Latest from Rome and beyond

Smoke is coming from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel -- but it's uncertain whether it's the white smoke that would signal election of a new pope.

• HILLARY FOR POPE? | 11:18 a.m. ET

While much of the world awaits smoke signals from the Vatican cardinals, New York Rep. Peter King joked Tuesday about a dark horse candidate for the vacant position: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

King, a sometimes maverick within his own Republican Party, praised and poked fun at New York’s junior senator when they both appeared at a breakfast of construction union officials.

“Maybe we can elect Hillary Clinton pope. God knows what she’s running for,” joked King, to roars from the crowd.

Clinton is up for re-election to the Senate in 2006, and considered the Democratic Party’s early front-runner for the 2008 White House nomination.

King said that while he sometimes disagreed with the senator, “when it comes to New York, Senator Clinton is always there,” praise not likely to be used in any 2006 GOP campaign against her.

• MONEY ON ARINZE | 10:22 a.m. ET

Nigeria's cardinal stormed forward on betting boards and Germany's Joseph Ratzinger slipped back on Tuesday as the secretive Vatican election to find the next pope whipped up gambling fever.

Three straight inconclusive votes between Monday evening and Tuesday morning by cardinals locked in the Sistine Chapel jumbled the odds in the race to the papal throne.

Ratzinger remained the frontrunner on two online betting sites to succeed Pope John Paul, but Nigeria's Francis Arinze leapfrogged him on Irish bookmaker Paddy Power's books with 7-2 after heavy betting on him from Nigeria.

• GETTING SERIOUS | 9:11 a.m. ET

An expert weighs in.

"This morning the voting got very serious. Now people are voting for their first choices and seeing how much support each cardinal has to have to become pope," said Father Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America.

"They are going to see movement from the candidates with a few votes to the candidates with more votes until someone starts getting momentum and gets up there to the two-thirds mark," he told Reuters.

• THE POLITICS OF THE VOTE | 7:57 a.m. ET

Experts say the early votes are likely to have pitted front-runner Joseph Ratzinger, standard bearer for the conservative doctrinal heirs of Pope John Paul, against former Milan Archbishop Carlo Maria Martini, who is seen as a stalking horse for the moderate camp.

Tuesday’s votes are expected to be crucial in assessing whether Ratzinger can show the strength to win the papacy.

If the German cardinal slips back he is expected to make way for another conservative. Bookmakers were already lengthening his odds on Tuesday.

However even if the powerful Ratzinger, dean of the cardinals and doctrinal watchdog for John Paul, pulls out of the race he is likely to exert influence as a “kingmaker” among the many undecided prelates.

The cardinals can hold two votes each morning and two each afternoon.

Most Vatican watchers expect the prelates from 52 countries to make their decision on Wednesday or Thursday morning.

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