Our local rag (the "Scott Walker Journal-Sentinel," aka "The Greater Milwaukee Committee Journal-Sentinel" and/or the "Wisconsin Manufacturer's and Commerce Journal-Sentinel") -- which at one time actually represented the people and best interests of the city of Milwaukee -- carried the Dirty Dozen story yesterday.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/06/world/europe/vatican-pope-selection/index.html
It was only visible in the online edition of the paper, not the printed one and it's notable for not having a "comments" follow-up area below the article.
The editors probably felt obligated to run the info because of the local connection with Cardinal Dolan.
The other eleven are:
Sean O'Malley of Boston, Donald Wuerl of Washington, Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, Norberto Rivera of Mexico, Marc Ouellet of Canada, Peter Turkson of Ghana, George Pell of Australia, Tarcisio Bertone of Italy, Angelo Scola of Italy, Leonardo Sandri of Argentina and Dominik Duka of the Czech Republic
Can't help noticing the strong correlation with betting line favorites. This list is from an aggregation table of other odds makers' best picks. A few of the more highly rated candidates are only mentioned (but strongly rated as dark horses) on a single odds makers site:
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics-and-election/next-pope/winner
*Angelo Scola*
*Tarcisio Bertone*
*Peter Turkson*
*Marc Ouellet*
Odilo Pedro Scherer
Gianfranco Ravasi
Angelo Bagnasco
Christoph von Schonborn
Peter Erdo
*Leonardo Sandri*
Francis Arinze
*Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga*
Not too much farther down, Dolan and O'Malley are also both listed, among the probable also-rans,
convention king-makers, and potential influence brokers.
I'm not Catholic, I honestly don't know jack about anybody on the list except the former Archbishop
of the southeastern Wisconsin diocese, Dolan. (He's a back-slapping blowhard whose conservative
back-slapping blowhard brother used to be a morning Talk Radio host on the nastiest, most hard line
Republican AM talk radio station in town. Until he blurted out something about Lindsay Lohan and
'pulling a train' and someone complained to the FCC?)
All that said, the only Catholic leaders I'm familiar with are some of the priests, nuns and lay volunteers
I've gotten to know through local activist groups. GREAT people.
Posting this here because the local paper's edition of the story didn't allow for follow-up comments and
I'm curious to know what others might think. (People who may be more familiar with the group posting the
'dirty 12' list, and the front-runners.) As an outside observer I'm rooting for the apparent disconnect
between the authoritarian leadership of the Church, and the membership, to at least start to narrow.
Doesn't look like that's what's actually occurring, but does it hurt anything to hope for that?
= new reply since forum marked as read
