The new pope may serve the church best by being a 'servant of the servant of God' rather than a charismatic or uncharismatic power leader, writes Fr Enda McDonagh
The election of a new pope is a highly secretive business both in the conduct of the conclave of cardinals who actually do the deed and in the detail of the process leading to the decisive vote.
Do particular cardinals address the conclave? Are implicit or informal manifestos circulated sotto voce or samizdat style? How much and what kind of lobbying is permitted? Do the cardinals know what they are voting for, and do the supporters of the successful candidate get it?
Of course, before and after rumours abound. Rome and rumour have always rhymed without necessarily revealing.
Lest this reflection be thought unduly irreverent in comparing a papal election with your regular political election and ignoring the role of the Holy Spirit, it must be remembered that the Holy Spirit works through human beings and that human beings in the election to however exalted an office must take counsel with and against one another. That is, behave politically.
The first Council of Jerusalem combined prayer and politics, personal consultation and invocation of the Holy Spirit in the way the conclave beginning on Monday should. "For it has seemed to the Holy Spirit and to us," that council's compromise decision ran (Acts of the Apostles: 15, 28).
There are deeper reasons for this. The pope is indeed first and foremost a religious leader. But like all major religious leaders, particularly today, he is also a world leader in many political matters. His teaching and active witness to the gospel and human values of truth and life, to human rights, freedom, justice and peace have inescapable political impact.
The fact that he is a head of state, if only of the tiny statelet of the Vatican, immerses him immediately in the world of diplomacy and politics.
For many Catholics and others this remains a mixed blessing. However, the unprecedented attendance at Pope John Paul's funeral by world leaders and ordinary citizens recognised his remarkable contribution in the world's public square, as it is sometimes called.
Although not anticipating a successor of such formidable talent and influence, the cardinal electors, like everyone else, will have to consider who would provide something of John Paul's impact on the wider world.
Of course, there are many other roles the pope must play, roles more immediately related to his central vocation as Bishop of Rome, symbol and guardian of the unity of the church and servant of the servants of God, as the more pious attribution would have it.
In assessing the qualities required of the next pope it may be helpful to consider some of the other influential popes and religious leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries. Apart from John Paul II who has been evaluated so minutely since his death, some other influential popes merit mention.
At the start of the 20th century an undoubtedly holy pope, now St Pius X, took as one of his great tasks the preservation of orthodox belief in the face of what he and his advisers saw as the heresies of scholars. These were seeking to integrate the findings of modern biblical and other scholarship into the church's teachings.
The resulting persecution of particular individuals, the climate of fear induced and the loss to fuller understanding of divine revelation did, in many people's estimation, considerable damage to the church's reputation as a community of truth and love.
Despite other achievements, for example in the promotion of the Eucharist, Pius X could act as a warning to single-issue authoritarianism in any future pope.
It was only with the papacy of John XXIII that the truth-in-love leadership fully reasserted itself. Not that he didn't leave problems for his successor, Paul VI, who for all his personal intelligence and holiness and such encyclicals as Populorum Progressio, did not prove to have the leadership qualities necessary to hold the church together in the implementation of Vatican II.
These predecessors from the 20th century all have their lessons for the electors and elected in the 21st century. It would be foolish to expect any candidate to be able to combine the positive qualities of these popes while avoiding their weaknesses.
The electors like ourselves might be better advised to lower expectations of papal leadership and to raise expectations of ourselves, bishops, priests and laity. The new pope may serve the church best by being a genuine servus servorum Dei, a servant of the servant of God, rather than a charismatic or uncharismatic power leader.
Although the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury may not readily be compared to that of the Bishop of Rome, all such leadership offices share certain characteristics and tasks. In the person of Rowan Williams the Church of England has an outstanding theologian, a personally holy man and a significant prophetic figure. Will he be regarded as a great church leader? It is too soon to say.
However, many of the painful problems he already faces will face the next bishop of Rome also, who has certain structural advantages in dealing with them but also certain structural disadvantages, in curial control for example, which it may be one of his first tasks to confront.
The challenges to the Catholic Church and to the new pope are immense. No particular human being is equal to them. Whoever is chosen will need the critical love, fidelity and energy of all Catholics if the Holy Spirit is to be free to follow through on the conclave's choice.
Enda McDonagh is professor emeritus of moral theology in the Pontifical University of Maynooth