Rome ? The nine-day hiatus between the burial of a pope and the shuttered silence of the conclave to elect a new one is a time of mourning and reflection for the cardinal electors of the Roman Catholic Church.

It’s also a time when rumors fly, when Vatican-watchers engage in perilous speculation about who’s ascendant among the papabili — or “pope-able” cardinals — and when any cardinal with ambitions tests the waters.

Last week’s rumor: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, reputed by some to be the front-runner, put a media gag on U.S. cardinals. The rumor, which the famously severe head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith denied, probably was floated to “torpedo” him, said George Weigel, the official biographer of the late Pope John Paul II, Thursday.

Joining Ratzinger this week with front-runner status was Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s businesslike secretary of state, which Weigel suggested may be a sign that the cardinal-electors “don’t want an adventurer” like the globe-trotting Pope John Paul II.

One question is whether the next pope should be from within the Vatican bureaucracy, known as the Roman Curia, or be the head of an archdiocese. To some observers, that points to Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar of Rome: a conservative who’s close to the Vatican but perhaps just enough outside it.

Ruini, on the other hand, has a different set of priorities. He says the “challenge of Islam” is the most important issue the church faces, and he wants a pope who can “engage” it. In an interview, Ruini said his support was going to Cardinal Ivan Dias of Bombay, India.

Dias is an accomplished member of the Vatican’s diplomatic corps who has served as its representative to Russia and other Eastern European nations. He’s also an Asian, which might be immensely appealing in Asia, Africa and Latin America. But the outgoing Dias is also among those cardinals Weigel counts as a likely “adventurer.”

Then there are cardinals who point to the drastic decline of Catholic identity in Europe and say the next pope must be able to engage with secularism, postmodernism and such bioethical challenges as cloning, embryonic stem-cell research and end-of-life care.

Among the men cited as having the skills to face the challenges of contemporary culture is Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice.