VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service
By Cindy Wooden and Francis X. Rocca
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Wherever journalists and bookmakers may be getting the names on their lists of top candidates for the next pope, it’s not from the cardinals who will actually vote in the election. Both custom and canon law forbid the cardinals to discuss the matter in such detail with outsiders.
Moreover, the true “papabili” — literally, pope-ables — are likely to emerge only after all the worlds’ cardinals — not just the 117 who will be under 80 and eligible to vote — begin meeting at the Vatican in the coming days.
One thing is already clear, however: because of their experience and the esteem they enjoy among their peers, certain cardinals are likely to serve as trusted advisers to the rest in the discussions and election.
Here, in alphabetical order, are 12 cardinals expected to have a major voice in the deliberations:
— Conventional wisdom has long held that the cardinals will never elect an American pope, lest the leadership of the church appear to be linked with the United States’ economic and geopolitical dominance. But the extroverted and jocular Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, 63, charmed and impressed many in the College of Cardinals in February 2012 when he delivered the main presentation at a meeting Pope Benedict XVI had called to discuss the new evangelization. The pope himself praised the New York archbishop’s presentation on how to revive the faith in increasingly secular societies as “enthusiastic, joyful and profound.”
— Although not a familiar name in the press, Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest, 60, is a major figure among his peers in Europe, the church’s traditional heartland and the region of more than half the cardinal electors. He was elected to a second five-year term as president of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences in 2011.
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