Now That Pope Benedict Has Said His Farewell, Meet The Men Who Could Be The Next Pope

Franco Origlia / GettyPope Benedict leaves the Vatican behind in resignation on Thursday, but his farewell speech gave no hints of who might succeed him, although he did warn that privacy will not come with the job.

“He who assumes the ministry of Peter no longer has any privacy,” he said to over 150,000 onlookers gathered in St. Peter's Square, according to The New York Times. “He belongs forever and totally to all people, to all the church. The private dimension is totally, so to speak, removed from his life.”

His announcement of resignation on Feb. 11 came as quite a shock to the faithful, with only three Popes ever resigning — all under extraordinary circumstances, and never for health concerns. In 1045, Pope Benedict IX was pressured to resign but was eventually re-installed on the Papal throne because his resignation appeared to be “selling” his office. Pope Celestine V, a reclusive monk, resigned in 1294. He had months earlier declared it permissible for a Pope to resign, establishing the tiny legal precedent that Benedict appears to be exercising now. Finally, Pope Gregory XII abdicated the papal throne in 1415 to end the great Western Schism.

But in churches and beyond, now the million-dollar question is: Who will be the next leader of the Catholic Church?

Whoever is chosen by the College of Cardinals at the forthcoming conclave will have the delicate task of governing the Church while his predecessor still lives.

There are plenty of contenders for the top spot, so we've worked up their potential odds using online prediction markets Paddy Power and InTrade, and assessed the pros and cons of each.