Who will be the next pope?
Baptized Catholics numbered 757 million in 1978, the year John Paul II took office. Today that number has grown to 1.1 billion, with nearly 65 percent living in the developing world. “Catholicism has been moving south to Latin America, Africa, and Asia, where there’s a lot of growth, whereas Catholicism in western Europe has been in decline,” said Chester Gillis, chair of the Department of Theology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Given the 148 percent increase in the number of Catholics in Africa in the last 25 years, there has been some speculation that the choice of the next pontiff might reflect these changing demographics. Break With Tradition? Two hundred and seventeen popes have been Italian. By contrast, 17 have been French, 6 German, and 3 Spanish. England, Portugal, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Poland each yielded one pope. The African continent has produced three pontiffs. The last of them, Gelasius I, took office in 492. Electing a non-Italian pope would br
