Cardinals 'must heed ambition'
2005-04-15 13:32
Vatican City - Roman Catholic cardinals meeting ahead of a secret conclave to elect the next pope have been warned by a papal preacher to reign in their personal ambitions, according to press reports on Friday.
The blunt warning came from Franciscan priest Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the papal household, in a "meditation" delivered to the cardinals who from Monday will start deliberating on a successor to Pope John Paul II.
"Be guided by the Holy Spirit," Cantalamessa told the assembled cardinals, according to reports that did not reveal their sources - understandably, as the prelates last weekend agreed unanimously not to give interviews.
"Don't be ambitious" or be tempted to "promote yourselves," or the conclave will descend into chaos, a frank-speaking Cantalamessa reportedly said in his stern admonition.
The message was delivered on Thursday to help the cardinals, the Catholic Church's highest officials under a pope, make what the Vatican has called "an enlightened choice."
Under the late pope's 1996 constitution, the cardinals are to hear two such meditations from "ecclesiastics known for their sound doctrine, wisdom and moral authority ... on the problems facing the Church at the time and on the need for careful discernment in choosing the new pope."
The second will be delivered as they start the conclave on Monday.
The release of Thursday's text was reportedly blocked by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is presiding over the pre-conclave meetings and is himself thought to be among the top candidates to succeed John Paul II, who died April 2 aged 84.
Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the meditation was followed by a period of "silence and prayer," before the cardinals got down to holding "an exchange of ideas on the situation of the Church and the world", Vatican-speak for often intense debate on the late pope's unfinished business and the ideal makeup of the man to succeed him.
On Thursday, that debate ranged from divorce to abortion, euthanasia to genetic engineering, Vatican watchers said.
Even if tradition dictates that the Holy Spirit holds the key, with only a weekend remaining before the opening of the conclave, speculation is rife in the Italian press depending on scraps of information filtering out of Vatican City.
With conventional wisdom narrowing the field to two leading candidates, Ratzinger - a close confidant of the late pope - and the scholarly Carlo Maria Martini, a former archbishop of Milan, Vatican watchers are increasingly predicting a surprise compromise choice, as happened with Karol Wojtyla's election in 1978.
Dissident Swiss theologian Hans Kueng said on Thursday that he doubted that Ratzinger - who has been dubbed "God's Rottweiler" for his ultraconservative views - stood a chance of winning, but that an "openly progressive" candidate would also be blocked.