ROME — Veteran Vatican journalist Edward Pentin has launched a fascinating “who’s who” of the Catholic college of cardinals, meant to serve as a racing form to handicap, and perhaps influence, the next papal election.
The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates (Sophia Press, 2020) is a guidebook to the 19 main “papabili” — or most likely papal contenders — for the next conclave. Since most of the cardinals do not know each other very well, Pentin argued, they risk arriving to the papal conclave with very little idea of where each other stands on a host of issues, and thus ill-equipped for the momentous task of electing one of the most important spiritual leaders on the planet.
Pentin, the Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register and a 17-year veteran in covering the Vatican, suggested that it is not only rank-and-file lay Catholics around the world who know little about who the cardinals really are, but their fellow cardinals as well. This racetrack program intends to fill that gap by providing not only mini bios of the most probable candidates, but also a summary of their pastoral track record and their stands on issues that could affect their suitability to sit in the chair of Saint Peter. …
Read more here: https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2020/06/24/book-preps-cardinals-next-papal-election/
