UNITED STATES
Jackson Sun
by Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
Any day now the cardinals of the Catholic church will huddle in the Sistine Chapel to choose the next pope.
Who is the holy, humble, super human who can lead the modern Catholic world of more than a billion believers? Who can preach eternal truth while confronting contemporary spiritual, social, economic and political challenges?
Americans are only 6% of the global church and the issues that loom large here — the clergy abuse crisis, contraception or whether priests can marry or women be ordained — may not be top-of-mind elsewhere.
“The great populations of Africa, Latin America and Asia are not thinking about those things,” says Rev. Patrick Ryan, professor of religion and society at Fordham University in New York who has spent 26 years in Africa.
“When I read that The New York Times suggested one of the major problems Benedict faced was same-sex marriage, I burst out laughing,” Ryan says.
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