Clarification/Follow-up by tarot10 on 04/20/05 4:27 am:
I found a website that was close in predicting the next pope.

It was the bookmakers and money betters who guessed most accurately....is what I heard on the television news broadcasters.

http://www.irishlinks.co.uk/next-pope-betting.htm

Since the sad death of Pope John Paul II - and beforehand - Irish online bookmakers Paddy Power have been taking bets on who will be the new Pope.
When the cardinals go into the conclave in the Vatican on 18th April who will emerge as the new Pope? Observers were tipping the Nigerian - Arinze to begin with - but Ratzinger of Germany has recently become favourite. The Argentinian - Bergoglio may be a surprise choice from South America where the Catholic Church is very strong.

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 04/20/05 6:36 am:
Re :predicting his name

Before the announcement, it was widely rumored that, if elected, he would take either the name Boniface (after St. Boniface, the Apostle to the Germans) or Leo (after Pope St. Leo IX, a great Germanic saint, whose feast day, incidentally, is April 19). Instead he settled on the name Benedict. Comparisons were immediately made to Benedict XV (1914-1922), a Pope who labored in vain to bring the carnage of the First World War to an early and just conclusion.

That may be, but the decision probably reflects a deeper spiritual sensibility. Saint Benedict of Nursia is one of the most important figures in the history of Roman Catholicism. From Benedict, the Western empire first learned monastic life. Benedict assembled the first communities in Latin Christendom dedicated to the pursuit of spiritual perfection. His disciples were to live simply, working with their hands and praying at regular intervals throughout the day. Ratzinger requested of Pope JPII that he return to Germany to continue his scholastic pursuits ,but JPII felt Ratzinger was too valuable to leave. People who assume he will be a "Rottweiller" as Pope because he was forced to vigorously defend the faith in his position at the Vatican may be suprised at his papacy.

Clarification/Follow-up by tarot10 on 04/20/05 10:37 am:
Elliot, can you explain a bit more what the advantages are to chosing someone older who won't be around long as you understand them? Thanks

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 04/20/05 10:52 am:
Tarot,

Basically, the College of Cardinals is a very orthodox and traditional group. They don't like big sweeping changes, and they don't like giving anyone too much time to change things. They like to move slowly for any doctrinal or procedural changes, and they are always ready to revoke any change the instant they get a bad reading from it. So the idea is to make sure that the Pope is someone who won't have enough time to become established and make those sweeping changes. That is why the average time that any Pope serves is somewhere in the 5-year range.

JPII was an exception to the rule. He sat as Pope for 26 years, and was responsible for installing MOST of the voting Cardinals. That means that he stacked the deck with "his people" who would support any changes that he made, and he made lots of them. That much power to change the Church usually makes the Vatican nervous. But that level of support was the reason that JPII was so influential in the POLITICAL arena, as much as in the religious arena. And in the case of JPII, there was no abuse of that power, and much good accomplished.

Still, after someone with that much power for so long, the Vatican needs a break, and so they voted for the oldest qualified Cardinal they could find (second or third oldest in history). The "hope" (a bad word, but there is no other word for it) is that he will only sit for a few years, not make any drastic changes in policy, and not cause much in the way of turbulence within the Church.

The point is to limit the power of the Pope, and an older man is less likely to establish a strong power base than a younger man with more time to create that power base.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by tarot10 on 04/20/05 12:56 pm:
Excon
What are you saying "yes" to?