What The New Job Specs Are

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"Not one comma will change in the doctrine." That is not the battle cry of some Vatican mossback but a matter-of-fact assessment by Andrea Riccardi, the well- connected founder of the Catholic social-justice group Comunità di Sant'Egidio. Among the major conclave topics, John Paul's conservative stance on faith-and-morals issues is least likely to be debated. That is unsurprising, since he made that stance clear in thousands of pages of explanation and appointed 113 of the electors. Says Catholic University's Ferme: "I don't think there is a shadow of a doubt among the Cardinals that there will not be woman priests or that the church must oppose abortion." No one better articulates such positions than Ratzinger, who as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been enforcing them for more than two decades.

What may be in play in the conclave, however, is some papabili's position that it is all right to discuss such changes (a practice John Paul and Ratzinger limited severely). Belgium's Danneels, for instance, has predicted that the church may someday want to revisit its role for women. That charms the liberal, priest-challenged West, although it may not ultimately help his papal chances. Others may hope to project a pastoral openness or allow their priests a certain leeway while refusing to cross certain lines. "Flexibility keeps coming up" in Cardinals' statements, says Gibson. "Not compromise but flexibility." Finally, there are church positions that remain somewhat undefined, and the Cardinals' stance on such questions as how to apply the idea of the soul to biotechnological advances may help sway their colleagues.

Interfaith

John Paul's approaches to Islam were not quite so historic as those to Judaism, but his first-ever papal visit to a mosque, in 2001, and his apology for the excesses of the Crusades indicated his understanding that Islam is both one of Catholicism's great competitors and, in many places, its next-door neighbor. Sept. 11 was perhaps the first great issue that the Pope, by then physically weakened, addressed in a less than aggressive manner, and the Vatican sense of urgency regarding Islam's various faces, although as keen as the rest of the world's, remains papally undefined. "It's the 800-lb. gorilla sitting in the room," says a well-placed Vatican source. "It's huge and expanding, has violent elements, so what will be the church's modus operandi confronting this dynamic?"