Who Will Be First Among Us?

By Kevin Fedarko

One day, John Paul lunched at the Vatican with a bishop from Senegal. "In Africa," the bishop said, "people are talking a lot about your succession. After you, they say there will be a black Pope." John Paul said, "You seem very well informed." To which the bishop replied, "Yes, I read it in Nostradamus!" The Pope laughed.

As John Paul approaches the twilight of his papacy, the question arises -- who will be the next Pope? For more than 450 years before Karol Wojtyla's elevation, the papacy was held by Italians. And when the present Polish experiment is over, some Vatican insiders insist that the Holy See will be returned to its traditional caretakers. "You can bet your last dollar that the next Pope will be one of ours," said one up-and-coming Roman prelate. "I don't know who it will be, but he'll be Italian."

Among the Italians, the best-known candidate is Carlo Maria Martini. As the Archbishop of Milan, Europe's largest archdiocese, Martini, 67, is promoted by moderate Catholics as the single most papabile prince of the Roman Catholic Church. Suave, brilliant, cosmopolitan, he hews closely to John Paul's dogma but is reputed to harbor less conservative inclinations. Some are convinced Martini could spur reform on issues such as celibacy and women priests. On contraception, he once said, "I believe the Church's teaching has not been expressed so well . . . I'm confident we will find some formula to state things better, so that the problem is better understood and more adapted to reality." Martini is an eminent New Testament scholar who reads or speaks 11 languages and has written nearly 50 books.

Martini, however, is a Jesuit, and the conservative College of Cardinals is not likely to look kindly upon even a moderate member of an order with a reputation for liberalism. And Vatican watchers never tire of invoking this aphorism: "He who goes into the conclave the next Pope, comes out a Cardinal." Martini has done everything to discourage discussion of his chances of succession -- including voicing his desire to be buried in the Holy Land. Implicit in that is the fact that Popes are buried in Rome.

Other possible Italian candidates include Silvano Piovanelli, 70, of Florence, and Pio Cardinal Laghi, 72, who heads the Congregation for Catholic Education. Both have conservative credentials. And then there is Giacomo Biffi, 66, the Archbishop of Bologna. Biffi, for whom John Paul reportedly has a soft spot, likes to bait Italy's liberal press with his diatribes against gays, feminists, AIDS victims, unwed mothers and pro-choice activists. He has led a campaign to abolish the music of Mozart and Schubert from the Mass, and he once likened ordaining women as priests to celebrating Communion with Coca- Cola. Says he: "Defending the truth as it has been revealed by God is the most elementary and necessary act of charity toward others."

Italian Cardinals number only 19 out of the 120 electors, and they are unlikely to vote as a bloc. Neither are the Americans who, with 10 voting Cardinals, are second only to the Italians. In any case, few can imagine a U.S. Pope -- America's status as the world's sole superpower is almost assumed ! to rule this out. Furthermore, John Paul has gone out of his way to distribute red hats around the world. The proportion of Cardinal electors from Africa, Asia and Latin America has grown from 21% to more than 40%. A Third World Pope is no longer an impossibility.

Among the front-running Cardinals from this camp are the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Bernardin Gantin, 72, of the West African nation of Benin, and Lucas Moreira Neves, 69, a descendant of slaves and Archbishop of Salvador in Brazil. The name most frequently invoked, however, is that of Francis Cardinal Arinze, the charming and efficient Archbishop from Nigeria who heads the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue. A convert at the age of nine from the animist faith of the Igbo tribe, Arinze, now 62, enjoys robust health (he is an avid tennis player) and almost legendary status back home. During Nigeria's fratricidal 1967 civil war, he faced down government oppression and sustained his flock in a breakaway province.

The Europeans have other papabili, among them Godfried Cardinal Danneels, 61, of Belgium. And then there is another prominent convert: Jean-Marie Lustiger, 68, the Archbishop of Paris. Lustiger was born a Jew, the son of Polish emigres to France (his mother would die in Auschwitz). Abandoning his original name, Aaron, he adopted Catholicism as a teenager, a move that hurt his parents terribly. Lustiger is a trusted confidant of John Paul's; when he first visited the Pope, John Paul's secretary, Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz, grabbed the Frenchman's arm and told him, "Remember, you are the fruit of the prayers of the Pope. The Pope prayed long and hard over his choice."

Asked by TIME about his chances of succeeding John Paul, Lustiger replies, "Me? Totally excluded. Out of the question." Lustiger fidgets silently with his breviary in its brown leather case, then suddenly announces, "I had a dream. I dreamed that the President of the United States was black, the President of the ex-U.S.S.R. was a Muslim -- and the Pope was Chinese. And in my dream I asked God to let me die before that day would come. Because if ever we had a Chinese Pope" -- he clenches his fist and makes a screw-turning gesture -- "they know what administration is!"

With reporting by Greg Burke/Rome and Thomas Sancton/Paris