Douthat: Does a safe pair of hands mean an Italian? A member of the curia? Cardinal Parolin?
Dougherty: I have nothing against Italians, but I hope not. It’s hard not to dread Cardinal Parolin because he seems comfortable with the chaos of the last decade.
Douthat: Dan, your choice or prediction?
Hitchens: It’s the hardest job in the world. But maybe the second hardest is being a Dutch cardinal with conservative theological views: The media are implacably hostile, much of the church bureaucracy is against you, and meanwhile, your diocese is rapidly going bankrupt. Cardinal Wim Eijk seems to have navigated all this with considerable administrative skill, with the hide of a rhinoceros and while sounding more like a preacher of Jesus Christ than a jaded bureaucrat. But I don’t expect two-thirds of the cardinals to agree. More likely someone who can promise just enough to reassure both the conservative and liberal factions.
Dougherty: Ross, what do you think is the likely result?
Douthat: It’s funny, I spent way too much time writing about Vatican issues early in this pontificate and then tried to detach in the last few years, which has left me lacking both a definite personal favorite and a confident prediction.
I do think there’s a reason, besides his wonderful name, that speculation has elevated Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem — he’s youngish (at 60) and telegenic, and he’s been in the thick of fraught events without fully alienating different factions, which is basically the papal job description at the moment. I also like the idea, among the (supposedly) conservative-leaning possibilities, of the bishop of Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, the leader of a tiny Catholic community in a Protestant and hyper-secularized country, but also therefore perhaps a plausible leader for a church that suddenly sees a window of opportunity to religious revival in the West.
But for all the talk about the conclave’s unpredictability, with so many cardinals appointed by Francis, the safest guess is still that the candidates being mentioned who embody continuity — Parolin, Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, perhaps Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost (an American with Latin American experience) — represent where the votes are likeliest to go.
