a few years ago I was told there was a group pushing a very conservative

person for the next pope.......from Germany??........youngish and very conservative with group's goal of undoing Vatican II and definitively wiping out any lingering trace of Liberation Theology anywhere in the church

this sound like anything you've heard????

not young, but ultra conservative

Sums him up though. :D

The only difference is now they call it the "Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith" or something like that.

He won't be the next pope. The cardinals will no doubt pick a conservative of some sort, but it would be odd to go with a belligerent, nonsympathetic cardinal, and Ratzinger brings nothing to the table ethnically (i.e. it would be odd to have two popes from central Europe in a row). I can't see him getting more than about 20-40 votes even in a two-way vote.

yuck!

Hopefully the election will work as one of the vatican historians joked it had in the past. He said that men go into the room as popes and come out as cardinals, meaning the obvious choices and front runners always lose.

And Europe has MONEY, and attendance is slipping. Ratzinger could revive the church in Europe and open wallets, plus, he is a vigorous theologian with intellectual bona fides, and he follows in the JP2 conservative tradition. He was also personally close to JP2, and that might have some effect. The fact that he is not young is actually a plus--if they screw up, and pick a reactive dinosaur, at least he won't last for decades, is the thinking.

I say the odds are good it will be an old guy, an "interim Pope" who will do a little tweaking but not too much, and who is good for ten years or so. The odds are also reasonable that it will be an Italian, a rather "traditional" choice, but those odds are not a guarantee at all. JP picked most of these Cardinals, but as we have seen with surprise decisions in our judicial system, you can't always be sure that the person that you THINK thinks like you actually does think like you. They could be ready for a change.

It would be nice to be a lizard on the wall of the Sistine when they go into Conclave...better still, to be able to listen in on all the conversations in their quarters, that's where the deals are made.

About the only thing we know is that it won't be an American, and Cardinal (Above The) Law is definitely off the list!

of possibilities (his "recommendations") that Duhbya will "provide" for the Vatican?