Latest from Rome and beyond

• ‘DICTATORSHIP OF RELATIVISM’ | 4:58 a.m. ET

In his homily Monday morning, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — a powerful Vatican official from Germany often mentioned as a leading candidate to become the next pope — spoke in unusually blunt terms against “a dictatorship of relativism” — the ideology that there are no absolute truths.

“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism,” Ratzinger said. “Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards.

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”

• SPECIAL MASS BEGINS | 4:04 a.m. ET

A special Mass setting the stage for the conclave that will select a new pope has begun at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The 115 cardinals will celebrate morning Mass before taking an oath of secrecy and hearing a meditation from a senior cardinal. After their oath, the cardinals will decide whether they will take a vote on Monday or wait until Tuesday morning.

• EUROPEAN FLAVOR | 3:48 a.m. ET

Cardinals who will elect a new pope come from 52 countries on six continents, but Europeans continue to dominate even though Latin America has many more Roman Catholics.

Europe has an estimated 277 million Catholics, or about one quarter of the world's 1.1 billion Church members. But the 58 European cardinals in the conclave represent half of the 115 present and eligible to vote.

The number of Catholics in Latin America has grown eight-fold in the past 100 years, and they now number some 483 million — 43 percent of the world total.

But Latin American cardinals in the conclave, coming from 12 countries, number only 20, or 17 percent of those able to vote.

Among individual countries, Italy — which has provided most of the popes over the 2,000-year history of the Church — continues to have the greatest number of cardinals in the conclave with 20, the same number as all of Latin America.

• SISTINE CDs | 2:48 a.m. ET

The cardinals who will choose a new pope will be virtually cut off from the world. No television, Internet, newspapers, radio or cell phones will be allowed. But they won't be without some creature comforts.

One Italian newspaper reports that some cardinals have packed CD players and headphones along with their prayer books and snacks.

Meanwhile, the Vatican’s security squad has swept the Sistine Chapel for listening devices. And cooks, maids, elevator operators and drivers are sworn to secrecy.

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