Not a cardinal? Cast a pope vote anyway

Cardinals' Coat of Arms (PioM)

Recent "Headlines" of the Religion News Service (RNS) featured an article by Alessandro Speciale titled "Vatican mulling changes to election of new pope."  Ironically, a "Poll" section titled "Vote for the pope" was located practically alongside of this Speciale article.

Although the chances of papal elections being decided by popular vote are currently slim to none, polls such as this RNS one at least play a part in educating the public as to who the "candidates" are.  RNS' pontiff-

possibility short list is as follows:  Cardinal Timothy Dolan (United States); Cardinal Marc Quellet (Canada); Cardinal Peter Turkson (Ghana); Cardinal Angelo Scola (Italy); Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco (Italy); Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi (Italy); Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer (Brazil); Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz (Brazil); Cardinal Leonardo Sandri (Argentina); Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga (Honduras); Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle (Philippines); and Archbishop Diarmuid Artin (Ireland).

Nevertheless RNS had the wisdom to add a choice called "Other" at the end of this papal-poll list.   That is probably because there have been a number of past surprises regarding actual choices.  Wikipedia gives the famous example of then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who "was not widely considered papabile [an unofficial

Italian term meaning 'a likely or possible candidate to be elected pope'] because he was not Italian and came

from the Eastern bloc."

Go figure…

Resources

http://www.religionnews.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papabile

Copyright February 26, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved