VATICAN CITY: Behind the thick oak doors of the Sistine Chapel, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church will do more than choose the next pope. Their deliberations – which begin today – also serve as a critical judgment on what the faith needs most, as pressures close in from all directions.

The cardinals often mentioned as possible papal successors have already made their voices heard – addressing the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics and their fellow red-hatted “princes of the church” expected at the first conclave in more than a quarter century.

Every speech, text and public gesture has been pored over in recent years for clues about each man’s style and priorities.

“They must pick the 21st century pope and address 21st century questions,” said the Rev. Giovanni D’Ercole, a commentator on Vatican affairs. “It may not be easy.”

At one end is the blunt tone of the German theologian-scholar Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who has taken on everything from rock music to Muslim Turkey’s European Union bid in his role as the Vatican’s chief watchdog for doctrine. He may be the only papal prospect with an on-line fan club.

A more nuanced path is followed by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who has reached out to Islamic leaders but has also encouraged Jewish settlement of the Holy Land. The Latin Americans considered “papabile” – the Italian word for papal candidates – speak forcefully about confronting poverty.

But none have signalled any support for major policy reversals, such as easing opposition to contraception or dropping priestly celibacy. This is a fact that pro-reform Catholics are slowly absorbing: priests do not rise to cardinal by challenging the system.

The conclave, with 115 cardinals under the age of 80 and eligible to vote, must juggle multiple demands and make some hard choices. With no clear papal favourite, the outcome will likely be about compromise and what new priorities attract the biggest following.

There’s geography: do they note that nearly half the world’s Catholics are in Latin America and select a “new world” pope for the first time? Or reward the vibrant African Catholics with a pope of their own? Or choose a leader who could reinvigorate a fading flock in Europe?

There are internal dilemmas, including how to reverse the priest and nun shortage in the West, stabilise the money-losing Vatican finances and restore credibility following crippling clergy sex scandals in the United States and elsewhere. The cardinals must also ask who among them can handle the important dialogue with Islam and other contemporary moral quandaries like cloning and biotechnology?

Rising above it all may be the powerful legacy of the charismatic Pope John Paul II. The cardinals heard the cries from pilgrims last week at the pontiff's funeral: “Santo subito!” – meaning make him a saint immediately.

“The church cannot go backwards,” said Fernando Segovia, a theologian at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. “The new pope must be someone who also can relate to the people as a pastor and leader. This could be the biggest force in the conclave. If the cardinals ignore this momentum, the church could suffer a serious blow.”

The process begins today with a special Mass. Then comes the conclave. The cardinals are cut off from the rest of the world until they reach a decision.

After taking their oath today, cardinals will decide whether they will take a first vote then or wait until Tuesday. Then it is four rounds a day until two-thirds of the cardinals – at least 77 – back one name. If no pope emerges late in the second week, a simple majority can vote to change the rules so that a winner can be elected by a majority – at least 58.

It took eight ballots over three days in October 1978 to elect the first Polish pope. The prelate who appears this time in the central window of St Peter’s Basilica will be caught in the reflected glare of Pope John Paul’s history-making papacy.

His every move will – at least initially – be measured against Pope John Paul. As one placard in St Peters Square read last week: “What would JP-Two do?”

But the late Pope’s decisive moments came during the Cold War. His successor inherits a very different world.

The world’s richest nations “must search an alternative global programme where all have the possibility to integrate themselves and no one remains outside,” said Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes in 2002. “There will be no future if things go on as they now stand.”

A book of 110 newspaper columns written by Hummes – ranging from land reform to drug abuse to human cloning – was released last week in Brazil to capitalise on the buzz about him as a contender.

The book, Dialogue with the City, includes harsh denunciations of “greedy and powerful” landholders who police believe ordered the February slaying of American nun Dorothy Stang, a longtime defender of land rights for poor settlers in the Amazon rain forest.

Hummes, 70, also holds the line on Catholic teachings regarding abortion and human cloning, which he called a “serious moral crime.”

In September 2003, Hummes told a UN meeting on AIDS that it is “one of the major tragedies of our time”, but must be addressed by education and sexual abstinence rather than condoms.

Another Latin American cardinal, 62-year-old Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, has also lashed out at inequalities.

“We are not moving simply towards a globalisation of markets... but we are moving toward the globalisation of poverty,” he said in 2003.

But some of his sharpest – and most conflicted – comments have come following the priest sex abuse scandals in the United States. In a 2002 Vatican news conference, he called paedophilia an “illness” that cannot be tolerated in the priesthood. In a later interview with the Italian magazine 30 Giorni, or 30 Days, he decried the judicial “witch hunts” against US clergy.

“(It) reminds me of the time of Nero, Diocletian and, more recently, of Stalin and Hitler,” he was quoted as saying.

Italian Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, 71, told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in 1997 that “very grave personal and social risks” stem from giving gay and lesbian couples full civil rights such as marriage and adoption.

Another Italian contender, 63-year-old Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, carries a similar conservative outlook. On calls for women priests, Scola told reporters in 1997: “The church does not have the power to modify the practice, uninterrupted for 2,000 years, of calling only men.”

Cardinal Francis Arinze, 72, a Vatican-based Nigerian, also taken a hard stance against liberal pressures on the church led by American Catholics.

The family is “mocked” by homosexuality and calls to recognise gay marriages, he told a Georgetown University audience in May 2003. Last year, Arinze suggested Catholic politicians supporting abortion are “not fit” to receive Communion. He made the same judgment for militant members of Rainbow Sash, a Roman Catholic gay rights group that has tried to provoke confrontations with clergy.

Arinze, however, stands out as a leading voice for better Christian-Muslim dialogue – a central part of his inter-faith work at the Vatican since the 1980s.

“It matters very much, not only to Islam and Christianity, but also to the world, how the followers of these two religions relate to one another and how they envisage these relationships at this turning point in history,” Arinze told the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding in Washington.

Schoenborn, of Austria, could encounter more scepticism from Islamic leaders.

In a speech in March at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he said Christians must support a Jewish presence in the Holy Land as part of biblical prophecy.

“Only once in human history did God take a country as an inheritance and give it to His chosen people,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Schoenborn as saying.

Schoenborn added that “we are all longing” for a solution to end Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But he has been less clear on hot topics in Europe, including whether to accept Turkey as a full EU member.

Ratzinger, however, has been an unwavering defender of Europe’s Christian essence.

“Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe,” he told the French magazine Le Figaro last year. Ratzinger – as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal overseer since 1981 – offers the broadest range of writings and comments of any of the possible papal successors.

In 1986, he scorned rock music as a “vehicle of anti-religion.” Last year, he told American bishops that it was appropriate to deny Communion to those who support such “manifest grave sin” as abortion and euthanasia.

In a book released on Wednesday, Values in a Time of Upheavals, Ratzinger dismissed demands for European “multi-culturalism” as a “fleeing from what is one’s own.” He also wrote that “marriage and family are essential for European identity.”

Yet in another book, Salt of the Earth in 1997, Ratzinger showed flashes of a pastoral side and sensitivity for the modernising reforms of the Second Vatican Council from 1962-65, when he was considered a leader among forward-thinking theologians.

“Christianity must rise again like the mustard seed, in insignificantly small groups whose members intensively live in combat with what is evil in the world while demonstrating what is good,” wrote Ratzinger, who turned 78 on Saturday. “They are the salt of the earth, the vessels of the faith.”