Kim Lawton is here with special reports, and so are several guests.
Colleen Carroll Campbell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and a former speechwriter for President Bush. She is the author of THE NEW FAITHFUL: WHY YOUNG ADULTS ARE EMBRACING CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY.
Also Chester Gillis, a professor and chair of the department of theology at Georgetown University in Washington -- the author of ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN AMERICA.
David Gibson is a religion journalist and author of THE COMING CATHOLIC CHURCH. He joins us from New York.
And John-Peter Pham is a former Vatican aide and diplomat, a faculty member at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is the author of HEIRS OF THE FISHERMAN: BEHIND THE SCENES OF PAPAL DEATH AND SUCCESSION.
Welcome to you all. Let me ask you, first of all, in a few words, would you summarize what you think the most important considerations should be for the cardinals who will elect the next pope? Colleen?
COLLEEN CARROLL CAMPBELL (Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center): Well, I think Pope John Paul was a visionary, and he left us with a great body of philosophical and theological works that we're only beginning to understand the implications of. So I think he laid out the vision, and the task for the next pope will be to implement it fully.
DAVID GIBSON (Author, THE COMING CATHOLIC CHURCH): Well, the pope -- John Paul II -- has left such a legacy and such a long shadow, I think the cardinals need to show they're going to go in a different direction, not just in substance, but maybe in form by choosing a new pope from the developing world -- perhaps Latin America -- just to show people, to make a dramatic statement that they're going in a new direction, rather than just trying to do "John Paul III."
