It’s never too early to start speculating about the next pope. The Paris daily Le Figaro seems to be the first out of the starting blocks with an article on Friday saying that Pope Benedict appeared tired during his U.S. tour and has been delegating more and more of his duties. “Three years after the election of Benedict XVI, his succession is not yet a daily issue at the Vatican but the rumours are rife,“ Rome correspondent Hervé Yannou wrote. “It’s true that he celebrated his 81st birthday on April 16 and everybody knows his health is fragile. The sovereign pontiff still climbs the stairs and is mentally alert, but he’s as old as his years. And it’s no secret for anyone that the pope has a weak heart.”

Perhaps to calm any concern the article might stir up, Yannou promptly says Benedict still plans to visit France on September 12-15, where he will celebrate a large outdoor mass at Les Invalides in Paris and visit the sanctuary at Lourdes. After a bit more background, he returns to the succession issue and names Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (photo below left), 74, as the front-runner. If the cardinal electors lean towards a non-European, Yannou’s pick is Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio, 72, the Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires who emerged as the main alternative to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now B16) at the 2005 conclave.

The reason for this speculation may have less to do with Benedict’s health than the fact that another “papabile” (pope candidate) has all but thrown his hat into the papal succession ring. On April 14, the day before Benedict left for Washington, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, 65, published a book in France entitled De la difficulté d’évoquer Dieu dans un monde qui pense ne pas en avoir besoin (The difficulty of evoquing God in a world that thinks it doesn’t need him). In it, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa (photo below right), who was considered a long-shot papabile back in 2005, wrote about the possibility of a non-European pope. This pontiff should be a “man of the 21st century” who embodies both tradition and innovation and whose knowledge of the concerns of the Third World would mean he could influence North-South relations, he wrote in what sounded very much like a self-description and job description rolled into one. French reporters covering Benedict’s U.S. visit briefly discussed the book one day in the press centre, but it didn’t sound like the start of the succession speculation season.

“Certainly, the pope is 81 years old,” said Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican Press Office, told John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter. “But on live television, before the eyes of the whole world, anyone can see that he’s fine and is performing all of his duties.” Allen said the article illustrated “an iron-clad rule of Vatican coverage: however thin the pretext may be, speculation about the next pope is always guaranteed to generate an audience.”

Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale noted that Benedict, following his U.S. visit, had celebrated a funeral, would preside over a long ceremony on Sunday and planned trips in the coming months to northern Italy, southern Italy, Australia and France. “Il Giornale has confirmed there is no (health) alarm,” he wrote.

On his blog, Tornielli asked whether reluctant vaticanisti were now going to have to write more and more papal health stories. Only three years ago, he recalled, the death of Pope John Paul II ended a difficult decade in which Vatican reporters had to write frequently about health issues and medical false alarms. “What’s coming from France is an ugly signal — is it already starting again?” he asked.

(Update: Zenit has more on the Vatican denial here.)

What do you think about speculation like this? Is it irreverent, given that Benedict seems in good health for his age? Or should Vatican reporters follow up any lead like this?

INDIANAPOLIS - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama refuted controversial comments by his Chicago pastor again on Friday and sought to play up his own origins in an effort to combat perceptions that he is an "elitist".

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who is semi-retired from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago which Obama joined 20 years ago, has called the Sept. 11 attacks retribution for U.S. policies and condemned America's failings on race.

Wright said in an interview this week that Obama's criticism of those comments was "what he has to say as a politician."

That led Obama to repeat his criticism on Friday.

"I have commented extensively ... on my profound disagreements with some of Rev. Wright's comments and, you know, I understand that he might not agree with me on my assessment of his comments. That's to be expected," the Illinois senator told reporters during a day of campaigning in Indiana which holds its primary May 6.

"He is obviously free to express his opinions on these issues. You know, I've expressed mine very clearly. I think that what he said in several instances were objectionable and I understand why the American people took offense. And, as I indicated before, I took offense."

The controversy over his pastor and, later, remarks that small-town Pennsylvanians were "bitter" about their economic situation, have taken a toll on the Illinois senator's image.

Obama, who was raised by a single mother and her parents, told reporters he came from more humble origins than rivals Hillary Clinton, a Democratic senator from New York, and John McCain, the Arizona senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Asked about his image by a local reporter in Indiana, Obama offered the example of his wardrobe as proof with a reference to his wife, Michelle:

"I haven't changed my approach to dressing too much. Michelle has asked me to clean up because when she first met me I had one suit. Michelle always finds this funny because I basically buy five of the same suit and then I patch them up and wear them repeatedly. I have four pairs of shoes. Recently, I've taken to getting a haircut more frequently than I used to because my mother-in-law makes fun of me. So, you know, I don't think people are too worried about what I'm wearing."

On his bowling abilities, he said: "I know there was concern about my bowling score, and, you know, I have committed to practicing bowling so that I'm better." 
     
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Frank Polich (Obama campaigns in Indiana.)

Fernando Lugo shed his cassock to win Paraguay’s presidential election on Sunday, ending 61 years of one-party rule in the South American country. Lugo stepped down as bishop of one of Paraguay’s neediest areas three years ago, saying he felt powerless to help the poor. A year later, he left the priesthood to launch his political career.

The Vatican responded by suspending him, but he remains a bishop under canon law because the Catholic Church views ordination as a lifelong sacrament.

Paraguay’s bishops said they recognise the mild-mannered, sandal-wearing Lugo as the new president, adding this may be the first country where a Catholic bishop has been elected leader.

It’s unclear how this might affect diplomatic relations between Paraguay and the Vatican.

“I understand this is the first time this happens and so the Pope will have to analyse this. I don’t know what measure he’ll take,” Monsignor Ignacio Gogorza, the head of Paraguay’s bishops’ conference, told local radio.

Local media reported that Lugo, 56, had expressed an interest in serving as bishop again, once his presidential term ends in 2013.

“For that to happen, he’d have to pass through a period of penitence and reflection, if the Church were to accept that. If not, he’d be a suspended bishop for life,” Gogorza said.

Bishop Adalberto Martinez, secretary-general of the bishops’ conference, said Paraguay’s bishops will continue to consider Lugo a friend after collaborating with him for 12 years.

“This is such a special and historic situation, that I think it deserves special attention from the Holy See,” Martinez was quoted as saying in Paraguayan daily La Nacion.

The Paraguayan people welcomed Lugo’s entry in politics since the Catholic Church is one of the most respected institutions in a country where corruption and nepotism abounds.

Thousands of Paraguayans flocked to a central square in Paraguay’s capital, Asuncion, to celebrate Lugo’s victory on Sunday night.

Among them was Delfina Ramirez, a Catholic nun.

“This triumph is incredible, we had been waiting for it for a long time,” Ramirez said. When asked what she thought of the Vatican’s opinion, she forcefully gestured with her hands as if to say: “Who cares?”

It seems that we’ve been writing for the past three years that Pope Benedict is different from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The fact there is a kinder, gentler person there than the worn-out “God’s Rottweiler” tag suggests doesn’t seem to be news anymore. But it apparently still is. When I sat down to write a summary of the pope’s trip to the United States, what struck me most was how many people were surprised by how favourably impressed they were. There were comments that he’d “changed his image” or “softened the edges” on this trip. In fact, he changed his image three years ago. What happened on the trip was that these people changed their view of him.

Here’s my analysis of the trip — he came, they saw, he conquered.

One comment I thought was particularly good was from Alicia Colon in the New York Sun: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a Roncalli, a Wojtyla, or a Ratzinger who wears the white robes and mitre; it’s the words that will always resonate in our hearts. It’s not the singer, it’s the song.”

How do you think his trip went? Was it the trip you expected? Was he the man you expected?

Loving thy neighbour is not always easy, especially, it seems, when it comes to the traditional site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

Christian factions have squabbled for years over who controls which parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s divided Old City.

Sometimes they even come to blows.

Priests and worshippers at an Orthodox Palm Sunday celebration on April 20 ended up brawling after Armenian clerics apparently kicked a Greek Orthodox priest out of a shrine at the church — one of Christianity’s holiest.

Police weren’t sure what sparked the fist-fight, but friction between the sects has been simmering for centuries. A Muslim keeps the key, and about 150 years ago, theTurks elaborately carved up territory in the church between the feuding Christian factions.

Police are braced for another punch-up when the eastern churches celebrate Easter on April 27 with the centuries-old “Miracle of the Holy Fire” ceremony.

Orthodox Christians believe the Holy Spirit miraculously lights candles when the Greek patriarch enters the shrine meant to mark Jesus’s tomb alone. The Armenians think their leader should be allowed in too.

I recently interviewed the director of a new Israeli documentary film called “Holy Fire”, which explores the religious fervour that grips Jerusalem’s Old City, revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Yoram Sabo, a secular Jew, said he was initially befuddled by the priestly quarelling at the Holy Sepulchre. But after three years of following the story’s twists and turns he came to understand that conflict was almost inevitable in a place endowed with such meaning for so many.

“It may seem trivial,” he said. “But you have to look at it through religious glasses — people fight for what they think is important.”

Earlier this month an Israeli court decided that stores and restaurants can sell food banned by Jewish ritual law during this week’s Passover holiday. Israeli courts are often arbiters in quarrels between Israel’s influential Orthodox community and its secular majority. This time the ruling has angered the Orthodox.

Ritual Jewish law forbids consuming leavened products known as hametz– from bread to beer– during the week of Passover. The tradition commemorates the biblical Israelites who did not have time to let their bread rise before the hasty exodus from slavery in Egypt.

My article on the Passover debate discusses the details and consequences of the April 3 court decision that overturned the convictions of two restaurant owners, a grocer and the owner of a pizza parlor who sold hametz last year. The court ruled that restaurants and stores can serve hametz because they are not “public areas.”

The decision has been heavily protested, including by a 27-year-old Orthodox man who was arrested by police after he stripped off his clothes in a non-kosher supermarket near Tel Aviv to challenge the definition of “public areas.”

But this is just the latest episode highlighting the rift between Orthodox and secular Jews in Israel.

The courts and attorney general have already intervened several times this past year when Orthodox and secular interests collided, including in debates on religious-public bus lines and same-sex adoption.

Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary next month but is still trying to define its identity as a Jewish state.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a secular Jew, said she did not agree with the court’s decision.

“Most of us don’t follow all the commandments and I disagree with the (ultra-Orthodox) parties on many things, but we have an interest in protecting the values and symbols of a Jewish state,” she told her centrist Kadima faction. “Everyone’s talking about the 60th anniversary celebrations. Every child knows what democracy is, but when they are asked what is a Jewish state, people stand with their mouth agape.”

I’m not sure if the timing has anything to do with Pope Benedict’s U.S. trip, but the schismatic traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X chose this weekend to announce its disappointment in the pontiff and its decision not to seek closer ties to Rome now. SSPX leader Bishop Bernard Fellay wrote in a “Letter to Friends and Benefactors” (here in French) that Benedict had not budged in his support for the Second Vatican Council despite his decision last year to allow wider use of the old Tridentine rite Mass in Latin.

“The time for an agreement has not yet come,” Fellay wrote. The decree on the old Latin Mass was “not accompanied by logically co-related measures in the other areas of the life of the Church … Nothing has changed in Rome’s determination to follow the council’s orientation, despite 40 years of crisis, despite the deserted convents, abandoned rectories and empty churches.”

The letter is dated April 14 but was only published on Saturday by the SSPX information service DICI. Here’s our story and here’s a partial English translation of Fellay’s statement at Rorate Caeli (hat tip to Father Z for that).

Fellay signalled his continued estrangement from Rome in February when he accused the Vatican of caving in to “foreign pressures” when it issued a new wording of the Latin prayer on Good Friday. In a FaithWorld post on that statement, I wondered out loud whether any or many SSPX parishioners would drift away from their churches to attend Latin Masses in their local parishes. From scattered comments I’ve heard since then, it seems that few if any of the people attending the (admittedly also few) old Latin Masses now seem to have defected from the Lefebvrist ranks.

Fellay isn’t the only one who might feel let down by Benedict. Michael Sean Winter had an interesting piece on Slate about “How Pope Benedict has disappointed the Right.” He recalls how conservative Catholics welcomed his election in 2005, only to find he didn’t crack down the way they hoped he would.

What do you think? Has Benedict been as conservative as you expected him to be?

Remember back in 2004 when some U.S. Catholic bishops declared they would deny communion to the Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry, because he supported abortion rights? Reporters spied on him in church to see if he received or not. Pundits dreamed up terrible catch phrases like “wafer watch” and “wafer war.” The issue became part of the campaign that year.

Now, four years later, Pope Benedict is visiting the U.S. and three prominent pro-choice politicians — Kerry, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani — have stepped up and taken communion at his Masses with a minimum of fuss. Pelosi kissed his ring at the White House as President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice looked on. Apart from his pro-choice stand, Giuliani is also twice divorced and remarried, which according to Church rules should bar him from taking communion. When our Vatican correspondent Phil Pullella asked him if he was uncomfortable with that, he said “No.”

As the National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen observed, “In none of these cases did the politicians receive communion directly from the pope, but it nonetheless happened during a papal Mass, and it took no one by surprise … While it would be a stretch to say that Benedict XVI authorized what happened, one can at least infer that the pope did not issue strict instructions to the contrary. The cumulative effect of these events will likely be to weaken the case that the Vatican wants the American bishops to take a stricter stance against communion for pro-choice Catholics in public life.”

What strikes me is how this is not making too many waves in the media. Sure, it’s getting mentioned and there are Catholics who wanted a firm line and blogs that are lamenting the politicians took communion after all. The Daily News did a short piece on it. But this is not causing that much fuss despite the fact it’s taking place during a papal visit and an election year.

What’s going on here? Benedict has made it clear on a few occasions that he doesn’t agree with giving communion to politicians who support abortion rights. Yet this is happening. It looks like there are four possible explanations:

1. Benedict has told the bishops to stay out of politics, so none are raising their voices as they did in 2004.

2. U.S. bishops felt the issue got turned into a political football in 2004 and don’t want that repeated.

3. The 2004 campaign was a Karl Rove-style “wedge issue” exercise by Republicans who aren’t repeating it because John McCain has a different take on religion and politics.

4. There are no Catholic candidates left running for the presidency.

What do you think?

It isn’t an event without a T-shirt. Here are two of them on sale in New York for Pope Benedict’s visit …

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At a rock concert on Saturday in the grounds of a seminary in Yonkers, just north of New York City, thousands of young Catholics mixed with hundreds of seminarians dressed in long black cassocks or black suits. The mosh pit in front of the stage was a sea of clerical black as the young seminarians jumped, clapped and danced to the music in brilliant sunshine.

“I give them a lot of credit for being willing to wear them on such a hot day,” said Maggie Coyne, 18, a student at Albertus Magnus High School in Rockland County, NY, who was due to present a gift to Pope Benedict on stage.

“It is a little outdated but it shows that they deserve respect. They’re doing a tremendous thing,” she said.

Her friend Gabriella Fiorentino, 18, a student at the Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, said “A lot of people are worried that there’s not enough new priests coming in.”

“I think (their clothes) are a great way to show that there are, and that they are still interested,” she added.

There were also quite a few young nuns in light-coloured habits, nothing like the black the nuns used to wear.

Clerical styles in the Catholic Church changed after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and many priests and nuns started wearing civilian clothes more frequently. But cassocks have made a comeback, especially among more conservative young priests and seminarians. And there seem to be more nuns back in habits, but with more style.

Conor King and his friend Joe Federico, both 15 and from Livingston High School in New Jersey, don’t think priests’ outfits should be updated.

“They keep it on so we’re reminded that they’re clergy,” King said. “It’s part of the Church and I don’t think it should be changed.”

But Courtney Mooney, 13, a student at Nanuet Senior High School in Rockland County, NY, was less convinced: “Maybe if they created something respectful but less formal that would be good.”

What do you think? When they’re out in public, should priests wear cassocks and nuns wear habits like they used to? Or should they dress in lay clothes, maybe with a single outward sign (a cross lapel pin for priests and head covering for nuns?) that they are religious?