The conclave may take longer this time

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, VATICAN CITY - On the eve of their conclave to select a new pope, cardinals held their final debate Monday over whether the Catholic Church needs a manager to clean up the Vatican or a pastor to inspire the faithful at a time of crisis. The countdown underway, speculation has gone into overdrive about who's ahead in the papal campaign.

Whoever the potential candidate is, there were strong indications that plenty of questions remained about the state of the church and the best man to lead it heading into Tuesday's conclave: Not all the cardinals who wanted to speak were able to Monday, and the cardinals were forced to take a vote about continuing the discussion into the afternoon.

"This is a great historical moment but we have got to do it properly, and I think that's why there isn't a real rush to get into things," Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier from South Africa said as he left the session.

Cardinal Javier Luis Errázuriz of Chile was more blunt, saying that while Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had tremendous support going into the 2005 conclave that elected him Benedict XVI after just four ballots, the same can't be said for any of the candidates in this election.

"This time around, there are many different candidates, so it's normal that it's going to take longer than the last time," he told the Associated Press.

One of the main presentations Monday came from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican No. 2 who heads the commission of cardinals overseeing the scandal-marred Vatican bank. He outlined the bank's activities and the Holy See's efforts to clean up its reputation in international financial circles, Lombardi said.

The Holy See's finances, and particularly the work of the Vatican bank have been under the spotlight during these pre-conclave meetings as cardinals seek to investigate allegations of corruption in the Vatican administration and get to the bottom of the bank's long history of scandal and secrecy.

There's no clear front-runner for a job most cardinals say they would never want, but a handful of names are circulating as top candidates to lead the 1.2 billion-strong church at a critical time in its history.

Among others, the pastoral camp seems to be focusing on two Americans, Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and O'Malley. Neither has Vatican experience, though Dolan served in the 1990s as rector of the Pontifical North American College, the US seminary up the hill from the Vatican. He has admitted his Italian isn't strong — perhaps a handicap for a job in which the lingua franca of day-to-day administration is Italian and the pope's other role as bishop of Rome. If the leading names fail to reach the 77 votes required for victory in the first few rounds of balloting, any number of surprise names could come to the fore as alternatives.

While the cardinals are widely expected to cast the first ballot Tuesday afternoon, technically they don't have to. In conclaves past, the cardinals have always voted on the first day.

The first puffs of smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney should emerge sometime around 8 p.m. Black smoke from the burned ballot papers means no pope. White smoke means the 266th pope has been chosen.