Some papal predicting ...

from the UK Catholic Herald ...

[...] Do not believe anything along the lines of a conservative/progressive clash. From the point of view of the secular world, all the cardinals are conservative: there is just not going to be a pope who changes Catholic doctrine .... the change in question will not be doctrinal but one of personnel and management style. It seems that as of now Cardinal Scola, the archbishop of Milan, is the favoured candidate of the reformers, and Cardinal Scherer, the Brazilian, that of the “business as usual” crowd. The latter are so discredited that they know that one of their own cannot win, and hence they are trying to talk up Scherer as a liberal, so as to gain credibility for him with the media and with the small remnant of moderately liberal cardinals. In reality they favour him because they think they can control him ....

My feeling is that Cardinal Scherer has no real chance because too many cardinals are totally browned off with decades of mismanagement and see through the manoeuvre. If the election happens quickly (on the second day) it will probably be Scola, but if it drags on beyond Wednesday this is likely to mean that the alliance of the curialists and the progressive rump has succeeded in blocking him. This may mean that they resign themselves to a non-Italian representative of the same camp – Scola, as an Italian, knows where the bodies are buried – and in this case I foresee the election of Canadian Ouellet, the Hungarian Erdo or, as an outsider, Boston’s Cardinal O’Malley (Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and the Sri Lankan Cardinal Ranjith are too confrontational, I think, to have a serious chance). It they succeed in blocking these (they are all “Ratzingerian” in terms of theology”) then all bets are off. The longer the conclave lasts, the bigger the surprise is likely to be.