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Paolo Cardinal Bertoli, 70. In 1973, after nearly four years as prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, Bertoli abruptly resigned his position. Neither he nor the Vatican ever explained the event, but two reasons have been suggested: 1) Bertoli was miffed that a new secretary to the congregation, Archbishop Giuseppe Casoria, had been appointed without his assent; in the 1960s, then Monsignor Casoria was identified as the notorious inquisitor of Priest-Educator Ivan Illich. 2) Bertoli felt that too many politically opportune saints were being pushed through the canonization process for the 1975 Holy Year without sufficient investigation. Either explanation, or both, would attest to Bertoli's wide reputation as a man of strict principle who could give the papacy a decisiveness that conservatives, especially, believe it needs. Bertoli's earlier diplomatic career took him from Occupied Paris in World War II, to Latin America, to war-sundered Lebanon in 1975. He has no specific pastoral experience, but work with World War II refugees brought him close to the poor and the homeless.
Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, 68. Italians have enjoyed a 455-year monopoly on the papacy, but if the voting swings to a non-Italian, a probable choice will be Holland's Willebrands (pronounced Vill-eh-brants), a prelate who manages to keep one foot in his archdiocese of Utrecht and the other in Rome as president of the vital Secretariat for Christian Unity. An Amsterdam parish priest in the 1930s, a philosophy professor and seminary rector in the 1940s, Willebrands in 1948 became head of a Dutch church group promoting ecumenism. In 1960 Pope John appointed him to the new Christian Unity Secretariat under Ecumenical Pioneer Augustin Cardinal Bea. Inheriting Bea's mantle in 1969, Willebrands has forged new links with Eastern Orthodox churches, Anglicans, Lutherans and other Protestant churches. As Primate of Holland since 1975, he has eased — but not ended — bitter tensions between the progressive wing of the Dutch church and an angry, re-emergent conservative wing.
Eduardo Cardinal Pironio, 57. In conventional papal terms, Argentina's Pironio is too young for the job: if he reached Paul's age, he would still be ruling in 2001. But he is also a distinguished prelate of the burgeoning Third World and at the same time the son of Italian immigrants—the youngest of 22 children. Among the top five candidates, he is easily the most accomplished theologian, former dean of the Theological Faculty at the Pontifical Catholic Argentine University and a peritus (theological expert) at Vatican II. He is sympathetic to the social activists who espouse liberation theology, and as secretary-general of the Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM) from 1967 to 1972, encouraged them as members of his staff. After becoming president of CELAM in 1972, he responded to Vatican worries about the increasingly Marxist drift of the theology and allowed a conservative secretary-general to cull the liberationists. Nevertheless, as Bishop of Mar del Plata, Pironio spoke out so sharply against right-wing terrorism that his life was threatened. In 1975 Pope Paul called Pironio to Rome, where he now heads the Congregation for the Religious. He could win the needed votes if the conclave wants a Third World man with Roman credentials.