So, the Pope is retiring.

When John Paul II died in 2005, I was shaken. I became a Catholic during his papacy. I'm not a cradle Catholic; I joined in September, 1992.(This sort of thing usually happens at the Easter vigil, but the approach of my date with open heart surgery sped that process up.) When John Paul died, he'd been the only Pope I'd known during my life as a Catholic. In my own personal pantheon of faith heroes, he's a near-hero. The man stared down the mighty Soviet empire with not so much as a bullet at his disposal, and that's certainly to be respected, and he consistently stood for the dignity and value of the individual. But, still, a near-hero. He was a little autocratic for my taste.

During his last few years he'd been ill and he'd suffered terribly. He wouldn't retire, though. He saw suffering as something we offer to God. On an individual level I'm OK with that; the God I believe in can redeem anything. Still, I wonder: did it occur to him or to those around him that, if you're suffering to the extent that he was, does the Church not suffer from a lack of leadership at the top? But, then, the Roman Catholic Church has really never considered what to do in the event of the abdication of the Pope. The last time it happened was in 1415. We do think in centuries; we just recently got around to apologizing for Galileo.

We're not the only church that has confronted the issue of what to do about an incapacitated person at the top. Another denomination that I used to belong to had an individual at the head of the church, and who occupied that spot for about nine years. For probably three or four of those years I'm not at all sure that he even knew he was the head of that church; health issues and age had caught up to him. That church, like mine, hasn't really considered the possibility that it may be necessary for the head to step down. That church, like mine, has no institutional mechanism for telling the one in charge that he should step down.

Benedict XVI made that decision on his own. I'm glad he had the courage to do that. I do have a hunch he's not going to ride off into the sunset. He has been a top-notch intellectual, and he has always loved writing.

Who will succeed? There's little point in speculating. A saying in Rome: "He who comes here as Pope goes home as a Cardinal." Just a couple of notes. One, the Italian Curia has regarded the last 35 years, in which the Pope was not Italian, as a kind of aberration. They'd love to see another Italian Pope. However, the Church is growing by leaps and bounds in Africa, and an African Pope is conceivable. But, if I was betting on a dark horse, I'd point out that there are about a billion Catholics worldwide. About half of that total in in Latin America. We have, indeed, become a Latin American church. I'd bet on one of the Cardinals from Latin America.

Does a Cardinal from the U.S. have a shot? Maybe Dolan, from New York, but that's an outside possibility.

Thanks for hanging out!