When you think about it, the next Pope market is one to stay away from. A completely opaque process, with no guide to form, and nothing but baseless speculation and tea-leaves reading to form an opinion on. But a) that's no fun and b) Dazzler's excellent post has whetted the appetite.
So, Catholic Church - what a bind you are in. You're old and creaky and losing influence in your traditional markets. There is growth within you, but it's at the crazy extremes - Africans that want to burn homosexuals and suchlike. Which, given the 'stay away from lady bits' recruitment policy among your staff will cause a great deal of friction (and not the kind that happens in the showers at the seminary). Also, sadly, it seems that the Jimmy Savile fan club may have been sending newsletters to more parochial houses than was first thought.
You need to attract new priests, and two easy ways of expanding the selection pool are by letting in both ladies and lady-shaggers. For the past 20 years, staff who have been transferred in from FC Anglican have been allowed to grandfather in their existing skirt, mostly without fuss (many people are unaware of this, thinking there are no married Catholic priests) but opening it up to all and sundry will cause a palaver far greater than the women thing which is causing headaches for the C of E.
Also, your official status on gays is 'no'. But unofficially, you know that this makes up a huge proportion of your current staff. Change it and you drive away much of the growth in the Southern hemisphere.
These old theological questions are the ones that have been bubbling under for the Church for decades, but the clear and present danger is the paedophile scandal. rumour has it that the real reason Benedict quit is simply that the scale of how many priests had been at it both disgusted him and overwhelmed him to such a degree that he would rather just walk away than deal with it. The new guy is very much getting a hospital pass.
This causes a problem, as in a time of crisis, the next Pope really needs to be a tough guy, displaying strength, sorting all these nonces out, and reinforcing the traditional core support of the Church - reassure them that, fundamentally the Church is sound and will get through this. Continuing to soft-play the scandal, try and hush-it up and sweep it under the carpet is not an option any more.
To this end, I think that they'll decide that it's one step at a time, and that now is not the time for the Catholic Barack Obama. They'll go traditional, probably Italian, someone who can pick things up quickly, an insider, rather than an outsider.
Dazzler's pick of Sandri has a lot of appeal, but the negative for me is his age, he's only 63. As hilarious for Fred as it would be for the Pope to be younger than Tikay I just can't see them going for a kid right now.
The one for me to punt on is Gianfranco Ravasi (20/1 - Stan James and Betfred). He's 70, so a good age. He's very much an insider - current Vatican culture minister, and he led a recent retreat inside the Vatican where the bigwigs get together (at which he was vocally scathing about the divisions within the Vatican). This means he has shown backbone from a position where he would be able to follow through on his words. He has good media presence (been on TV and radio), which is increasingly important for a Pope. Potential negatives are than he could be seen as being a bit 'bookish' and being seen as close to Benedict would be a problem if there is a move to put distance between the new Pope and the old one (which I don't think will be too much of a problem as Benedict wasn't seen as a bad Pope and has said that he will be out of the game completely now).
He's not anti-evolution, and is pro-dialogue with other faiths and non-believers, so he can be portrayed as having modern proclivities, giving him time to put off making any decisions regarding the big, tough decisions (women priests, gays) until later.
In a market where being seen as a favourite is a negative, I like his price.
So recommend £20 on Gianfranco Ravasi (20/1 - Stan James and Betfred)
My guy is 69, not 63.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_SandriI agree with you that the market is incredibly open and I spent a large portion of yesterday going through a lot of the potential candidates.
The thing I like about Sandri is, I just can't find any negatives and I see a lot of positives.
You mention your guy having good media presence. My guy was the guy that announced to the whole world that John Paul 2 had died with the line,
"Our Holy Father John Paul has returned to the house of the Father...We all feel like orphans this evening."
Sweet.
Does your guy have any drawbacks? Well let's see. Hmmmm, oh yes, he's a heretic.
'In 2005, according to Sandro Magister, Ravasi was a leading candidate to become Bishop of Assisi but the Congregation for Bishops withdrew his candidacy after Ravasi wrote an article about Easter in the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, in which his statement, "He was not raised; he arose," was seen as potentially heterodox'
Also his modernity is going to be a little too modern for some of the boys.
"We need to remember that communicating faith doesn't just take place through sermons. It can be achieved through the 140 characters of a Twitter message."
Say what?
That ain't gonna fly. Most of these guys want 4 hour Latin masses.
Also he was favoured to be appointed Archbishop of Milan. But (current betting 2nd fav) Angelo Scola was chosen instead.
Your guy has a history of being overlooked.
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