The death of Pope John Paul II in the year 2000 will be followed by a six day conclave as the college of cardinals sifts through the dozen most papabile candidates to succeed him. The winner will be Silvano Piovanelli of Florence, a smiling, rotund man who will select the name Benedict XVI and will immediately call a halt to the special privileges allotted right wing groups like Opus Dei and the Neo-Catechumenate. He will inaugurate a new consultation process involving the world synod of bishops, which will be given its own financing system, secretariat and full control of its own agenda. The synod will be required to meet every four years, working toward a General Council of the Church in 2005 and toward the first fully Ecumenical Council in the last 1,000 years, possibly by 2015, to be held in Manila. This latter gathering will involve full participation by Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Episcopalians and other believers in Christ.

Thus did Australian Fr. Paul Collins bravely predict a future that clearly represented his fondest dreams and hopes. The councils, he said, would wrestle with four major issues: world population control, the degradation of the earth's environment, the relationship of Islam to other faiths, and the reform of Catholic church structures. On structural reform, Collins, who is currently under investigation in Rome, said, "The Roman Catholic priesthood as we know it is vanishing before our eyes" while gradually emerging is "a priesthood of others." The notion is taking hold, he said, that certain persons in each church community represent and mediate the saving power of Jesus, and "this power is sacramental," whether these persons are ordained, consecrated, designated for ministry, or whatever. The ordination of women will be a big issue in the third millennium, he predicted, but he added in a rare moment of caution that no one, regardless of age, race or gender, is totally immune to the virus of clericalism.

Reese: Inside the Vatican
The internal workings of the Vatican are like no other institution, said Jesuit political scientist Thomas Reese: byzantine bureaucracy, obsessive secrecy, and an entrenched old guard of 40 top officials, almost all clergy, whose average age is 71. And John Paul II's excessive centralization has made matters much worse. The recent Vatican rejection of the translations of the psalter and lectionary approved by the U.S. bishops shows why decentralization is desperately needed. Bishops need more autonomy, since it is they who must guide efforts to enculturate the Gospel in the varied cultural settings of a global Church. Will the next pope be different? Reese says John Paul II's changes in the rules for the next papal election are not a good sign: they allow the cardinals to choose a pope with just 51 percent of the votes, without ever reaching consensus.