Mahony Breaks Public Silence

On the eve of the conclave to elect the next Roman Catholic pontiff, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles said Sunday that he would be looking for a pope who could “speak to the world” as a pastor and confront new challenges to the church in the 21st century.

The world’s cardinals agreed last week to a moratorium on public comments. But in an interview, Mahony offered glimpses into the behind-the-scenes meetings and conversations among 115 voting cardinals who are to gather in the Sistine Chapel today to begin the process of electing a successor to John Paul II.

Mahony said cardinals from the Southern Hemisphere had offered “some very good insights” about challenges facing the church in their countries. He also singled out cardinals from India, saying that despite periodic persecution of Christians in the predominately Hindu nation, Indian bishops had offered “positive” reports about the church’s growth.

“I learned a lot from these people,” Mahony said.

He was not the only one to break silence Sunday. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, archbishop of Westminster, told seminarians at the English College here that he had been moved by comments from an unnamed African cardinal about the challenges of “aggressive Islam, AIDS, poverty and wars” on that continent.

The prominence during the closed-door meetings of issues facing developing nations should not be surprising, Mahony said, noting that about half of the world’s 1 billion Catholics live in the Southern Hemisphere.

The next pope, he said, will have to confront such “North-South” issues as poverty in developing countries and globalization as effectively as John Paul confronted “East-West” issues before the fall of communism.

“It’s certainly going to be a major priority,” Mahony said.

He downplayed reports in the Italian media about a horse race between conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the retired archbishop of Milan, who for years was Europe’s most prominent liberal cardinal.

“I think everybody’s just really staying very open, a lot of listening, a lot of thinking and reflecting. It’s going to be interesting, that first day or so,” Mahony said.

In a homily at the 4th century basilica that is his titular church here, Mahony called on people in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to pray for him as he helps make “the single greatest decision of my entire life.”

Mahony said he believed that cardinals would be looking for a pope who was an effective communicator and pastor.

“From my perspective we’re electing a new pope, not a carbon copy of the last pope, because I don’t think there is any. That was a unique papacy of extraordinary dimension,” he said. “We hope to elect somebody who is very pastoral, who communicates to people. But no one is going to have [John Paul’s] range of gifts again.... Nobody’s going to fit into those shoes and shouldn’t be expected to.”

Mahony also cautioned against reports that ideological divisions among cardinals in Central and South America would reduce the likelihood that one of them could be elected pope.

“I think some of those differences are not as marked as you might think,” he said.

Mahony, who is thought to be aligned with more liberal cardinals, said he was not leaning toward any candidate.

“I’m just trying to put myself in God’s hands and ask the Lord to ‘help me choose the one you have selected.’ I look around that hall each day this week, and I say, ‘The new pope is sitting here! He’s sitting here!’ It would sure be nice if the hand of God just came down from the ceiling and said, ‘This one.’ It would make life a lot easier! But that’s not happening yet.”