Apr 15, 2005  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

When the next pope emerges onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Square, after election by his fellow Roman Catholic cardinals in a conclave scheduled to start April 18, gay and lesbian Catholic groups in America hope he will be someone willing to listen to their plights as outcasts in their own religion.

Short of that, gay Catholics want a new Holy Father who will not continue John Paul II’s pattern of chastising them with hostile papal proclamations, said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the gay-affirming New Ways Ministry.

“John Paul II was really about teaching, to the extent that there was a stifling of discussion, so I think it’s really time now for a pope who will listen to the experiences of faith and church that people have,” DeBernardo said.

“We need a pope who has the same courage as the last to speak out on issues of justice, but also someone who will look at justice in the church, not just justice in the world,” he said.

But papal election watchers doubt the upcoming conclave will produce a new pontiff who strays radically from the church’s traditional teaching that homosexuality is unnatural and sinful.

“We have tradition in the church, which is changeable; but then there is doctrine — which includes topics like homosexuality — that to try to change would require an act of God,” said Patricia Dugan, a Philadelphia-based Catholic canon and civil lawyer.

A new pope may act more kindly toward gay Catholics, but the election of someone willing to soften the Vatican’s strict opposition to homosexuality is “probably not going to happen,” Dugan said.

Dugan also operates electapope.com, a Web site that teaches visitors about the papacy and allows them to “vote” for a new pope online.

But DeBernardo, who said the Catholic Church’s “progress on homosexuality will be evolutionary, not revolutionary,” still has faith that a leader who fully embraces Catholics of all sexual orientations can be elected.

“Yes, it would take an act of God, but that’s not impossible,” he said. “We are, after all, a church who believes God does miraculous things.”

One change gay groups and other human rights organizations hope the new pope makes is softening the Vatican opposition to the use of condoms, which help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS, particularly in Third World countries.

“I do think this is one area where we might see the Vatican back off from having their ambassador to the United Nations pushing so firmly against the use of condoms in Africa, because it’s an argument that’s very difficult to justify on moral grounds,” said Sam Sinnett, president of Dignity USA, a group for gay Catholics.

“Almost every single one of the cardinals who will be voting for a new pope was hand-picked by John Paul II, so you’re not going to see a 180-degree turn on anything,” Sinnett said. “But even shifting a few degrees is important.”

Perceived front-runners
Few people knew who Karol Wojtyla was when the last papal conclave began in 1978, and even fewer expected the Polish cardinal to be elected the first non-Italian pope in more than 450 years.

John Paul II’s election in 1978 “opened the floodgates” for who could become pope, making the already dubious task of speculating which cardinal will lead the church virtually impossible, said Salvador Miranda, a retired assistant director of the Florida International University Libraries who has long studied the College of Cardinals.

“It’s certainly more complicated because this is the first conclave after a non-Italian was elected, which means any one of the cardinals who enters the conclave will have a possibility of being elected,” Miranda said.

There is widespread consensus that none of the 11 U.S. cardinals will be chosen. Beyond that, “no one knows what is going on behind those closed doors,” Sinnett said.

A handful of names have been bandied about by Catholic scholars and the media as likely front-runners to the papacy, including the dean of the College of Cardinals who presided over much of John Paul II’s funeral, Joseph Ratzinger of Germany.

Ratzinger, 78, authored the Vatican’s “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons,” a July 2003 battle plan guiding Catholic politicians to oppose gay marriage and adoptions.

“There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any ...