Vatican Idol
I've been kicking some of the likeliest papal candidates among the cardinals back and forth - briefly - with a friend. Last week I'd fished around and found a piece from Slate from 2003 that looked at the group of seeming frontrunners at the time (it was JPII's 25th anniversary and his health problems were known, so it was a natural enough line of thought at the time) , and we were largely batting the shortlist then with the shortlist now, looking at every element from age and nationality to affiliations, politics and how conservative or liberal they are with respect to the church's current stances. Without getting into any of the names, here's a piece that weighs most of the important factors that will be considered in the next choice, and then there's an attempt at the job description for the next pontiff.
One element that's of almost comic interest, though, is that there are bookmakers' lines running on the top candidates, and if one clicks on some elements of the menu, including individual candidates, you can see that these have been running odds going back for years. Okay, certainly, it isn't as if Roman Catholics can call in and vote for their favorite cardinal, but there's still something I find amusing about the impulse apparently many have to vote on nearly anything. Not that it's new, considering that Pope Gregory XIV banned it in 1591, but not everyone lives in fear of excommunication.
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