FaithWorld

(Cardinals attends a meeting at the Synod Hall in the Vatican March 4, 2013. REUTERS/Osservatore Romano)

Catholic cardinals in a closed-door meeting ahead of the election of a new pontiff want to be briefed on a secret report into leaks about alleged corruption and mismanagement in the Vatican, a senior source said on Monday.

More than 140 cardinals began preliminary meetings to sketch a profile for the next pope following the shock abdication of Pope Benedict last month and to ponder who among them might be best to lead a church beset by crises.

The meetings, called “general congregations,” are open to cardinals regardless of age, although only those under 80 will later enter a conclave to elect a pope from among themselves.

The source, a prelate over 80 who was present at Monday’s meetings, said the contents of the report came up during the morning session but declined to say if the requests to be briefed were made in the formal sessions or informal coffee break discussions or both.

(Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, watches  the helicopter (not pictured) carrying Pope Benedict XVI fly off from the Vatican, on its way to the papal summer residence at Castelgandolfo, February 28, 2013. REUTERS/Yara Nardi )

Roman Catholicism faces a serious challenge from the rising number of people who believe in God but no longer see any need for a church, according to New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

Opinion research shows that some people today have problems “with the very nature and meaning of the church”, Dolan, in Rome to prepare for a conclave to elect a replacement to the retired Pope Benedict, told Reuters in an interview.

(A man tries to remove a spoof poster supporting Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson from a billboard in Rome, March 1, 2013.  REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi )

Narrowing down lists of about a dozen potential popes to a handful of serious hopefuls will be one of the main tasks of the closed-door meetings that Catholic cardinals begin on Monday.

The lists circulating in public, mostly drawn up by Vatican journalists based on private chats with Catholic prelates, look more credible than some that floated around during the last conclave in 2005, according to Chicago Cardinal Francis George.

(A man holds new stamps “Vacant Seat” in his shop next to the Vatican in Rome March 1, 2013.  REUTERS/Tony Gentile )

A relaxed and rested Pope Emeritus Benedict read messages from well-wishers and strolled in his retirement palace gardens on Friday as cardinals due to elect his successor planned pre-vote meetings for next week.

The 85-year-old former pope watched televised reports of his departure from the Vatican on Thursday evening, then slept soundly in the papal summer residence Castel Gandolfo, where he will stay for about two months, a Vatican spokesman said.

(A woman strolls past a poster supporting Cardinal Peter Turkson in front of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome March 1, 2013.  REUTERS/ Max Rossi)

Spoof  “vote for Turkson” posters have popped up in Rome along walls still plastered with campaign posters from Italy’s general election on Sunday and Monday. Campaigning for the papacy is officially forbidden and even suggesting one is a candidate is usually enough to end any cardinal’s chances of ascending to the throne of Saint Peter.

Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson is the Irish bookmakers’ favorite to replace Pope Benedict, putting a non-European in pole position to lead the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church for the first time in more than a millennium.

(Pope Benedict XVI’s twitter account is pictured on a smart phone in front of the Twitter logo displayed on a laptop in this photo illustration taken in Rome December 3, 2012.  REUTERS/Max Rossi )

With Pope Benedict’s abdication on Thursday, the most prominent living speaker of Latin will retire into the shadows, after doing much during his eight-year pontificate to give the language of ancient Rome a new lease of life.

Benedictus, his name in Latin, set up the “Pontifical Academy of Latinity” to promote its use inside the Roman Catholic Church and beyond and chose to deliver his abdication speech in Latin, in what was considered a model of clarity.

“The servant of God’s servant departs in peace,” was the headline on an article by the British novelist Piers Paul Read this week. The piece was a eulogy to Benedict XVI’s papacy, in which Read argued that the pope had left the Church much richer in doctrine – conservative doctrine – than he had found it. Watching the televised images of Benedict touring St. Peter’s Square in his Popemobile ‑ smiling, waving, embracing the babies passed to him from proud parents as he went, speaking about the joy and light he finds in God ‑ you would be inclined to agree.

But in that final address, he also said that in his eight years, "I have had … moments that haven't been easy … moments of turbulent seas and rough winds … at times it seemed like the Lord was sleeping.” He offered no details on the rough winds nor on what events the Lord was sleeping through, but it’s likely that those that gave him the most heartache concerned the people with whom the Lord’s servants were sleeping with. Sex is roiling the Catholic Church.

Benedict has been accused of much of which he is innocent: his membership, brief and mandatory, in the Hitler Youth when a teenager; his supposed anti-Muslim comments attributing violence to Islam, actually a quote from a medieval emperor, from which he dissociated himself; and an attribution of anti-Semitism because he reconciled the Church with the Society of Pius X, one of whose members was a Holocaust denier. He has been so accused because of his orthodoxy, and orthodoxy has been taken by his more radical critics to include prejudice and worse. But it is unlikely that his prejudices include pro-Nazism, or anti-Islamic or anti-Semitic views.

(Pope Benedict XVI waves to the faithful after arriving in St Peter’s Square to hold his last general audience at the Vatican February 27, 2013. REUTERS/Max Rossi )

Pope Benedict bid an emotional farewell at his last general audience on Wednesday, acknowledging the “rough seas” that marked his papacy “when it seemed that the Lord was sleeping.”

In an unusually public outpouring for such a private man, he alluded to some of the most difficult times of his papacy, which was dogged by sex abuse scandals, leaks of his private papers and reports of infighting among his closest aides.

(Cardinal Peter Turkson (2nd L) during the Ash Wednesday mass at the Vatican February 13, 2013. REUTERS/ Alessandro Bianchi )

Ghana’s Peter Turkson is the Irish bookmakers’ favorite to replace Pope Benedict, putting a non-European in pole position to lead the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church for the first time in more than a millennium.

Irish bookmaker Paddy Power offered odds of 11/4 against for Turkson, meaning successful punters would win 11 pounds for every four staked, while Britain’s second largest bookmaker Ladbrokes offered odds of 5/2 against.

(A technician works on a structure set up for TV media in front of St. Peter’s Square in Rome February 26, 2013. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi )

Pope Benedict was praying and packing on Tuesday two days before his move out of the Vatican and into retirement where he will assume the title of “pope emeritus” and still be referred to as “your holiness”.

The Vatican said Benedict was spending a quiet Tuesday in the apostolic palace with no audiences.