CANADA
Vancouver Sun
The odds are strong – seven to two – that Canada will next month become much more famous.
Two big British bookmakers are putting serious money on a Canadian horse: Ladbrokes and PaddyPower are betting that Marc Ouellet, a cardinal from Quebec, could be elected pope at the March conclave.
If that happens, Canada’s Catholic roots and its supposedly polite, multi-faith culture will be thrust into the international spotlight.
The interest has already arrived. Popular American satirist Stephen Colbert devoted much of a show last week to mock-complaining that Ouellet would be “too Canadian” (i.e., too nice) to be pope.
When a man is catapulted to the top of a church of 1.2 billion people, unpredictable things happen to him and his country of origin. For good or ill.
A media blitz struck Poland after native son Karol Cardinal Wojtyla became John Paul II in 1978. It happened to Germany when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
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