We Might Get An American Pope

From John Allen.  Excerpts:

...In the days immediately after the end of Benedict’s papacy, the American cardinals were among the most vocal in press interviews in insisting that governance would be a major issue in this conclave. They were hardly the only ones saying it, but the frequency with which they brought it up, and the basic coherence among them in terms of how they fleshed out what reform would look like – transparency, accountability, and more rapid response – was striking.

Famously, the Americans were the only ones to hold daily press briefings while the General Congregation meetings were going on, drawing tremendous interest not just from the American press but from a wide variety of other nationalities, especially the Italians.

When the plug got pulled on those briefings, American stock, at least in terms of public perceptions in Rome, went through the roof. They looked like the group that had their act together, who got stomped on by the ancien régime because the efficient and media savvy Americans were making them look bad.

For the record, the reason given for cancelling the briefings was concern among the cardinals about leaks from their General Congregation meetings. Anyone who attended those briefings at the North American College can attest, however, that the leaks definitely didn’t come from there.

As a result of these two developments, the buzz on the street in Rome is that the Americans are the most likely to rattle cages in the Vatican and clean the place up...

Whether the American cardinals are instrumental in electing a pope committed to good government – and, for sure, whether that pope is one of them – very much remains to be seen.

But for now, a fascinating bit of subtext from the 2013 conclave is that in the run-up to the event, observers frustrated with business as usual in the Holy See basically have hailed them as folk heroes.

To use that quintessential American interrogative: Who woulda thunk it?

And more. Excerpts:

...Veteran Italian writer Sandro Magister has offered a major plug for the candidacy of Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York as the next pope, styling him as the great hope of non-Roman cardinals who want to break the grip of "the feudal lords of the curia."

Magister upsets conventional wisdom by suggesting Dolan is actually a stronger runner than his fellow North American, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who usually finishes much nearer the top of candidate handicapping lists.

He also suggests that the candidacy of Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer of Brazil is being floated by the Vatican's old guard, who, Magister asserts, see him as "docile and bland." In part, the analysis is based on the fact that Scherer served in the Congregation for Bishops from 1994 to 2001 under Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, a consummate Vatican insider and presumably one of those "feudal lords" Magister had in mind.

Magister includes all the usual qualifications about this being a wide-open race, noting that Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston is also a plausible American candidate, but he closes by predicting Dolan could get "quite a few" votes on the first ballot.

Magister's piece doesn't cite sources, and much of it is analysis rather than reporting. Still, there continues to be a drumbeat around Dolan that can't be ignored. Several days ago, word went around in journalistic circles that Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the still-powerful former president of the Italian bishops' conference, was telling people Dolan was his "dream" candidate.

For now, the conventional wisdom remains that the boisterous Dolan may be a bit too American to be elected. There's also concern in some quarters that the force of his personality would inevitably overshadow everyone else.

As one church-watcher put it: "If Dolan is elected, the other 5,000 bishops of the world might as well take the next 15 years off, because they'll never be seen or heard from again..."

From Sandro Magister, the aforementioned piece. Excerpts:

The easiest bet is that the next pope will not be Italian. But not European, African, or Asian ether. For the first time in the bimillennial history of the Church, the successor of Peter could come from the Americas. Or to hazard a more targeted prediction: from the Big Apple.

Timothy Michael Dolan, archbishop of New York, 63, is a larger-than-life man from the Midwest with a radiant smile and overflowing vigor, precisely that “vigor of both body and mind” which Joseph Ratzinger recognized he had lost and defined as necessary for his successor, for the sake of properly “governing the barque of Peter and proclaiming the Gospel.”

In Benedict XVI's act of resignation there was found already the title of the program of the future pope. And many cardinals were quickly reminded of the visionary vivacity with which Dolan developed precisely this theme, with his “primordial” Italian, his words, but scintillating, at the consistory one year ago, when he himself, the archbishop of New York, was preparing to receive the scarlet...

Dolan is, in doctrine, a dyed-in-the-wool Ratzingerian, and moreover with the gift of being a great communicator. But he is also this in his vision of man and of the world. And in the public role that the Church is called to carry out in society.

In the United States, he is at the head of that team of “affirmative” bishops who have marked the rebirth of the Catholic Church after decades of subjection to the dominant culture and of yielding to the spread of scandal.

In Europe and in North America, the regions of most ancient but declining Christianity, there does not exist today a Church more vital and resurgent than that of the United States. And also more free and critical with respect to worldly powers. The taboo has vanished of an American Catholic Church that identifies itself with the primary global superpower and therefore can never produce a pope.

On the contrary, what is astonishing about this conclave is that the United States offers not one, but even two true "papabili." Because in addition to Dolan there is the archbishop of Boston, Sean Patrick O'Malley, 69, with the robe and beard of the worthy Capuchin friar...

This is not the first time Dolan's name has emerged in John Allen's reporting as a possible papabile.