• What's next: Can Pope Benedict really quietly retire?

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    German Catholic News Agency KNA via Getty Images file

    Joseph Ratzinger gives a theology lecture at the University of Freising in Germany during the summer semester in 1955.

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    By M. Alex Johnson, staff writer, NBC News

    Published at 5:21 p.m. ET: Pope Benedict XVI always said he was first and foremost a teacher and a writer, and in his retirement he intends to pick up where he left off before he was called to church leadership, the Vatican said Monday. But is that a realistic expectation for a man universally known for his restless and questing intellect?


    Roman Catholic Church law doesn't extensively account for a pope's abdication — among the hundreds of thousands of words in the Code of Canon Law, there's just one sentence: "If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone."

    And since that hasn't happened in almost 600 years (or in more than 700 years depending on how you interpret history), there's no precedent for just what role, if any, a living ex-pope plays in the church.

    What little is known came in a brief statement Monday from the Vatican, which said that when he leaves the papacy on Feb. 28, Benedict would move to Castel Gandolfo, the pope's summer residence in the Alban Hills a few miles south of Rome. Eventually, he will take up residence in a former cloistered monastery in the Vatican. What he will do there hasn't been clarified, but when he was elected pope in 2005, he said the job had interrupted his plans to retire and spend the rest of his life writing "in peace and quiet."

    Beyond its obvious authority, the papacy is unique within the Catholic Church because of its temporal status — it doesn't come with the equivalent of tenure. So the moment he steps aside, Benedict will return to being just Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, with no special authority or official prerogatives. 

    "This is all very new territory," said Donald S. Prudlo, a historian at Jacksonville State University in Alabama and scholar of theology and church history at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College in Front Royal, Va. "No set of guidelines exist for an ex-pope, even including where he should live, what he should be called and what liturgical role he would play."

    It's not even certain that Benedict will resume being an active cardinal — that would be up to the new pope. Prudlo told NBC News he thought it was "unlikely," saying he expected Benedict would want almost no public visibility in his declining years.

    Even if Benedict, 85, does resume life as Cardinal Ratzinger, he's beyond the cutoff age of 80 to be eligible to vote, meaning he'll be locked out of the room when the College of Cardinals elects his successor as the leader of more than 1.2 billion Roman Catholics around the world.

    But that doesn't mean he won't have influence should he choose to exercise it, and that could be tricky for his successor, said John Thavis, Rome bureau chief of Catholic News Service.


    "The church has not really had a situation of two popes in many centuries," Thavis told NBC News from Vatican City. 

    One reason is that the church has historically discouraged papal abdication out of concern about divided loyalties. Benedict's predecessor and mentor, John Paul II, declared that "there cannot be an 'emeritus pope.'"

    "It is going to be hard for people to forget that Pope Benedict is still alive and he is still perhaps writing, still perhaps expressing himself," Thavis said. "I think it's going to fall to his successor to find a way to utilize this kind of expertise perhaps in a way that does not create new difficulties for the church."

    But George Weigel, a Catholic theologian at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a nonprofit religious research foundation, said Benedict "understands there is not room in the church for two popes."

    "He will be very discreet about even writing new books," Weigel told NBC News.

    Prudlo also predicted a smooth transition — perhaps the most orderly in centuries — because Benedict will be there to give the new pope the lay of the land.

    "A new pope is often left flummoxed by the ins and outs of the office, usually taking years sometimes to gain a foothold," Prudlo said. "Having a 'senior pope,' for lack of a better word, would prove invaluable to easing into the throne of Peter."

    Tracy Connor of NBC News contributed to this report.

    Related:

    Now that Pope Benedict has stepped down, it's unclear who will replace him or even how Pope Benedict will be addressed in the wake of his departure. New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan is the only American so far being considered to possibly replace Benedict. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.

     

  • Pope Benedict XVI, citing deteriorating strength, will step aside Feb. 28

    Mentioning no specific ailment other than 'advanced age,' Pope Benedict's parting came as a shocking announcement for many – except for the Pope's brother, who said he knew Benedict had been thinking about stepping down for months. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    By Claudio Lavanga, Erin McClam and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

    Updated at 2:57 p.m. ET: Pope Benedict XVI shocked Catholics around the world Monday by saying that he no longer had the mental or physical strength to carry out his job and would become the first pope since the Middle Ages to give up the title.

    The pope, speaking in Latin, informed a small gathering of cardinals at the Vatican of his decision. The abdication will take effect on Feb. 28, and cardinals could gather as early as March to elect a successor.

    Benedict, 85, said later in a statement that the papacy required “strength of mind and body,” and that both had deteriorated in recent months. He said that he had made the decision “after having repeatedly examined my conscience before God.”

    The abdication closes an eight-year pontificate widely recognized as deeply conservative. The church also spent much of Benedict’s term grappling with sexual abuse scandals.

    The pope’s decision shot quickly through the dioceses of the world, and some of the 1.2 billion faithful — from laity to the very cardinals who were in the room — expressed profound surprise.

    “I’m as startled as the rest of you and as anxious to find out exactly what’s going on,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said on TODAY. “Except for prayer, I don’t know what else to do. I’ll await instruction with everyone else.”

    In an announcement that stunned Catholics around the world, Pope Benedict XVI revealed he will be stepping down from his position, citing failing strength. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports on his eight years as pope.

    Monsignor Oscar Sanchez of Mexico, who was at the Vatican for the announcement, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that the cardinals “remained shocked and were looking at each other.”

    President Barack Obama said in a statement that he and first lady Michelle Obama “warmly remember our meeting with the Holy Father in 2009, and I have appreciated our work together over these last four years.”

    Canon law says that the pope may relinquish his office provided that the decision is “made freely and properly manifested” — language to which Benedict appeared to allude in his statement.

    Because there is no one in the church higher than the pope to accept a resignation, the renouncement is technically an abdication.

    The last pope universally recognized to have abdicated was Celestine V, who was elected in July 1294 and gave up the job five months later after feeling that he was being manipulated by the King of Sicily and Naples. He was declared a saint in 1313.

    During a period of division known as the Great Western Schism, from 1378 to 1415, there were three rival claimants to the papacy. The legitimate pope, Gregory XII, abdicated to make way for an undisputed pope.

    Benedict’s abdication clears the way for the College of Cardinals to gather at the Vatican to elect a successor, a process in which the United States is expected to have unprecedented sway.

    The U.S. will have 11 votes, almost 10 percent of the electorate and the second-largest voting bloc behind Italy, which will have 28 votes. Germany, the home country of the current pope, will have six.

    It appears highly unlikely that an American will be elected Benedict’s successor. Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is considered a longshot for the job.

    The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, explains the "mixed emotions" he feels about the news that Pope Benedict XVI will resign on February 28, saying he feels a "special bond" with the pope.

    Among the cardinals mentioned as possible successors are Angelo Scola of Italy, Peter Turkson of Ghana, Marc Ouellet of Canada and Francis Arinze of Nigeria and Christoph Schoenborn of Austria.

    Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, told reporters that the cardinals would be looking for an “articulate voice” for the church and would keep in mind Benedict’s tradition.

    “He has called all of us to focus on the spiritual mission of the church, proclaim the gospel and once again begin this personal relationship all of us are capable of having with God back to the foreground,” he told reporters at St. Matthew’s Cathedral.

    Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected April 19, 2005. He was the 265th pope and the successor to John Paul II, who had served since 1978 and was wildly popular among the faithful.

    Born in 1927, he had been conscripted into the Hitler Youth during World War II, but he never joined the Nazi Party, and his family opposed the regime of Adolf Hitler, Reuters reported.

    Ratzinger, before being elevated to pope, headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees church doctrine. His strict approach to theology earned him the nickname “God’s Rottweiler.”

    NBC New Vatican analyst George Weigel gives his thoughts on Pope Benedict XVI's announcement of his resignation, and explains how a new pope will be selected.

    He sought to rekindle the faith of Catholics and bring them closer to the teachings of the church. He worried that too many had strayed, and said in 2005 that the parts of the world suffered from “a strange forgetfulness of God.”

    During Benedict’s papacy, thousands of people came forward to report that priests had raped or molested them as children and that bishops had covered it up.

    It was Benedict’s old office that dealt with abuse cases, yet Benedict never admitted failure himself or of the Vatican, and never punished bishops who ignored or covered up the abuse.

    “He could go around and minister to victims, which he did, and I think that was a brave and profound thing to do, but he couldn’t change the definitive elements of the Catholic Church that enable abuse,” said Michael D’Antonio, author of “Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal.”

    “He would have had to pick up the church and drag it into the 21st century, but you know he could have,” he said. “He might have died trying, the stress of that might have been even more profound, he would have faced tremendous intrigue and opposition but I suspect that instead he may go down in history as a caretaker, an interpersonally kind pastor who made no mark when he had the chance to.”

    Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, said that Benedict had tackled the abuse problem much more aggressively than John Paul II, who he said had let the issue languish.

    “Nobody clearly did more to counter this problem in the Catholic Church” than Benedict, Donahue said. “I think history will treat him very well in terms of dealing with the problem.”

    Benedict continued the outreach to Jews of his predecessor, John Paul II, and was the second pope to enter a synagogue. His relationship with Muslims, however, was much more complex.

    He generated outrage among Muslims when, in 2006, he gave a speech in Germany and quoted a Byzantine emperor who had characterized some of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings “as evil and inhuman.”

    Benedict also stirred an uproar in 2009 when, en route to Africa and discussing the AIDS epidemic with reporters, he said that the distribution of condoms “increases the problem” rather than preventing the spread of the disease.

    A year later, in an interview, he said that a male prostitute who used a condom to avoid passing HIV to his partner might be taking a step toward more responsible sexuality.

    James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, which claims 40,000 members and wants the church to focus more on social justice and poverty, praised the abdication as a “sign of humility from the aging Holy Father” and encouraged the church to reflect on the “challenges of this papacy.”

    He suggested that the church open itself to a pope from Latin America or Africa.

    Slideshow: The life of Pope Benedict XVI

    Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Look back at his life from childhood through his papacy.

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    NBC News staff writer Miranda Leitsinger, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Related:

    'Heavy heart but complete understanding': Pope's resignation stuns leadership

    Archbishop Dolan of New York: I'm startled, anxious at pope's resignation

    From prisoner of war to pontiff: A timeline of Benedict XVI's life

    US will have unprecedented voice in electing new pope

  • The unaffiliated rank third among world religion groups, Pew study says

    Jim Hollander / EPA

    Franciscan nuns and Nigerian Christians pray inside St. Catherine's Church, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity, traditionally accepted as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Monday.

    By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Roughly one in six people around the world has no religious affiliation, a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life found, making the unaffiliated the third-largest religious group worldwide, behind Christians and Muslims, and about equal in size to the world’s Catholic population.


    The religiously unaffiliated population includes atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys, the study issued Tuesday reads. Many of the religiously unaffiliated, however, hold religious or spiritual beliefs, the study emphasized.

    "For example, belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30 percent of French unaffiliated adults and 68 percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults," it read.

    Making up 16.3 percent of the world population, this group comprises a majority of the population in six countries. China's number of religiously unaffiliated is the largest, with a 62 percent share.

    The Pew Forum's study is based on self-identification.

    Titled "The Global Religious Landscape," the study analyzed data available as of early 2012 from more than 2,500 national censuses and large-scale surveys, and found that Christians are the world's biggest religious group, with 2.2 billion people or 32 percent of the world’s population. The largest share of all Christians live in the United States, followed by Brazil and Mexico.

    About half of all Christians are Catholic, while an estimated 37 percent of Christians are Protestant, the study shows. Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians make up 12 percent of Christians.

    With 23 percent of the world's population, Muslims represent the second-largest religious group and are a majority in 49 countries, including 19 of the 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

    Hindus make up 15 percent of the population, while the nearly 500 million Buddhists add up to 7 percent.

    The study also found that the median age of Muslims (23 years) and Hindus (26) is younger than the median age of the world’s overall population (28), and more than 12 years younger than the median age of Jews, which is 36 years old.

    "Muslims are going to grow as a share of the world's population, and an important part of that is this young age structure," Pew Forum demographer Conrad Hackett told Reuters.

    Judaism has the weakest growth prospects in comparison.

    There are about 15 million Jews in the world, or about 0.2 percent of the global population, and about 44 percent of them live in North America, while about 41 percent live mostly in Israel.

    The Pew Forum study also shows that an estimated 405 million people practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. More than 70 percent of the world’s folk religion practitioners live in China.

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  • Ex-oil man and son of bootlegger to be next Anglican leader

    Suzanne Plunkett / Reuters

    Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, walks through Westminster in London on Thursday. A former oil executive and critic of corporate excess, he is expected to be named on Friday as the next Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world's 80 million Anglicans.

    By Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

    Updated at 5:55 a.m. ET: LONDON — A former oil executive whose father was a bootlegger in prohibition-era America and later a friend of the Kennedys, was on Friday named the new spiritual leader of the world’s 80 million Anglicans.

    Justin Welby, 56, the Bishop of Durham, who has risen quickly within the Church of England hierarchy since quitting the world of commerce in 1992, will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

    The Church of England is known in the U.S. as the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America. Its Presiding Bishop is currently Katharine Jefferts Schori.

    The change in leadership follows the resignation of the current Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, ending a turbulent era in which the Church of England has been sharply divided on issues such as same-sex marriage, female clergy and gay bishops.

    Welby faces the near-impossible task of reconciling traditionalists and liberals among the church's 77 million worldwide followers.

    Welby went to the same exclusive private school, Eton College, as British Prime Minister David Cameron, London mayor Boris Johnson and Princes William and Harry.

    Read more on this story at ITV News

    His late father was sent to America in 1929 as a teenager after his grandmother went bust in the financial crash.

    "I remember my father telling me she gave him five pounds and put him on a boat," the bishop told the Mail on Sunday earlier this year. "He said he went to New York in 1929 and traded whiskey. When I was studying history, the penny dropped that Prohibition ended in 1933 and he had a lot of friends who had Italian ancestry, so he was bootlegging. He was illegally trading whiskey."

    Bishop Welby added: "He went on to become successful in the whiskey business and must have met the Kennedys by moving in the right social circle."

    Rowan Williams quits: could Anglican church have its first black spiritual leader?

    Welby’s father introduced John F. Kennedy to his first mistress, a 21-year-old Swedish aristocrat, weeks before the future President’s marriage to society beauty Jacqueline Bouvier, the Mail on Sunday said.

    Jonathan Wynne-Jones, the Chicago-based British journalist who first broke the story for the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph, told NBC News:  "It is an excellent choice. He is a very down-to-earth guy and self-deprecating.

    "He is nobody’s fool, but many people felt intimidated by Rowan Williams’ intellect whereas I think Bishop Welby will prove to be an effective communicator."

    Welby is widely reported to be against gay marriage but broadly in favor of the ordination of women bishops, two of the most divisive issues in the communion.

    The Daily Telegraph said: "At a time when the Church is grappling with the aftermath of the banking crisis, he combines — almost uniquely — an understanding of the working of the City with that of life in the inner city, gleaned as a parish priest and Dean of Liverpool."

    The new archbishop will earn about $120,000 a year. He will have lodgings in the Old Palace in Canterbury, southeast England, and the historic riverside Lambeth Palace in London. His tenure will last until retirement at 70 or until he decides to move on.

    ITV News is the U.K. partner of NBC News.

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  • Ramadan set to cause 'traffic chaos' near London's Olympic site?

    Olivia Harris / Reuters, file

    Muslims attend Friday prayers in Spitalfields, East London, on February 10, 2012. The area, which is near the Olympic Park, was settled by Bengali migrants in the 1970s and 1980s after Bangladesh's war of independence from Pakistan.

    By Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

    LONDON - Visitors and athletes are being warned of "traffic chaos" near the main Olympic Park because the Games coincide with Ramadan, the Islamic holy month that draws thousands of extra worshippers to nearby mosques.

    Local politician Abdal Ullah said extra traffic caused by large attendances at nightly prayers during Ramadan could disrupt those using key Olympic road links between central London and the main Games site in Stratford, about four miles to the east.

    "The areas all around the mosques get very busy around prayer time during Ramadan, and there is often traffic chaos on nearby roads and it will be busier on the Underground [London's subway system]," he told NBCNews.com.  "Although the prayers are in the late evening, many people will stay on at the Olympic Park after events and will be traveling through East London late in the day and might not be expecting it to be congested, which is a big concern."

    Slideshow: When the Olympics is your neighbor

    /

    A diverse community in East London will welcome the world to Britain for the 2012 Olympic Games. Meet residents and hear how they feel about having a huge, world stage in their backyard.

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    Ramadan began at 3:17 a.m. local time Friday. 

    Muslims abstain from food and drink from dawn to dusk during the 30-day period, which lasts until after the closing ceremony.

    Astronomers, scholars debate start of Ramadan

    The area around the Games site is home to more than 250,000 Muslims and almost 100 mosques. In the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which has a large Bangladeshi and Somali community and the largest Muslim population of any U.K. district, Islam is the prevalent religion in many neighborhoods.

    East London, which will host the Olympic Games, boasts a colorful history. NBC News' Jim Maceda reports.

    The biggest local mosque, the East London Mosque in Whitechapel, which sits on the main route linking central London to Stratford, says it attracts around 5,000 additional worshippers every night throughout Ramadan.

    The Summer Olympics hasn't clashed with Ramadan since the 1980 Games in Moscow.

    According to Abu Dhabi's The National newspaper, more than 3,000 Muslim athletes will compete in the London Olympics, but many will not fast -- a decision that has been sanctioned by religious authorities. 

    An actor from gangster movie "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is giving walking tours of old underworld haunts in East London, where this month's Olympic Games are being held. NBC's Theresa Cook reports.

    Ullah, whose St Dunstan’s and Stepney Green ward includes Mile End Stadium, the training base for Team USA track and field athletes, said local mosques were ready to welcome extra visitors, including competitors. "We want to show Britain’s Bangladeshi community in the best possible light," he said.

    The East London Mosque said it expects to reach its peak capacity of 5,000 on some nights during the two-hour time frame for evening prayers.

    Mark Evers, director of Olympic Games transport at city transit authority Transport for London (TfL) said: "TfL has worked with more than 20,000 companies of all types and sizes, including faith organizations, across London, to help them prepare for Games-time travel. We will continue to offer advice and guidance as required to help businesses understand the temporary changes on the road network and plan ahead to minimize how they will be affected."

    A London taxi driver is converting his cab into a hotel room, just in time for the business rush of the Olympics. TODAY.com's Alex Witt reports.

    More London 2012 coverage:

     

  • Elephants run amok in India; boy killed, 25 injured

    By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com

    A 2-year-old boy was killed and 25 others were injured Sunday morning when three elephants broke loose and ran through the famous Koodalmanikyam temple in Kerala, a southeastern state in India, according to media reports.

    Sunday was the last day of a 10-day festival and the elephants were lined up to carry a deity to a holy bath before they ran amok, Gulfnews.com reported.


    When policemen fired their guns in the air marking the beginning of the processional, Kannan, one of the elephants, became scared and freed himself from his mahouts, or elephant handlers, trumpeting and waiving his tusk. When the elephant started to run, so did two other nearby elephants, CNN-IBN reported.

    The elephants frightened the crowd, sending people running for safety. During the melee, toddler Yadu Krishnana fell and was killed. The 25 others who were injured -- most of them during the stampede to get away from the elephant -- were hospitalized.

    After half an hour, the mahouts were able to regain control of the elephants, Gulfnews.com reported.

    Gulfnews.com reported that some have criticized the government for elephant-related injuries during the Hindu festival.

    Watch the most-viewed videos on msnbc.com

    Last week more than 50 people in nearby Thrissur were injured after an elephant on parade turned violent, according to Gulfnews.com.

    Three years ago, an elephant at the Koodalmanikyam temple ran amok and killed three people. It is unclear whether that elephant was Kannan.

    During the festival, elephants outfitted in ornate caparisons carry a deity in a procession to the holy bath of the deity, or arattu, according to Hindu.com.  

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  • Dalai Lama to give $1.7 million prize to a mystery beneficiary

    By Alastair Jamieson, msnbc.com

    The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, is to be awarded a $1.7 million prize – then instantly give it away.

    Tenzin Gyatso, 76, the 14th Dalai Lama, will be presented with the Templeton Prize – the world's largest - at a ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on Monday.

    The Tibetan monk, believed by his followers to be the reincarnation of an ancient Buddhist leader, has not yet identified the recipient of the prize money.

    China boosts security in Tibet following protests

    Visiting St Paul’s for the first time, will receive the prize from Dr John M. Templeton, Jr, president and chairman of the John Templeton Foundation and son of the late prize founder.

    Q&A: The Dalai Lama, Tibet and China

    Guests at the ceremony, to be broadcast live on the internet on the organization’s website, will include the British actress Joanna Lumley.

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  • Rowan Williams quits: could Anglican church have its first black spiritual leader?

    Leon Neal / AFP - Getty Images

    A file picture taken on July 11, 2008 shows Archbishop of York John Sentamu speaking to the media about the plight of the people who have fled Zimbabwe in Parliament Square in London.

    By Alastair Jamieson, msnbc.com

    LONDON - The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams - spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion - is to step down, ending a turbulent era in which Church of England has been sharply divided on issues such as same-sex marriage, female clergy and gay bishops.

    He announced on his website Friday he would be leaving his post at the end of the year after a decade of wrestling with the near-impossible task of reconciling traditionalists and liberals among the church's 77 million worldwide followers.

    The church is known in the U.S. as the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America. Its Presiding Bishop is currently Katharine Jefferts Schori.

    "Williams was in an almost impossible position, trying to keep together the two tectonic plates of the increasingly liberal American Anglican church and the conservatives in Africa," Jonathan Wynne-Jones, a Chicago-based journalist and former Religious Affairs Correspondent of Britain's Sunday Telegraph told msnbc.com.

    "The Episcopal Church is very liberal on issues such as gay marriage and gay clergy - it ordained a lesbian bishop two years ago - and Williams has been caught between them and conservatives without really satisfying either side."

    Williams has also tried to reach an agreed position on the ordination of women as bishops in the Church of England after a string of traditionalists left to join the Roman Catholic church.

    Unlike the Catholic Church, the Anglican movement's head has no direct control over its members, making the structure of authority harder to define. It has approximately 1.9 million followers in the United States and central America.

    Williams, an academic and a poet, will move to a new post as master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University.

    In an interview with the Press Association on Friday, he spoke of the demands of the job, hoping that his successor "has the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros".

    He added: "I think the Church of England is a great treasure. I wish my successor well in the stewardship of it."

    The current favorite to succeed him is the Uganda-born Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, a populist conservative with a high media profile thanks to his attention-grabbing acts, such as sky-diving to raise money for families of servicemen killed in Afghanistan.

    The Daily Telegraph reported that other possible contenders to replace Williams include: Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London who gave the address at the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton last year; Bishop of Bradford Nick Baines, known as the ''blogging'' bishop, in recognition of his enthusiasm for new media; and Tim Stevens, the Bishop of Leicester.

    However, Wynne-Jones said: "Sentamu is the hot favorite but I would not be surprised if the eventual choice is somebody who has kept a lower profile."

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  • Thirst for beer keeps brewery alive in dry Pakistan

    The only brewery in Pakistan is a 150-year-old tradition.  Business is booming despite strict prohibition laws.  NBC's Amna Nawaz reports.     

    By Amna Nawaz, NBC News correspondent in Pakistan

    RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Beer. Vodka. Whiskey.

    These are not words you hear often in Pakistan, where it's illegal for the majority of the population to buy or drink alcohol.

    But once you walk inside the gates of the Murree Brewery Company, it's all anyone wants to talk about.

    We're greeted by the company's CEO, Isphanyar Bhandara - a man in constant motion - who is the third generation in his family to run the 150-year old company. In his office is an impressive display of bottles - lagers, flavored gins, matured whiskeys - the full product line of Murree Brewery, including non-alcoholic beers, fruit juices, and the latest addition - an energy drink called "Blitz."

    "We're very proud of the fact that we're working in Pakistan," he says with a smile. "But you must remember, this brand - Murree Brewery - is much older than it's host."

    A brewery that the British established in 1860 to ensure their soldiers were never without their favorite drink is now an unlikely institution in Pakistan, where Muslims are prohibited from purchasing or consuming alcohol. Legally, the company's only potential market is limited to Pakistan's non-Muslims - just three percent of the 180 million population.

    And even for them, the actual process of legally buying alcohol is involved and tedious, with business conducted out of sight of the general public. The country's Christians, Hindus, and Zorastrians can obtain an alcohol license from the government. That license comes with a monthly quota. To buy a case of beer, or a bottle of vodka, they must stand in line at distribution points hidden behind hotels or other establishments, license in hand to prove they are not Muslim.

    Murree Brewery is doing business with one hand tied behind its back. It's illegal for them to advertise their alcohol. It's illegal for them to export their alcohol. Still, it is alcohol sales that bring in 60 per cent of their revenues, which totaled just under $100 million dollars last year.

    Running a successful business in Pakistan these days in hard enough. A lack of basic utilities, corruption within the law and order system, and the volatility of the Pakistani rupee are enough to keep any CEO awake at night. Bhandara shoulders the additional burden of running the only legal alcohol producer in a majority-Muslim country, where the conservative segment has grown more vocal and more influential with time.

    "There are more heinous crimes going on, like honor killing, and throwing acid on people's faces, burying people alive," Bhandara says. "These things are considered in a lighter mode, that they are forgivable crimes. But having a beer is considered a non-forgivable crime!"

    The truth in Pakistan that few will admit on the record, is that many Muslims do, in fact, regularly commit this "crime." The black market for alcohol is booming business, and the porous border makes for easy smuggling. The Pakistani elite serve wine at dinner parties in their homes. Pakistani men will end a long day at the office with a glass of whiskey. A bar table, hidden behind a curtain, is set up at weddings so that guests can enjoy a drink as they celebrate. But few are willing to do so openly, and potentially incur the wrath of the country's conservatives, whose power, Bhandara says "is increasing by the day."

    "We like to keep a low profile," he says. "I think that's the best security."