The Candidates

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Norberto Rivera Carrera (Mexico, 62) (d.o.b. 6/6/42)
Rivera Carrera, whose ancestors were Tepehuene Indians, entered the seminary at age 13, taught ecclesiology at a pontifical university in Mexico, became bishop of Tehuac in 1985, and has served as archbishop of Mexico City since 1995. Rivera Carrera is a traditionalist on doctrine and liturgy. In 1990, he closed a seminary that he charged was teaching Marxism under the guise of liberation theology. Rivera Carrera is also close to the Legionaries of Christ, one of the conservative movements that sprang up after the Second Vatican Council. He is sometimes critical of folk religious practices that he believes contradict Christian orthodoxy; in 2003, for example, he argued that Christians should not consult horoscopes because the only star that truly influences human destiny is the "star of Bethlehem." Yet like many other Latin American churchmen, Rivera Carrera is a strong advocate of social justice. His criticism of globalization and political corruption so annoyed Mexico's Salinas government that it threatened to adopt a law forbidding priests from commenting on politics.

Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga (Honduras, 62) (d.o.b. 12/29/42)
Rodriguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is widely seen as a rising star in the Latin American church. He served as president of CELAM, the federation of Latin American bishops' conferences, until 1999. He speaks near-perfect Italian and English (along with passable French, Portuguese, German, Latin, and Greek), plays the piano, and has taken pilot training. He is ferocious on social justice issues. He was part of a small group that met German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder in Cologne to hand over the Jubilee 2000 petition for debt relief. Some say his rhetoric, however, is not matched by a command of policy details. Rodriguez has a warm smile and a ready sense of humor. He earned a degree of notoriety in the United States in 2002 by comparing media criticism of the Catholic Church in light of the sex abuse scandals to persecutions under the Roman emperors Nero and Diocletian, as well as Hitler and Stalin. He later said his intent was to draw attention to the suffering of peoples in the Third World, suggesting that the massive media attention to the scandals in the American press was disproportionate.

Christoph Schonborn (Austria, 60) (d.o.b. 1/22/45)
A member of the Dominican order, Schonborn studied theology under Joseph Ratzinger in Regensburg, Germany, in the 1970s, and later taught at the prestigious Swiss University of Fribourg. He served as general editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Schonborn comes from an aristocratic background -- some 19 members of his family have been archbishops, bishops or priests. He speaks several languages fluently, including French, Italian and English in addition to German, and he travels widely around the world, giving him a cosmopolitan outlook. As cardinal, he won high marks early on in Austria, where the church had been rocked by a sexual misconduct scandal involving his predecessor. As time went on, however, Schonborn committed missteps. He became involved in an ugly clash with the fiercely conservative Bishop Kurt Krenn of Sankt Polten. Schonborn carried out a purge of his staff, in one case firing his popular vicar general by leaving a note on his doorstep. These stumbles, combined with Schonborn's reputation as rigid in his theological views, seemed to some to tarnish his halo.

Angelo Scola (Italy, 63) (d.o.b. 11/7/41)
The patriarch of Venice, Scola is the first adherent of the conservative Comunnion and Liberation movement to become a cardinal. His particular interest is bioethics and the "culture of life," so one could expect a Scola papacy to be very energetic in defense of traditional Church teaching on these issues. Scola is fluent in several languages, including English, the result of his having studied at the Catholic University of America in Washington. Scola, formerly rector of the Lateran University, is considered conservative, a man with an open and curious mind. Asked in October 2003 by CNN to identify the main challenge facing the church, Scola said the principal one was flagged by Pope Paul VI: the "fracture" between the church and contemporary culture. "It's very difficult to determine whether this is the fault of the world that has abandoned the church, or the church that does not know how to relate to the world," Scola said. On a personal level, Scola is gracious, polished and approachable.

Dionigi Tettamanzi (Italy, 70) (d.o.b. 3/14/34)
If an Italian is to be elected pope, Tettamanzi, the successor of the legendary Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in Milan, is perhaps the most likely candidate. He has a roly-poly, affable bearing reminiscent of John XXIII. Tettamanzi is moderate-to-conservative on theological issues. A moral theologian, he is rumored to have worked on John Paul's encyclical Evangelium Vitae. Tettamanzi burnished his credentials with traditionalists by writing letters in support of indulgences -- the remission of the temporal punishment due to sin that was anathema to Protestant Reformers -- and Church teaching on the devil. At the same time, he added luster to his standing with the left by embracing the anti-globalization protest, delivering a rousing address in June 2001 in which he insisted that "a single African child sick with AIDS counts more than the entire universe." Tettamanzi is perhaps the only one of the contenders to have corporate sponsorship; in 2000, Microsoft put out his new volume on bioethics online and on CD. Tettamanzi is not an especially gifted linguist and has not traveled a great deal outside Italy.