VATICAN CITY -- It had all the hallmarks of a political campaign: The candidate was shaking hands in the adoring crowd, a television crew and security detail covering his every move.
Except that this is no regular election, and the people don't have a vote.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, archbishop of Genoa and a papal contender, was working the crowd outside St. Peter's Basilica yesterday, greeting some of the hundreds of thousands lined up to pay their final respects to Pope John Paul II.
''It's an extraordinary day," he said, a camera crew taping every word. ''Full of memories of our pope. The pope did so much for the world."
Bertone, a former high-ranking Vatican official who took up his Genoa post in 2002, shook hands, embraced a backpacker and gave words of encouragement to the faithful as they waited for hours to file past John Paul's body.
Bertone wasn't exactly hustling for votes, since pilgrims don't vote in a conclave. But he was raising his profile -- one of the more subtle ways cardinals can influence a papal election since overt campaigning is frowned upon.
Even before John Paul died, cardinals were loath to discuss his succession publicly, ducking the question or, if pressed, sticking to generalities about the qualities that would make a good pope -- even though they weren't shy about going before TV cameras.
''That is up to heaven, what God is thinking about that, and then up to the cardinals. I have no comment," Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium, himself a papal contender, told reporters yesterday when asked to speculate on the winner of this month's conclave.
Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, went so far as to say he hadn't even discussed the issue with any of his colleagues.
''I have not had one discussion nor heard anyone that has," he told CNN, stressing that cardinals were instead talking about the problems facing the church.
A cardinal will often say that any cardinal other than himself would make a fine pope.
''I have always said my shoulders were too small for such a heavy weight," Cardinal Geraldo Majella Agnelo of Brazil told Italian state radio.
Nevertheless, papal politicking is going on, and even the slightest gesture can be loaded with meaning.
It seemed significant, for example, that some of the top ''papabili," or cardinals considered to have the qualities of being a pope, attended a recent meeting in New York on improving relations with Jews.
John Paul made reaching out to other religions a hallmark of his papacy. With tensions between faiths on the rise worldwide, a cardinal who has been active in interfaith relations might be viewed positively behind the secret doors of the Sistine Chapel.
