on her songs: “lacerating musically and thematically”).
At a Vatican synod in October on spreading the Gospel, participants said it was crucial for the next pope to be comfortable with social media as the church tries to deliver its message to nonbelievers in the digital age.
Marc Ouellet
If the cardinals buck centuries of history and pick a non-European pontiff, then Marc Ouellet of Canada is one of the strongest contenders from the Americas, home to more Catholics than any other part of the world.
Ouellet, 68, once described being pope as a “nightmare” job that nobody would willingly pursue. He oversees the Vatican department that vets potential bishops, but his supporters say that, as pope, Ouellet would be enough of an outsider — and a non-Italian at that — to shake up the administration and reform an unwieldy, dysfunctional, fractious institution beset by scandal.
Odilo Pedro Scherer
A Brazilian of German descent, Odilo Pedro Scherer, 63, is archbishop of Sao Paulo, the biggest Catholic diocese in the world’s most populous Catholic country.
About 40 percent of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America, and some clerics in the region have pointedly said that the time is right for a Latin American shepherd of the flock.
But the church in the region is under stern challenge from evangelical Protestantism, as it is in Africa, particularly the livelier Pentecostal strains. Nowhere is that more true than in Brazil, a nation of nearly 200 million people that was 90 percent Catholic just a few decades ago, a figure that has since dropped to 60 percent to 70 percent.
Other possibilities
If none of the four is chosen, a consensus could form around one of the following:
• Cardinal Peter Erdo, 60, of Hungary is an expert on canon law and distinguished university theologian who has also striven to forge close ties to the parish faithful. If elected pope, he would be the second pontiff to come from eastern Europe.
• Cardinal Peter Turkson, 64, of Ghana is viewed by many as the top African contender for pope. He is the head of the Vatican’s peace and justice office and was widely credited with helping to avert violence following contested Ghanaian elections.
• Cardinal Timothy Dolan, 63, the archbishop of New York, is an upbeat, affable defender of Catholic orthodoxy, and a well-known religious figure in the United States. But scholars question whether his charisma and experience are enough for a real shot at succeeding Benedict.
• Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina. The archbishop of Buenos Aires reportedly got the second-most votes after Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 papal election, and he has long specialized in the kind of pastoral work that some say is an essential skill for the next pope.
• Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, 69, is a Vatican insider who has run the day-to-day operations of the global church’s vast bureaucracy and roamed the world as a papal diplomat. He left his native Argentina for Rome at 27 and never returned to live in his homeland.
• Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, 55, is Asia’s most prominent Roman Catholic leader. The Filipino knows how to reach the masses: He sings on stage, preaches on TV, brings churchgoers to laughter and tears with his homilies. And he’s on Facebook.
• Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, 68, is a soft-spoken conservative who is ready to listen to those espousing reform. That profile could appeal to fellow cardinals looking to elect a pontiff with the widest-possible appeal to the world’s 1 billion Catholics. His Austrian nationality may be his biggest disadvantage: Electors may be reluctant to choose another German speaker as a successor to Benedict.
• Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, 65, of Sri Lanka was chosen by Benedict to oversee the church’s liturgy and rites in one of his first appointments as pope.
• Cardinal Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, 70, of Honduras is an outspoken campaigner of human rights, a watchdog on climate change and advocate of international debt relief for poor nations.
• Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, 70, the archbishop of Genoa, is head of the powerful Italian bishops’ conference. Both roles give him outsized influence in the conclave.
• Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, 68, the archbishop of Boston, has faced the fallout from the church’s abuse scandals for nearly a decade. The fact he is mentioned at all as a potential papal candidate is testament to his efforts to bring together an archdiocese at the forefront of the abuse disclosures.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.