On Kevin Knight's NewAdvent.org, there is a list of past popes. One of the google ads currently links to a Foreign Policy article called "Job Description for the Next Pope" by a Professor Appelby of Notre Dame. It's an odd piece, repeatedly claiming that the next pope needs to pay more attention to political, economic, and scientific leaders. Now elites have their place in the world, and I'm not one to deny their need for religious conversion and ministry. But this author's insistence on the importance of technocrats in papal policy strikes me as very odd. Really, technocrats get enough attention in the press and corporate worlds; it may be a good mission for a religious order, but the papacy has a larger body of people to whom he must minister.
As I remember, the Jesuits used to have a special ministry for the elite, but their decline and their order's insistence on getting back to what St. Ignatius Loyola originally intended has seriously dampened their effectiveness. I have some impression that Opus Dei is trying to fill the Jesuits' niche, but that is perhaps because of Rev. McCloskey's many high-profile converts.
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