A Vatican insider’s view: Papal field is wide open

    For John Thavis, the timing of a papal conclave coinciding with the release of his new book, “The Vatican Diaries” – based on his 30 years of covering the Vatican for Catholic News Service – is the nearest thing to winning the Catholic publishers’ lottery.
    His book hit the stores just a few days before Pope Benedict XVI announced on Feb. 18 he would become the first pope in 600 years to resign the papacy, and it has zoomed to No. 16 on the New York Times bestseller list.
    “I had to convince my publisher that I did not convince the pope to resign,” Thavis said last Saturday from Rome, where he has returned to soak in another moment of history. “They think the fix was in. But believe me, it didn’t happen that way.”
    Thavis is one of the most respected journalists in Rome. The American was elected by his peers as president of the International Association of Journalists Accredited to the Vatican, and in 2007 he received the St. Francis de Sales Award from the Catholic Press Association for his decades of insightful and nuanced reports on the universal church.
    So, if anyone has the inside connections to give him an idea of who the next pope will be, surely it is he.
    And he has no idea.
    “I’ve never predicted that, and this time around is probably the worst time around to predict something like that,” Thavis said. “I guess I wouldn’t be surprised to see (Angelo) Scola, (Odilo) Scherer or even (Marc) Ouellet. On the other hand, there are some dark horses out there – (Peter) Erdo of Hungary and even (Sean) O’Malley of Boston. I don’t count these people out.
    “This is a rather incredible time. It’s non-stop everything. I’m glad to be back here for this.”
    Thavis writes a daily blog (johnthavis.com) on the fascinating process that has transfixed not only the Catholic Church but also those of other faiths or of no faith who are peering in from the outside. It is such a newsy event that Las Vegas has posted odds on who will be the next pope – getting an assist from paddypower.com, an Irish morning-line service that apparently has even better sources than Thavis.
    At last report, “Paddypower” listed Cardinal Scola of Milan as the 9/4 favorite, followed closely by Cardinal Scherer of Brazil at 4/1 and Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana at 9/2. Cardinal Ouellet of Canada was listed at 10/1, and the top-rated American was Cardinal O’Malley at 14/1.
    The secular feeding frenzy – there are 5,000 journalists credentialed to cover the conclave, with about 600 of those being actual reporters – gives this an air of the Catholic Church’s Super Bowl. And you can cash in on the winner.
    “The most creative thing I’ve heard is that the cardinals obviously don’t know who to pick, and they should go back to Benedict and offer him the job,” Thavis said. “You never really know what’s going to happen. The latest rumor being floated around is that enough cardinals think there are enough huge problems at the Vatican that they’re going to elect an older, wiser man for a short term, whose only job will be to call either a council, which will never happen, or a major church-wide conference to sort out these governance issues in the curia.
    “But I’m not really much clearer than I was a week ago on who could be pope,” Thavis added. “The field is pretty wide open.”
    Thavis was actually in St. Peter’s Square in 1978 when the white smoke from the Sistine Chapel wafted up to signal the elections of both John Paul I and John Paul II. He began working in the CNS Rome bureau in 1983 and had the rare privilege to witness the style and the substance of both Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
    “I would say that John Paul II was more of this world – the world we live in,” Thavis said. “The reason for that is because as a young man, he actually did things in this world. He was a poet, he did theater, he worked in a factory, he did menial work – before he became a priest. Josef Ratzinger went into the seminary at the age of 11, and that was the world he knew, except for a brief time during the war when he was drafted.”
    While John Paul built bridges with the world and often invited lay people to lunch with him, Pope Benedict didn’t “turn his lunch table into a forum for discussion.”
    “He wanted his privacy, and I think people respected him for that completely,” Thavis said. “But he was a totally different person who found all the answers he needed in the church. Although his message is very invitational, well-crafted and eloquent, he was never really at ease with the environment outside the church.”
    Thavis believes Pope Benedict will disappear completely from public view.
    “I think he’s probably decided that the only way this is going to work is if he’s never seen or heard from again,” Thavis said. “He may be tempted to publish some things down the line or posthumously, but even that could raise issues depending on what he’s writing about.”
    But this historic conclave and all future conclaves, Thavis said, will be affected by his decision to resign.
    “The option of retirement is always going to be there, and that can be good and bad,” Thavis said. “It can be good because a pope may reach the point that Benedict did and say it’s time to step down. But it’s going to invite speculation almost from Day 1. When somebody is elected, people are going to ask, ‘OK, when is a good time for him to retire?’ They’re going to have to learn to deal with that, and that may not be an easy option.”
    And you can bet your last Irish pound that paddypower.com will come up with a bet for that.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].