Latin American or African Pope Possible, Reveals Top Benedict XVI Aide

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A top Roman Catholic Cardinal has revealed that the successor of Pope Benedict XVI could possibly come from Latin America or Africa, which would be the first time in over a millennium that a non-European man has been chosen to take St. Peter’s seat.

“The challenges of the Church in the world are very different on different continents: in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. The question is 'where will the challenges be greater, on which continent, should it be a pope for, above all, Latin America, for Africa,” Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch told Reuters. Koch, 62, has been a close aide of Pope Benedict XVI, and will be one of the 117 cardinals this March who will vote in secret for a new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

“I can imagine taking a step towards a black pope, an African pope or a Latin American pope. I can imagine this,” Koch added of the various options available to the Church. The Cardinal added that he always knew Benedict, 85, would step down when he felt he could no longer lead the Church to the best of his abilities, and hinted that future popes might be inclined to the same.

The pope shocked the world last week when he announced that he would be retiring at the end of February, making him the first to do so in 600 years.

“The Church calls on all its members to renew themselves… which constitutes a fight, a spiritual battle, because the evil spirit wants us to deviate from the road towards God,” Benedict said on Sunday from his balcony in his last public address as pope, addressing a crowd of more than 100,000 people gathered at St Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

As for the leading candidates for the pope’s seat, Brazilian archbishop Odilo Scherer and Argentine archbishop Leonardo Sandri would likely be at the top of choices from Latin America, Reuters noted. Peter Turkson from Ghana, head of the Vatican’s justice and peace department, where the church is growing, has been talked about as the prime African candidate. Luis Antonio Tagle of the Roman Catholic Church in Philippines, the largest Catholic country in Asia, is also believed to be in contention.
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“I think each pope has to have four qualities: First of all, deep faith, then, sound doctrine, charisma and a capacity to govern,” Koch added in the interview. The cardinal acknowledged that the Church have an especially important decision in front of them, and will have to select a new leader wisely.

“It is clear that this is a situation that is totally new. The cardinals must choose the new pope with the presence of the living pope. We still don’t know what effect it will have. It makes a great difference if the pope is dead or alive,” Koch continued. He affirmed that the election process is very secret, and the cardinals will not know where the other votes are going.

“We now see that behind the ministry (of any pope) there is a human person … these are decisions of individual conscience. John Paul decided not to come down from the cross, as he put it, and retained the ministry to his death,” Koch reflected.

“John Paul reflected long and hard on that and came to his decision. Benedict is another person and he came to another decision and I think we have to accept this decision of conscience and not think about all the consequences that it could bring about.”
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Any one of the Cardinals could become Pope.

While it’s technically true to say that it could be this or that Cardinal, it doesn’t do anyone any good to speculate about which one of them, since it isn’t something that can be predicted.

And anyway, if one goes into the Conclave a ‘presumptive Pope’, one comes out a Cardinal. That’s the rule.
 
DexUK said:
And anyway, if one goes into the Conclave a ‘presumptive Pope’, one comes out a Cardinal. That’s the rule.
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I’ve seen this posted several times, what does it mean? I just don’t understand.🤷
 
That’s a lot of paragraphs that told us absolutely nothing we didn’t already know. The media is getting desperate to fill space on what they know is a big story.

Incidentally, I may be misinterpreting what he meant, but this statement is wrong:
He affirmed that the election process is very secret, and the cardinals will not know where the other votes are going.
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The results of each round of voting are announced to the assembled cardinals, so they DO know where the other votes are going. Maybe he meant at the moment when a cardinal casts his vote, he doesn’t yet know how the other cardinals are voting that round. But each cardinal certainly knows that say Scola picked up 12 votes last round, while Ouellet dropped 9.
 
Newsy said:
I’ve seen this posted several times, what does it mean? I just don’t understand.🤷
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It’s just an aphorism to caution people not to be so certain about the frontrunner. Due to the twists and turns of politics within the College of Cardinals, the candidate feted as the most likely next pope could easily be a lowly, ordinary cardinal again by the end of the conclave. It’s just a rephrasing of “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first”. But it’s also worth noting that in the case of Benedict XVI and Pius XII, the favorite did become pope.
 
Newsy said:
I’ve seen this posted several times, what does it mean? I just don’t understand.🤷
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It’s also worth noting that Benedict XVI, for one, did not want the job. After his election we received some information about how the voting and debates progressed. Benedict was effectively running the whole interim operation as his last duty to JPII, and was looking forward to a peaceful retirement. The cardinals recognized his humble dedication to duty, coupled with his intellectual brilliance and long track record of distinguished leadership, and it was all over but the crying.

Had Benedict gone into conclave with an arrogant attitude that he could run the place better than anyone else he probably would have been voted down by the second ballot.
 
Digitonomy said:
Incidentally, I may be misinterpreting what he meant, but this statement is wrong:The results of each round of voting are announced to the assembled cardinals, so they DO know where the other votes are going. Maybe he meant at the moment when a cardinal casts his vote, he doesn’t yet know how the other cardinals are voting that round. But each cardinal certainly knows that say Scola picked up 12 votes last round, while Ouellet dropped 9.
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Digit, have you ever seen the movie “Shoes of the Fisherman”? A great, great movie. And it was made before JPII was elected.
 
ProVobis said:
Digit, have you ever seen the movie “Shoes of the Fisherman”? A great, great movie. And it was made before JPII was elected.
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Haven’t seen it, but I’m checking to see if any area libraries have it.
 
Shoes of the Fisherman is a wonderful look at Papal Ceremony…including the coronation. It was almost prophetic in a few ways too, with the surrender of the Tiara and the Pope coming from the Eastern Bloc.

Unfortunately, beyond some very good and well-researched scenes that show Vatican life prior to the reforms of the early 1970s, its a horrible movie.
 
When I say its a horrible movie, I’m speaking as a film critic. It has far too many subplots, some of them featuring rather bizarre logic. Its largely a product of the 1960s when it was written. Definitely liberal in leanings.

But, like I said, you would be hard pressed to find a better fictional example of Papal ceremony.
 
mburn16 said:
When I say its a horrible movie, I’m speaking as a film critic. It has far too many subplots, some of them featuring rather bizarre logic. Its largely a product of the 1960s when it was written. Definitely liberal in leanings.

But, like I said, you would be hard pressed to find a better fictional example of Papal ceremony.
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Well, it has a 6.7/10.0 rating for what it’s worth.

imdb.com/title/tt0063599/?ref_=sr_1

BTW, what exactly is the Church definition of “liberal” so I know for future reference? 🙂
 
DexUK said:
Any one of the Cardinals could become Pope.

While it’s technically true to say that it could be this or that Cardinal, it doesn’t do anyone any good to speculate about which one of them, since it isn’t something that can be predicted.

And anyway, if one goes into the Conclave a ‘presumptive Pope’, one comes out a Cardinal. That’s the rule.
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Then there was Benedict.
 
GangGreen said:
It will be whoever the Holy Spirit picks 🙂
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It’s very interesting that you should say this. I was thinking about this just the other day. In his interview Light of the Word, Pope Benedict said something very interesting. “There have to be little popes too.”

Everyone is always looking for the pope who will fix the major problems of the Church and the world. However, as Pope Benedict said, there are popes who preach by their personal holiness without accomplishing much that this measurable. In reality, their personal holiness has a tremendous impact on people. These could be considered the little popes, because in the eyes of many, they are not great achievers.

We must be open to either a big pope or a little pope.
 
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