By Nicholas Rigillo
Vatican City - A daunting task awaits the successor of John Paul II, who will be the 265th pope in the 2 000 year history of the Roman Catholic Church.
A steady decline in the number of churchgoers and priests, especially in the world's richest nations and blamed in part on a stubbornly conservative approach to sex and celibacy, appears to have undermined the Church's authority in many countries.
John Paul's tendency to centralise power and inflate the role of the papacy has resulted in frustration on the part of parishioners and little progress on the ecumenical front, particularly with the eastern Christian Churches.
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Vatican watchers and insiders are reluctant to name names Moreover, the next pope will be replacing one of the cleverest and most charismatic leaders the Church had ever seen.
Vatican watchers and insiders are reluctant to name names, if only because these names have a tendency to change frequently.
A famous Italian saying about conclaves holds that "he who goes in as pope comes out a cardinal". The idea behind the saying is that someone who is widely tipped as a candidate in fact loses his chances of being elected.
In fact, the suggestion does not always stand to scrutiny. Of the past five papal elections, Vatican experts note, only one - that of Karol Wojtyla in 1978 - was a clear surprise, if only because most had assumed the next pope would be an Italian.
One way of predicting whom the next pope might be involves drawing up a portrait of an ideal candidate, and then match names to go with it.
Openly speak of the next pope coming from Latin America John Allen, a Rome-based correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, argues that Pope John Paul II leaves behind "a more united world and a more divided church".
"John Paul II directed much of his energies towards the outside world rather than on the inner workings of the Church," Allen argues. "Under his pontificate, liberals and conservatives have found it increasingly difficult to talk to each other," he adds.
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