Speculation mounts over who will inherit Pope Paul's tiara
We earnestly exhort the electors that they should not let themselves be guided by friendship or aversion, or be influenced by favor or respect toward anyone, or be forced by the intervention of persons in authority or by pressure groups...
—Pope Paul VI, in his 1975 decree on papal elections
Notwithstanding Paul's earnest exhortation, his funeral was hardly over before outside pressure groups began agitating over the sort of man who should become the next Pope. The ultraconservative religious movement Civilta Cristiana plastered Rome with posters...