VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times
By Carol J. Williams
February 22, 2013
It remains to be decided when the Catholic world’s cardinals will lock themselves away in the Sistine Chapel to elect the next pope. But the undeclared candidates to succeed retiring Pope Benedict XVI are already campaigning in the gilded salons of Vatican apartments and over grappa and espresso in restaurant alcoves.
Cardinals have begun descending on the Eternal City to attend Benedict’s last audience at St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday and an informal farewell the next day for the first pope to abdicate in nearly 600 years.
Most will likely remain in Rome until the papal conclave, which under current rules can begin no sooner than March 15. That leaves more than two weeks for the red-robed princes of the faith to caucus and cajole over who among them is best suited to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
Openly jockeying for the papal miter is frowned on and rarely successful, Vatican watchers note, reciting the cautionary adage that “whoever enters the conclave a pope comes out a cardinal.”
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