FaithWorld

(Pope Benedict XVI meets bishops at the end of his Wednesday general audience in Paul VI hall at the Vatican February 13, 2013. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini)

Pope Benedict may have shocked the world by announcing his resignation on Monday, but some cardinals apparently started maneuvering for the succession as long as two years ago.

Papal elections are among the world’s most mysterious, with no declared candidates and more bluffing than a high-stakes poker game. No cardinal can openly campaign for a job whose election is said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit.

But behind the scenes, at meetings inside the Vatican’s thick walls and dinners at the finer Roman restaurants, the cardinal electors size up potential candidates among themselves and drop subtle hints to Vatican watchers in the media about who’s up or down.

This round of discreet discussions, dubbed “totopapa” or “pope sweepstakes” by irreverent Romans, was only kicked into a higher gear on Monday when Benedict announced the first papal abdication for centuries. It will go into overdrive when cardinals from around the world arrive in the next few days.

(St Peter’s Basilica is pictured at the Vatican February 12, 2013. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi )

Cardinals around the world began informal contacts to discuss who should next lead the Church through a period of major crisis and the Vatican said it planned a big send-off for Pope Benedict before he becomes the first pontiff in centuries to resign.

At a Tuesday news conference on how the pope plans to spend the next two weeks before he steps out of the limelight, the Vatican also disclosed that the 85-year-old Benedict has been wearing a pacemaker since before he was elected pope in 2005.

(The monastery from where Pope Benedict XVI will retire from March 2013 is seen at the Vatican in this picture taken in January 2011.  REUTERS/Mark Kortum )

Pope Benedict may be retreating into a life of prayer but the first retired pontiff since the Middle Ages will, physically at least, remain at the very heart of the Vatican.

The convent of Mater Ecclesiae – Mother of the Church – is being renovated and following Benedict’s shock resignation will offer him a substantial, four-storey, modern home, complete with contemporary chapel, garden and a roof terrace looking out from a rise dominated by the Holy See’s TV transmission tower.

(Pope Benedict XVI (C) at a consistory at the Vatican February 11, 2013 before announcing his resignation. REUTERS/Osservatore Romano )

Pope Benedict would not be the meticulous theologian he has always been if he didn’t make sure even his shocking resignation – the first by a pontiff in over 700 years – was fully in line with Roman Catholic doctrine.

His announcement was so stunning that many Catholics will have instinctively asked if a pope is allowed to step down. For many of them, Pope John Paul’s long and very public agony before he died in 2005 is the iconic image of the end of a papacy.

(Separate file photos of Roman Catholic clergy from Latin America cited as being possible candidates to be the next Pope, (L-R) Brazilian cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, Sao Paulo Archbishop Odilo Scherer, and Argentine cardinal Leonardo Sandri, taken in Rome between 2007 and 2012. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi)

With Pope Benedict’s stunning announcement that he will resign later this month, the time may be coming for the Roman Catholic Church to elect its first non-European leader and it could be a Latin American.

The region already represents 42 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion-strong Catholic population, the largest single block in the Church, compared to 25 percent in its European heartland.

At a faster rate than many expected, the post-Arab Spring’s Islamist governments are stumbling.

For weeks, President Mohammad Mursi has faced increasingly violent opposition in Egypt. And now the Islamist rulers of Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, are facing growing unrest.

Across the country once considered the region's best hope for democracy, mass protests and political paralysis have erupted following the assassination of a leading secular politician on Wednesday.

The members of Praagaash, an all-girl band in Kashmir, split up this week after an influential cleric deemed their music un-Islamic. Zila Khan, one of India’s most popular sufi singers and daughter of sitar maestro Vilayat Khan, spoke to Reuters about how singing is closest to worship and meditation and how children should be allowed to sing.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Questions about Grand Mufti of Kashmir and Islam are best answered by experts in the field of religion. I am an expert in music, it will be no use pondering on subjects that I am not an authority on. There will be more experts to say better things on this issue. I can, however, talk about music, on my journey as a singer and the issue of women’s rights.

Obviously, I feel children should sing.

I feel the art of music and especially singing is the highest form of art in the world and in the cosmic cycle. To have the ilm (idea) and knowledge of this art is itself a blessing because it is much higher than any other form of art or work as such.

Earlier this week the British Parliament housed a restrained, sometimes mawkish and at times moving debate on gay marriage – and the bill passed the House of Commons, 400 to 175. The story was not that it passed, which had been expected. Instead, it was the split in the major governing party, the Conservatives, more of whose 303 MPs voted against the bill than for it. (Conservatives voted 136 in favor of the bill, with 127 voting no, five abstentions and 35 not registering a vote.) Prime Minister David Cameron, still intent on ensuring that his party is liberal as well as conservative, was emollient and understanding of those against the measure but presented his support in the context of a “strong belief in marriage. … It’s about equality but also about making our society stronger.”

His remarks signal that while there is division on the right over gay marriage – at least in Europe –and that while prejudice and bigotry still exist, the serious debate is between contending notions of conservatism. For liberals like Cameron and many in his party, gay marriage extends the benediction of an ancient rite upon modern couples, drawing them into the rituals of homebuilding and long-term affection that have so far been claimed as a heterosexual monopoly. For opponents, marriage must be just such a monopoly, since it is a union of one man and one woman for the purpose (if not always the practice) of procreation, of continuing society’s values in particular and the human race in general.

On values, Britain – in this case, England – is an anomaly: The Church of England is established, the Queen is its head, bishops sit in Parliament’s second chamber, the House of Lords, and the country’s canon law is part of the law of the land. Yet the country is largely irreligious as far as observance goes – the churches are mostly empty – priests and bishops are largely unattended and polls show a sizable majority in support of gay unions of any kind. Indeed, it is only if religion is put in a subaltern position to secular values like equality, fairness, inclusion and the right to pursue happiness that gay marriage could be approved.

(Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill attend a meeting with Russian Orthodox church bishops in Moscow February 1, 2013, in this picture provided by Ria Novosti. REUTERS/Sergei Gunyeev)

President Vladimir Putin has said the Orthodox Church should be given more say over family life, education and the armed forces in Russia, as he celebrated the leadership of its head Patriarch Kirill.

Faith runs deep in Russia after the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union and Putin has looked to the largest religion in Russia for support since he began his third term as president after a wave of protests against his rule.

(A visitor looks at a fetus that died before it was born during “Bodies: The Exhibition”, an international exhibition, by Gunther Von Hagens in Lima June 24, 2009. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares)

A Catholic hospital group said it was “morally wrong” to contradict its church’s teachings on the beginning of life when it argued fetuses are not people to defend itself against a wrongful death lawsuit in Colorado.

Catholic Health Initiatives said it will instead use other legal theories in the case.