Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — nicknamed “God’s Rottweiler” during his long tenure as the guardian of Catholic doctrine — is a polarizing influence on the pre-conclave negotiations, according to Italian media reports.

Opposition to the former head of the powerful Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is cantering around the scholarly Carlo Maria Martini, a former archbishop of Milan.

Both men are 78 and reportedly reluctant to assume the front-runner mantle, but experienced Vatican watchers agree they can garner between 40 and 50 votes each, short of the 77 needed for the requisite two-thirds majority.

Many of the 115 cardinals who will go into the secret conclave on Monday are undecided, however.

Any deadlock could see an unknown compromise candidate emerge, as happened when Krakow archbishop Karol Wojtyla came to the fore in the later ballots of the October 1978 conclave, which stretched to three days, to become John Paul II.

Compromise candidates being mentioned with increasing frequency in Rome are Portugal’s Jose da Cruz Policarpo, 69, and the Austrian Christoph Schonborn, a relative youngster at 60.

Both the Lisbon patriarch and Vienna archbishop are seen as bridge-builders with the Russian Orthodox Church, with which the Vatican’s relations have long been cool.

To help them make what the Vatican called “an enlightened choice,” the prelates meeting for their 10th congregation on Thursday heard a meditation from a Franciscan priest, Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the papal household.

“At the end of the meditation, the cardinals dedicated a period of time to silence and prayer,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.

He said the cardinals spent the morning involved in “an exchange of ideas on the situation of the Church and the world”, Vatican-speak for often intense debate on problems facing the Church and the ideal make-up of the man to lead it.—AFP