Cardinals Urged to Take a Revolutionary Road

By Barney Zwartz
Sydney Morning Herald
March 4, 2013

http://m.smh.com.au/world/cardinals-urged-to-take-a-revolutionary-road-20130303-2feox.html

Is Rome ready for a non-European pope? Ghana's Cardinal Peter Turkson, seen by some as Africa's top candidate to become the next pope, is a strong contender.

As cardinals gather in Rome to elect a new pope, the Catholic Church faces either a Vatican Spring or a new ice age, says its most senior theologian, the dissident Hans Kung.

The most urgent need, Dr Kung wrote in The New York Times last week, was a pope ''not living intellectually in the Middle Ages''. Otherwise the ossified institution risked shrinking into an increasingly irrelevant sect, he wrote.

Many Catholics, unsettled amid the ''turbulent waters and rough winds'' to which Pope Emeritus Benedict referred in his final public speech last week, share Dr Kung's trepidation.

Part of the problem is that there are at least a dozen plausible candidates, amid an ocean of imponderables. The church, US surveys show, is ready for the first non-European pope in 1500 years, but there is a strong counterargument for returning to an Italian - after all, the pope is the bishop of Rome.

It took a mere two days in 2005 to elect Joseph Ratzinger, an obviously outstanding candidate once the cardinals accepted his priorities: secularism (the ''culture of death'') and Europe's exodus from faith. This time round, with so much to deliberate, consensus could take much longer.

For all the merits of the leading candidates, each has obstacles to overcome of personality, performance or perception. Here, in no particular order, are the names most mentioned. From Italy, Angelo Scola, 71, Archbishop of Milan, the leading Italian and early favourite but seen as divisive. Gianfranco Ravasi, 70 , head of the Council for Culture, did his chances no harm with a polished series of reflections for the Lenten retreat attended by the Pope (previous speakers included John Paul II and Benedict ). He could be a good compromise, as might Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, 69, the popular head of the Italian conference.