The election of the next Pope of the Roman Catholic Church is going to be interesting. At least, it will be to me, even though I am not a Catholic, nor even a Christian. Indeed, I think the very basis of Christianity is suspect. By this I don't mean its beliefs. These are, by themselves, curious and unbelievable, but its moral basis is suspect, too.

The primary moral basis of Christianity is to love all men, forgive those who sin against you, and to turn the other cheek when oppressed. This, at least, is what is mainly preached from the pulpit. Yet it is plainly impractical -- being the most open invitation you could ever give to a potential tyrant. And the Church itself didn't believe this when it had finally converted the Roman Emperor Constantine and then set about its early missionary endeavours in Europe. Its messengers went straight for the jugular in every country, not speaking to ordinary people but preaching directly to kings and princes in the same way they had converted Constantine. They preached the power of the one God -- and that if a king also believed in this God he would be powerful, too. The poor only came later as the missionaries built churches and appointed their own agents (and tithe collectors) with instructions to preach subservience both to God and the secular king aided by colourful pictures on the walls of the church as to the torments of hell if parishioners didn't do as they were told. For something over a millenium the Medieval Church, and even the various early reformed Churches in Europe, were hand in glove with the secular powers.

That has all gone now -- or at least mostly gone -- in the developed countries, as attendances at churches have decreased almost to vanishing point. Paradoxically, though, there is a curious recent fashion by which several senior politicians such as George W. Bush and Tony Blair have allied themselves strongly with Christianity, the former with the fundamentalisalist wing of Protestantism and the latter with the Catholic faith which historically has always been fundamentalist. Then, too, most politicians of the developed world felt obliged to turn up for Pope John Paul II's funeral -- something which has never happened before. Hardly anybody has commented on this.

Why this strange phenomenon? I think that historians in the future will say that the funeral was really a comfort-meeting of leaders of dying institutions. Respect for politicians and interest in politics are now declining in the same way as respect for church leaders and interest in theology did in the course of the last century or so. Both the Cardinals and Archbishops of the Roman Catholic Church and the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the nation-state are in the same boat. Both species are seeking validation from each other. And, travel being cheap these days, even the small minority of enthusiastic Catholics in many countries accumulated in St Peter's Square in sufficiently large numbers to give the impression of some sort of mass popularity of the Pope. Various senior politicians allowed themselves to cash in on this popularity by allowing themselves themselves to be photographed while kneeling in front of the coffin.

Institutions like the Christian Church take a long time dying so we cannot expect the early demise of the nation-state. Just as the government and indoctrination of ordinary people took centuries to pass from the Medieval Church to the secular state (and indeed has not finished yet), so the nation-state will not collapse in any sudden or spectacular way. It will take plaace over generations and be almost indiscernible within the lifetimes of most people. Meanwhile, governance has to continue in some way. But it is plainly a fact that the thousands of multinational corporations and the non-governmental international organisations (NGOs) are now becoming far more relevant, influential and powerful in today's world. It is they which are gaining the allegiance of people in the developed world. Consumerism, not religious attendance at church, dominates most people's lives now and the cream of the young intelligentsia from our universities who don't stay there after graduation as teachers or researchers don't choose politics or the civil service as their first choice these days but opt for more interesting and remunerative careers in the media or in multinationals or NGOs.

The following Sunday Telegraph piece is by David Willey, the BBC's Rome Correspondent since 1972 and is the best I've come across in today's crop of articles on the subject of the election of the next Pope. He was a frequent traveller with Pope John Paul II on his worldwide journeys so, when he writes that there are going to be fierce debates among the Cardinals I think we can accept this as an expert view. I can remember the drama which surrounded the meetings of the last Conclave when Pope John Paul II was elected and how most people were surprised at the sudden ascendancy of a relatively unknown Cardinal from Poland. This time, however, I think it will be quite different. The Roman Catholic Church is now in such a perilous condition that the few progressive Cardinals are going to be so concerned that a more liberal Pope is chosen that they are going to leak to the press in order that powerful outside views might start to penetrate their debates both before and during the Conclave. I think this time, we will see the emergence of a few well-defined candidates long before they finally meet in the Sistine Chapel and this is why I will find it interesting.

Whether a similar Pope as the last one or a more liberal one is chosen I think it will make very little difference to the declining power of the Church in the developed countries. It is possible, however that a more progressive Pope, more open to sensible ideas about birth control, celibacy of priests, prevention of HIV by use of condoms, abortion, euthanasia and other similar matters vital to the well-being of ordinary in these modern times could make a great deal of difference to large populations of the impoverished in undeveloped countries of South America, Africa and parts of Asia.

Keith Hudson

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BEHIND THE ELABORATE PROTOCOL, A NAKED POWER STRUGGLE BEGINS

David Willey

In a four-star hotel near the Vatican, staff are busily preparing to serve the next influx of guests. Their duties, however, are not of the usual hotel variety -- for this is no ordinary hostelry.

Situated within the walls of the Vatican City, the 130-room, £10 million Domus S. Marthae -- The House of Saint Martha -- is about to fulfil the function for which it was built by the pope nine years ago. It is where, for the duration of the papal conclave, the 116 cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church who have gathered from around the world to elect a successor to John Paul II, will be quartered.

In nine days' time, the staff - including confessors and doctors as well as cooks and housekeepers - are charged with the mission of providing the cardinals with an environment free from all interference or pressure from the outside world during the length of the conclave. They, as with the cardinals themselves, are sworn to secrecy on pain of excommunication from the Church.

For the cardinals, it is one of Pope John Paul's most appreciated initiatives, modern facilities in each room or suite including private baths, air-conditioning and television, although it is expected that this will be turned off during the conclave. They will appreciate the change from the spartan conditions of previous conclaves when temporary bedroom partitions and monastic cells were set up in frescoed halls and there was an acute shortage of bathrooms. The Renaissance Pope Pius II, the only pope in history who also fancied himself as a journalist, wrote in his diary ''a great quantity of cardinals used to meet in the latrines, and there, as in a place that was conveniently secret and secluded, agreed that a certain William should be elected pope and promised their vote in writing and with an oath. William immediately began to promise jobs to his friends& the place was worthy of such an election. Where better than a latrine could you draw up unusual contracts of this sort?''

The task faced by the cardinals of this next conclave is somewhat more daunting. They seem slightly shell-shocked to realise that they have the grave and immediate responsibility of filling the shoes of a Fisherman who was quite unique in the recent annals of his church, if not in its entire 2,000 year history.

The prodigious John Paul II - already being proclaimed a Saint by the Roman vox populi - broke practically all previous papal records. In seeking to revivify his ancient institution and enable it to face the challenges of the end of the 20th century, he travelled further (31 times the circumference of the earth) and more frequently (104 international journeys) than any of his predecessors. He reigned longer, created more new saints, appointed more new cardinals, wrote more documents, made more speeches and attracted more heads of state and government to his funeral than almost any of the previous 262 popes of history.

It's going to take some time to digest the full significance of just what the first non-Italian pope for four and a half centuries did for his church, but meanwhile the pressing task of selecting a successor cannot be postponed. Nine days of prayer and reflection and furious backroom lobbying have already begun. A papal conclave is a curious mixture of the holy and the unholy; a naked power struggle concealed behind elaborate protocol, exquisite ecclesiastical courtesy and the imposition of an ironclad rule of secrecy that is already making some papabili - as serious runners for the succession are known - quake in their shoes.

Every morning until they retire into conclave in the Sistine Chapel a week on Tuesday, the cardinals are meeting inside one of the Vatican's most secure conference rooms to exchange views on how the universal Church shall be governed in the coming months and years and who is to lead it. Although the late pope laid down elaborate instructions as recently as 1996 for the electronic debugging of all meeting places inside the Vatican during this preliminary period of caucus meetings and during the actual election, recent advances may make all this obsolete. There are no official instructions yet on the carrying of mobile telephones by cardinals into the Vatican.

In politics, one would expect the use of smoke-filled rooms to determine the nature of the struggle but, in this case, there is none for the exclusive use of members of the Sacred College of cardinals, the world's most exclusive men's club. One cigar smoking cardinal commented that he is appalled at the recent change in the law in Italy banning all smoking in public places, including bars and restaurants. There is a similar ban operating inside the Vatican, but it is usually honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

In the short run-up period to the conclave, the cardinals are staying for the most part in their own national seminaries or training colleges for future priests dotted about the city of Rome. Here, they sometimes hold private dinner parties for a few of their colleagues to sound them out on who might be credible candidates. More often they eat out in the many lavish Roman restaurants that provide private rooms for diners on request.

During conclave, the cardinals will have some spare time, particularly in the evenings after balloting and Vespers. As well as time for their own prayers, they will be able to listen to music and read. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, told the press this week that he will be taking in religious texts for private devotion. But also a few other books - he is yet finally to decide, but is contemplating taking in a Jane Austen "and perhaps a Bronte".

Most of the cardinal electors know their fellow electors personally having met them continually over a long period of time during Vatican synods and other church events in Rome. "Name cards are unnecessary," said one, and indeed would be frowned upon by the discreet Vatican security men and staff secretaries who are the behind-the-scenes facilitators of all Vatican events.

Two days before the election of Paul VI in 1963, according to a diarist, a key strategy meeting of cardinals from the Netherlands, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Germany and Italy took place inside a Capuchin convent in Rome. There, the compromise candidacy of Giovanni Battista Montini was agreed in order to satisfy both progressives and conservatives attending the Second Vatican Council. He was duly elected.

When the white smoke comes out of the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, only one of the cardinal electors inside will not have to make the journey home after the conclave. Officially, discussion among the 116 (the are 183 cardinals but only 117 can vote because those over 80 are ineligible and one, Cardinal Sin from Manila, is too ill to attend) about who this will be has not been allowed until the moment that the late pope was lowered into his coffin on Friday. Indeed, the cardinals have now taken a new vow of silence. However, for many months as John Paul's sickness steadily worsened, the rule has been widely disobeyed in private. Various factions have formed, divided roughly among continental lines.

The Europeans still have the strongest voting block with 58 and the Italians, with 20, still have the largest single national group in the Sacred College. But the Latin Americans are expected to champion their candidature for the papacy - Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga from Honduras is the most likely - on the grounds that slightly over half the world's Catholics live in South and Central America. The North Americans are effectively excluded from the contest because a superpower pope would not be acceptable by the Church of Rome in a world where the hegemony of the United States over the rest of the planet seems palpable.

However in terms of ecclesiastical influence, the 11 American cardinals will exercise considerable clout. Much of the finance of the Catholic Church comes from North America. The generosity of Canadian and American Catholics, even after the disaster of the priest paedophile scandals, remains high and the Vatican coffers depend very heavily upon American contributions. John Paul II also grouped together the cardinals of North and South America into a hemisphere association making the wealthy North co-responsible for helping to fund and support the churches of the poor south. A Latin American candidate with American support might easily garner enough votes in the conclave to secure the necessary two-thirds plus one majority to win the papacy. The tradition of always electing an Italian pope has been broken. After Karol Wojtyla from Poland, the field is now wide open. The Italians no longer have a claim on the papacy.

It is pointless at this preliminary stage to start making forecasts as to the name of the man who will emerge from the balcony of Saint Peter's dressed in the white papal vestments now being sewn at the ecclesiastical tailors' just down the road from where I live. In their back room, they keep three mannequins that represent the possible sizes of the next pope - big, medium and small. Three outfits are being readied. When the new pope is announced, the shop will rush them over to the Vatican. The tailor cannot get into the papal apartments, however, so the fitting and any nipping and tucking of hems and waistlines will be by needle-working nuns, who will have just half an hour to do their job. For his first appearance, the new pope will wear a long white cassock with a scarlet cape.

Conclaves always have kingmakers, cardinals who are not necessarily themselves candidates for the highest office, through age or infirmity, or for some other reason, but who set the guidelines for the choice of their colleagues. Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, 77, the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy for more than two decades, has revealed himself as the kingmaker of this conclave. He is the German theologian who has been the pope's chief adviser throughout his long pontificate and who is one of the few electors who do not owe their promotion to John Paul (Ratzinger was given his red hat by Pope Paul VI just before he died). The fact that he was chosen by his peers to conduct the funeral requiem is significant and his homily on Friday deserves close study.

Raising his eyes to the empty window of the Apostolic Palace from which Pope John Paul had as recently as Easter Day blessed the crowds in Saint Peter's Square, the Cardinal said that the late pope was now looking down on us from Heaven. It was a warning to the assembled cardinals, their red vestments flapping in the wind as they bade a final farewell to the man who had appointed practically all of them to their jobs, that they must not betray the ideals he set them.

Sunday Telegraph -- 10 April 2005

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