Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Though certainly imperfect, and at times a bit exhausting, the 13 “General Congregation” meetings of Roman Catholic cardinals preceding the papal conclave were an exercise in genuine collegiality, cardinals said.

“The next pope, whoever it is, will have heard the mind of the church” as a result of this experience, said one cardinal before entering the secret conclave to pick a new pope, which began Monday (April 18).

The cardinals spoke on the condition of anonymity as the College of Cardinals adopted a media blackout in the week preceding the conclave.

While the first few pre-conclave meetings were devoted to a line-by-line study of Universi Dominici Gregis, John Paul II’s 1996 document governing the transition, later meetings allowed every cardinal the opportunity to speak for seven minutes, and most used that platform to explain the issues facing their local churches.

From that experience, cardinals say, several issues emerged as key challenges facing the next pontificate.

To a great extent, the topics these cardinals listed match what cardinals were saying publicly before a press blackout was imposed April 9, though two concerns from cardinals from the global south also seemed to have emerged more strongly.

_ Collegiality: How to ensure that the pope, and the Vatican bureaucracy, work in concert with the bishops and local churches of the world, with appropriate structures for input from the grass roots and a sense of shared decision-making. As one step in that direction, some cardinals have suggested that the next pope should bring the cardinals together more regularly, so that they can know one another better and have greater opportunities to form a consensus about the direction the church should take on important issues.

_ Secularism: Especially in the developed world, the church faces a secular culture that in many ways is post-Christian, if not post-religious. How to evangelize and engage a culture that often seems deaf to spiritual concerns has to be a front-burner priority for the next pope.

One question is whether the church ought to adjust itself, becoming more democratic, transparent and lay-run in order to be a credible dialogue partner with secularity; or whether the crisis is not a structural one but one of nerve, and the trick is to live and proclaim the traditional Christian message boldly and unapologetically.

_ Islam: In a post-Sept. 11 world, the relationship between Christianity and Islam will be an important factor in shaping a future of peace or of conflict. The next pope will have to pursue dialogue with Islam, while at the same time pushing Islamic nations, especially in the Arab world, to ensure religious freedom for Christian minorities.

_ Social Justice: Many cardinals, especially from the global south, have spoken about the growing gap between rich and poor, and the structural conditions that breed poverty. There seems to be a genuine consensus that the next pope must build upon John Paul II’s legacy of challenging the international community to build a more just world.

_ Sects: Cardinals from the south also spoke about the rapid growth of Pentecostal and evangelical Protestant movements that are cutting into traditional Catholic populations. These movements, often uninterested in ecumenical dialogue, tend to be aggressively missionary in nature. The challenge is how to respond to these movements without turning that response into a battle for “market share.”

One cardinal also said that he picked up a sense among at least some of the cardinals that the church must be “more generous” on a couple of long-controversial points: the use of condoms in preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS, and the question of Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics. To what extent that represents a consensus among the cardinals, however, remains unclear.

Of course, the next pope is not obliged to follow any of the priorities sketched out over the past few days. At the same time, one cardinal said that having sat through long discussions in which these concerns repeatedly emerged, “it would be difficult for whoever it is not to take notice.”

These cardinals stressed that while their meetings to date have produced some degree of clarity on the issues, they have not yet pointed toward particular candidates. The race, in that sense, remains wide open.

At the same time, cardinals stressed that they do not want a protracted conclave. “It would be my hope that we’re out by Thursday,” one said.

MO/KRE/PH END ALLEN