Latin America is home to the largest percentage of Catholics in the world, so it has long been an irritant to its Catholics that no Latin American cardinal has ever truly been considered "papabile" — a potential pope. 

Prior to the last conclave, Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga was a possibility. At that time the cardinal was tremendously popular and considered a "rising star," and though he was still the longest of long shots according to those in the know, his name was at least mentioned. Since then, the Honduran cardinal has lost much of his credibility with rank and file Catholics after he sided with members of the Honduran military who pulled a coup to force president Manuel Zelaya out of office in 2009. 

By 2012, the only Latin American cardinal who was being mentioned as papabile at all was Mexico City's Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, an ordinary renowned for his courage in denouncing the ruthless drug traffickers and cartels operating in Mexico. But in its oddly timed article Business Insider gave him very long odds indeed, and cited the primary impediment to Rivera Carrera's election a "hesitation about his strong social justice message."

One of the two Brazilian prelates mentioned as papabili when news of Pope Benedict XVI's resignation broke today, Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz from Brasilia, has also been "tarred" by the social justice brush.

And therein lies the greatest difficulty in getting a Latin American cardinal elected to the papacy. Latin American social justice bona fides — the preferential respect due to the poor that has been an integral part of Catholic social ethics since Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum was promulgated in 1891 — scares the bejesus out of the non-Latin American powers that be. 

For this we have late Pope John Paul II to thank. 

JPII, who may well be the contemporary pope most beloved by Latin American Catholics, was, ironically enough, terribly jaundiced in his treatment of social justice issues when it came to Latin America. He is rightfully remembered as the pope who first set foot in communist Cuba and who didn't mince words with that leftist authoritarian government. But he averted his eyes and forsook courageous words when the repressive authoritarian leaders in Latin America were members of the right-wing (the oligarchy of El Salvador, for example, and the genocidal regimes of Guatemala, both of them in the 1970s and '80s).  

But despite the assassinations of Archbishop Óscar Romero (in San Salvador, 1980) and Bishop Juan José Gerardi (in Guatemala City in 1998) and what they indicated about the moral bankruptcy of the regimes he hadn't denounced, JPII accused many Latin American priests, theologians and catechists of espousing liberation theology in their desire to secure some level of social justice for ordinary citizens. And that accusation seemed to stick. It is both the genesis of the stereotype and Catholic establishment's fear we hear when Latin American papabili are mentioned.

It is also outdated.

Because at the same time as JPII was calling out prelates for "liberation theology," he was seeding Latin America with "neo conservative" movements — institutes, orders and personal prelatures whose impetus turned away from social justice to more personal expressions of faith. 

Not that these "neo con" examples have shed a favorable light on Latin American Catholicism. A couple of them have, in fact, been publicly hoist on their own resolutely un-social-justice petards, and been slapped with lawsuits alleging abuse of labor laws (Opus Dei) and dubious fundraising tactics (Legionaries of Christ), among other, better known uglinesses. Still, a Latin American prelate with fairly conservative credentials like São Paulo's Cardinal Odilo Scherer or Argentina's veteran Vatican diplomat Leonard Sandri will probably fare better with Vatican "popemakers" than those with the social justice credentials I wish we'd see.

But, it is all, most likely, immaterial.

Despite Latin America's status as the most Catholic region of the world, despite the way people from Mexico City through Buenos Aires would rejoice and revel in one of our own having made it to the heights of religious power, I don't believe B16 will be replaced by a Latin American pope. 

If the cardinal electors are going to make history electing a non-European pope, it will not be a Latin American, an Australian, a North American nor an Asian. It will be an African cardinal. 

African Catholicism is young and growing in a way it isn't elsewhere in the world. And the African prelates — among the most conservative Catholics to be found on the globe — have been in serious contention since the conclave that saw B16 elected. 

Last time around Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze was the frontrunner, but at 80 he's a little long in the tooth to be selected (though he keeps showing up in the papabili list). The money, as it were, this early in the process is on Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, with oddsmakers naming him the 3/1 favorite.

The Latin Americans? Well, the oddsmakers aren't even ranking them.