When the 115 voting members of the College of Cardinals begins its conclave tomorrow to elect the Catholic Church's 266th pope, the man they ultimately choose will face a daunting list of church and global issues.

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From economics to bioethics, from the dwindling percentage of priests worldwide to the surge of evangelical Pentecostalism in the global south, that list will keep the next papacy cassock-deep in politics, debate and prayer for years to come.

Don't expect radical changes in the Vatican's standing on birth control and women priests. Do expect that continuing fallout from the clergy sexual abuse scandal will continue to taint U.S. church efforts both spiritually and financially. And it's fair to think that modest changes in style or tone may emerge in such issues as Rome's wielding of authority over local bishops.

"We shouldn't even dream of something very revolutionary," said Dean Hoge, a sociology professor at Catholic University of America. "What's needed is not something revolutionary but something more subtle that could set processes in motion."

Such subtlety could come in the next pope's openness to convening delegations to discuss longtime church issues, or his relaxing of Rome's oversight of bishops. It may also take the form of continued rapprochement between the church and Islam, a dialogue jump-started by John Paul II nearly two decades ago.

A pope's attention to a specific issue may stem from a personal interest -- Pius XII was particularly keen on medical ethics, for example, and made numerous addresses on the topic -- or from world events.

The issue of economic justice, on the other hand, is constant. It includes jobs and education, and the ability of local bishops to develop innovative programs. Success in Latin America could reverse the growing trend toward evangelical Pentecostalism in an area once considered a solid cradle-to-death Catholic bloc.

As one of the few worldwide nonprofit organizations, the church has a unique chance to make important strides, according to Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of Cleveland-based FutureChurch, a coalition of parish-based Catholics working for greater church participation.

"The church can constructively engage international agencies about policies that unfairly impact the poorest," Schenk said. "That has a lot of exciting potential.

"I don't think we'll reach that potential if the next pope does not work in a collaborative way to empower the bishops and bishop conferences of any given country."

Stephen D. Long, an associate professor of systematic theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill., said complicating the church's economic work is a lack of priests.

Between 1975 and 2003, the number of Catholics grew from 710 million to nearly 1.1 billion. Yet during that same period, the number of priests remained constant at about 405,000.

In the U.S., that has meant the closing of parishes; indeed, the number of American priests has been declining by 10 percent each decade. Yet the U.S. is considered "priest rich;" in Central and South America, there is an average of one priest for every 7,000 Catholics. In Africa, the ratio is 1-to-4,800. In the U.S., the ratio is one priest for every 1,333 Catholics.

In Central America, evangelical Christians have stepped into the breach by providing day care, clothes and jobs.

"I think this was a real fear of the church," said Ted Hewitt, a sociology professor who wrote about social movements before recently being named vice president of research at the University of Western Ontario.

"They were doing excellent work and the church was beginning to look irrelevant," he said. "People wanted to know, 'What's the church really offering me?' "

But Long warns that globalization carries its own downside.

"It could be just as dangerous to the church if the global market works," he said. "Second- and third-generation kids may be seduced into the culture of the global market" and reject religious faith for secular trappings.

The public way in which John Paul II spent his final weeks in rapidly deteriorating health undoubtedly will spur future discussions of bioethics. Coupled with the right-to-die case of Florida resident Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman who died last month after doctors removed the feeding tube that had kept her alive for more than a decade, the next papacy may engage in more scientific dialogue to gain a better understanding of end-of-life issues.

"By refusing to resign, by being seen drooling at times, by being reduced to a feeding tube, the pope showed us profoundly in a prophetic way that human dignity endures even when one is unable to effectively communicate with others," said D. Brian Scarnecchia an attorney and a professor of human life issues at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

"[People] knew there was still a great heart beating and a will to embrace the whole world."

Scarnecchia predicted that scientific advances will "push the veil back" about the levels of consciousness in people diagnosed as persistent vegetative states such as Schiavo. He compared it to medical advances that initiated debates about the humanity of fetuses.

"If we don't have the facts down, we'll never come down with sound bioethics," he said. "We won't solve the ethical dilemma if society adopts a utilitarian yardstick for measuring human dignity, human worth and human rights."

Little papal change is expected in issues such as AIDS and birth control. The church's involvement with AIDS will be strictly pastoral, said Francesco D. Cesareo, dean of the liberal arts school at Duquesne University and a church historian who studies the papacy. There will be "no movement" on birth control, he said.

But David F. Kelly, director of the Duquesne's Health Care Ethics Center, said genetic engineering could potentially force the next pope's hand, since such enhancements would be limited to populations with the necessary wealth and technology.

"It could become a global issue as the developed countries begin going down that road," Kelly said.

The question of women priests will be limited to industrialized nations, said Christel Manning, an associate professor of graduate program religious studies at Sacred Heart University. Third World nations are too busy dealing with questions of economic development and cultural issues, she said.

FutureChurch's Schenk said the time may be right for further discussion on the topic. There may be a shortage of priests, but worldwide there are 783,000 nuns and more than 1.5 million female lay ministers. Opening the female diaconate could provide a huge new pool of ministers for the church, she said.

Over the past 15 years, Catholic women in the U.S. have acted as readers and served communion wafers. And there are instances of priest-less parishes being run by nuns.

"As parishes close and cluster and there are no priests, that creates a lot of pressure," Schenk said. "You can't do your mission in the world if your organization is crumbing from within."

Along that same line of reasoning, Schenk and others believe it's imperative that the next pope loosen the reigns of the Congregation of Bishops in Rome. It is one of nine committees that exercise control over such church aspects as saints, liturgy, evangelization, clergy and worship. Along with the secretariat and various other agencies and courts, they comprise the Roman Curia.

"The average Catholic knows about the curia because they come across as the villain," said the Most Rev. Anthony Bosco, who retired as bishop of the Greensburg Diocese a year ago.

Under John Paul II, the congregations tended to micromanage, Bosco said. The best known example was the curia's unsuccessful effort in 2002 to control the renovation of Milwaukee's Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist.

Decentralizing control of bishops makes sense, Bosco said, because they know their dioceses better than a committee meeting in Rome. But even that kind of change will not be swift.

"Why do you think they call Rome the Eternal City?" he asked. "Things take an eternity sometimes."