New pope?

The old pope, John Paul II, is dead. He was the one the Jewish world felt comfortable with. He was from Poland, like many of our grandfathers, fathers, great-grandfathers. He had the same sort of accent. It was easy to forget that he represented a religious authority that had persecuted and murdered Jews, that had given the Nazis tacit support and worse. He appeared so modern, a linguist, friendly. Though his religious beliefs were considered conservative.

The Vatican is rich, appears indestructible, though there are fewer young men willing and wanting to be priests, and there are fewer young women willing and wanting to be nuns. Catholic families are no longer of uncontrollable sizes. Birth control is the defacto norm, so parents of few children no longer encourage their best and brightest to "enter the church" to give them the status and "protexia" it once brought. When you have one son, you want him to reproduce.

There's an enormous gap between the "machers" in the Vatican and the simple Catholics. Will the new pope be able to bridge the gap, or will the church crack, crumble and collapse?