Let's hope the new Pope will be different

While all the mournful praise of the late Pope clogs the ether, let's hope the new Pope will allow the Catholic Church to catch up with modernity. The late Pope was commendably anti-Communist and anti-capitalist, and declared himself against the Iraq War. He was commendably much-traveled, to 130 countries. But he was also against condoms, against the ordaining of women, against abortion, against homosexuality ('an intrinsic evil'), against progessiveness, and stamped out Liberation Theology. He was a throwback like Bush, and after the church had appeared to start reforming itself, set it back hundreds of years (the way Bush is trying to turn the U.S. back to the era of the robber barons)--not least by consistently appointing conservative cardinals who were to the right of Attila the Hun. The Church itself is still ruled by Italians and Europeans, when most of its flock are in South America, Africa and Asia. We shall see if his legacy of right-wing cardinals will choose a progressive among their number--perhaps a black Pope from Africa--or continue a Papacy dead set against the modern world, leaving Catholicism as backwardly traditionalist and Middle-Aged as Islam.