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04/10/2005:

"As Catholic as the Pope"

DAKAR, Senegal — This week a cardinal from Nigeria, Francis Arinze, edged ahead of an Italian, Dionigi Tettamanzi, at Paddypower.com, an Irish wagering Web site taking bets on who will be the next pope, with 11-4 odds on the Nigerian and 7-2 on the Italian.

While Irish odds makers may not be the best guide to the intentions of the 117 Roman Catholic cardinals who will begin the ancient, mystical and extremely secret task of electing the next pope on April 18, they may be onto something.

Much has been made of the fact that two-thirds of Catholics now live in the southern hemisphere, and the church's traditional stronghold in Europe, which has produced more than a millennium of popes, is withering away at an alarming rate. These trends have led many to conclude that the next pope is likely to be from the developing world, most likely Latin America - as though the papacy were a tribal chieftaincy naturally shifting to the clan in ascendancy.

But that pointedly secular view misses a deeper spiritual argument for why the next pope might, and perhaps should, emerge from Africa. In some fundamental ways, the spirit of the Roman Catholic church in Africa is closest to the kind of Catholicism Pope John Paul II worked to engender across the globe.
Full Article: nytimes.com

I'm sure that was the plan...