07:02 AM MST on Monday, April 4, 2005

By JEFFREY WEISS / The Dallas Morning News

The first question everyone has about the future of the Catholic Church is: Who will be the next pope?

The second may be: How will the Catholic Church change under its new leader?

No matter who succeeds John Paul II, the Catholic Church around the world will continue to become more brown and black and Hispanic and Asian and less Western and European. Contact, conflicts and maybe even cooperation will increase between Catholicism and other world faiths, particularly Islam.

Some American Catholics will continue to push for greater power and influence among the laity – and others will push back. Divisions within American Catholicism over issues including contraception, cohabitation, the death penalty, homosexuality and the role of women won't go away. The aftershocks of the pedophile priest scandal will continue.

How much of a difference can a pope make on any of that?

Maybe a lot, maybe not so much.

"The way the church looks in 100 years has less to do with who the next three popes are and more to do with who the next 3 billion Catholics are," said Christopher Bellitto, a history professor at Kean University in New Jersey and author of several books about Catholic history.

On the other hand: "Leadership matters," said Jim Post, a management professor at Boston University and the president of Voice of the Faithful, a national Catholic laity organization created as a result of the clergy sex-abuse scandal. "And the leadership of a global institution like the Catholic Church matters to people all around the world."

Some institutional change is inevitable, because much more than a pope will be new. Just as an American president has his Cabinet, a pope has his close advisers and department heads. The new pope will replace many of those people currently in the Vatican.

A lot depends, of course, on whom the cardinals choose in their conclave. CNN offered a three-person short list of potential popes over the weekend, an act either of incredible prescience or breathtaking hubris. Most lists of likely candidates contain at least a dozen names. And the shocking selection of Karol Wojtyla in 1978 – a cardinal on no public short list – should warn against overconfidence.

Some other "common wisdom" amid the speculation butts up against history and common sense.

Will the cardinals choose an older man as a calming, short-time "transitional pope?"

Pope John XXIII served only five years (1958-1963), but he called together the revolutionary Second Vatican Council. And even if the current cardinals do pick an older man, that's hardly a guarantee of a short papacy in the age of new geriatric medicine.

Since John Paul II chose all but three of the cardinals, won't they pick someone so much like him that change is unlikely?

Well, nobody but Peter served longer than Pius IX (1846-1878), a pope well-known for keeping the modern world out of the Vatican. He was followed by Leo XIII (1878-1903), who opened the Vatican archives for the first time and championed a social justice movement, Mr. Bellitto said.

How much any new pope will affect the average Catholic is up for debate. Catholics and non-Catholics speculate about the changes they expect – and the changes they hope for or fear.

Margy Veatch, 64, has lived through five popes. She was at St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas for Sunday Mass. Her particular hope is that the church will allow women to play a greater role.

She said she'd never forget the day a friend, who was a nun, gave her a pin to wear that said "Ordain Women Now."

"I don't know if that kind of change can happen in five years," she said.

Whether or not doctrine will change, some Catholics say that a shift of priorities is inevitable.

"For sure, the new pope will speak Spanish. Start there, because the majority of Catholics in the world are Spanish-speaking," said Dr. Arturo Bañuelas, director of the Tepeyac Institute in El Paso, Texas and a member of the national board of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians.

"For sure, I think the new pope will have a very strong emphasis on the poor as a priority of the mission of the church in the world," he said. "And whereas [John Paul] made a major, significant contribution to the world with regards to the Cold War, the new pope will deal with issues of globalization and, in particular, how that affects the Americas."

For Mr. Post, of the Voice of the Faithful, the next pope might loosen what under John Paul had become increasingly centralized authority.

"I suspect around the world, we will see national meetings of bishops to discuss their special needs and think about how to present them to the pope," he said.

And just from a management perspective, Pope John Paul emphasis on pastoral work left a gap in administration, Mr. Post said. For instance, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican has a computer system that sometimes balks at handling e-mail.

His organization is focused on is the sexual abuse scandal – an issue that some people criticized John Paul for not addressing more decisively.

"Our little boat is sailing in the wake of this great institutional change," Mr. Post said. "I'm sure there will be some waves that will bounce us around."

Catholics aren't the only ones watching and worrying about the future of the papacy and the Catholic Church. Jeff Bingham chairs the theological studies department at the evangelical Dallas Theological Seminary.

Some conservative Protestants are anxious that the doctrinally conservative John Paul might be succeeded by someone less conservative, he said.

"The concern exists that a more liberal pope might be installed," he said.

And if a more liberal pope has anything like the charisma of John Paul, his words might influence even those in other Christian traditions, Mr. Bingham said.

"Protestants no less than anybody else – evangelicals no less than anybody else – are subject to being swayed by charismatic, intelligent, articulate leaders," he said.

Timothy Muldoon is the incoming director of the "Church in the 21st Century" program at Boston College, a private Catholic school.

Willy-nilly, the next pope will be forced to deal with changes that will be very different in different parts of the world, he said.

China could become the nation with the largest Catholic population, he said. A state-approved "Catholic" church works with the heretofore underground church linked to the Vatican.

Like some others, Mr. Muldoon hopes the new pope allows more local autonomy. Some Asian churches, for instance, have been required to send their local liturgy to Rome for approval, even though nobody in the Vatican can read the language.

John Paul demonstrated both the power and the limits of his office. For all his gifts of charisma and communication, he was unable to halt the war with Iraq, unable to get many Americans who admired him personally to follow some of his key teachings, and unable to end centuries of theological differences between his church and the Orthodox and Protestant churches.

"Even such a man could not solve all of the world's problems," Mr. Muldoon said. "We can't live under the illusion that the next pope will solve all of the world's problems, either."

Staff writer Stella M. Chávez contributed to this report.