
By Joshua McElwee
As Catholic cardinals meet to choose a new pope, they will face a big question: Is it time, after three consecutive non-Italian pontiffs, to give the papacy back to the nation that held it for most of the 2,000-year history of the Roman Catholic Church?
For 455 years between the death of Dutchman Adrian VI in 1523 and the election of Poland’s John Paul II in 1978