Pope installing 30 cardinals

VATICAN CITY — If you're looking for the next pope, look no further than St. Peter's Square today.

That's when the ailing Pope John Paul II installs 30 new cardinals in a pomp-filled ceremony attended by most of the College of Cardinals, the body that has been electing popes, largely from within, since the 11th century.

Many are calling today's ceremony a dress rehearsal for a conclave, although figuring out who John Paul's successor will be is no easy task.

With his new nominations, John Paul has expanded the College of Cardinals to a record size that makes a future election wide open and a real guessing game, Vatican watchers and cardinals themselves agree.

"It's funny, nobody is whispering, 'He'll be the next man,' " said Cardinal Lubomyr Husar of Ukraine after attending a series of meetings of all cardinals last week, during John Paul's 25th anniversary celebrations.

"Nobody has arisen as a personality," he said an interview with The Associated Press.

When Pope Paul VI was elected 40 years ago, 80 cardinals took part in the conclave. With the new nominations, there are 135 cardinals under the age of 80 who are eligible to vote for a new pope.

In fact, the body has gotten so large that cardinals wore tags with their names and home dioceses during last week's meetings at the Vatican.

When John Paul was elected in 1978, the Polish cardinal broke a 455-year-long Italian monopoly on the papacy. One of the dominant questions now is whether the cardinals will return the papacy to the Italians or look for another nationality, perhaps someone from the developing world.

The church can choose someone to be pope who is not a cardinal, but that hasn't happened in modern times.

Even before he received his red hat, Italy's Angelo Scola was dubbed "papabile," — a potential successor to the pope. He's the patriarch of Venice, a post that produced three 20th-century popes.

Italian pundits speak of blocs being formed pitting the Italian cardinals against the Latin Americans. Some also speak of the possibility of an African pope, with speculation centering on a Vatican-based Nigerian, Cardinal Francis Arinze.

Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, says that with the Catholic church a universal church, "the field is open in that sense" — but he does exclude one nationality: Americans.

"An office like the papacy needs to be free. And to some extent, even the appearance of being in some sense captured by, as we say now, the world's only superpower, would not be helpful to the mission of the church," George said.