Mexico City: Latin America is home to the world’s largest Roman Catholic population, but hopes that the next pope will come from the region appear faint, experts said Monday.

The predominance of Europeans on the College of Cardinals means that the odds are stacked against a Latin American pope, even though the names of a number of high-ranking churchmen from the region have been bandied about, analysts said. The 118-member college, with 62 European members and only 19 from Latin America, will elect a successor for Pope Benedict XVI, who announced Monday he will resign due to age.

Still, hope springs eternal.

“Since Latin America is a fortress for Christianity during these rough times, it would be healthy for us to get a Latin American pope,” said Fernando Reyes, 57, a professional violinist, who prays daily at the La Merced church in Santiago, Chile.

Crossing himself before leaving the church, Reyes noted, “I would be proud. We’ve had Italian, Polish, German. It’s time for a Latin American.”

But it is unclear whether any one of them could gain traction.

“To see the possibilities for a Latin American pope, you have to look at the make-up of the College of Cardinals,” said Bernardo Barranco, an expert at Mexico’s Centre for Religious Studies. “From the get-go, I see it as difficult for a Latin American because the college has not only been “re-Europeanised,” it has also been “re-Italianised.”

In the Philippines the faithful prayed quietly and took to social media in the hope their cardinal might be chosen as the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

Many Catholics in the Philippines, the largest Christian community in Asia, were shocked by Pope Benedict’s resignation, including their charismatic leader, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle.

“Pope Benedict XVI’s renunciation of the ministry as Bishop of Rome on February 11, 2013 came as a surprise,” Tagle said in a statement.

Tagle’s close alignment to Pope Benedict, an uncompromising conservative on social and theological issues, could work in his favour, with the Philippines a bulwark of Catholicism in a mainly Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist region.

Many Filipinos felt the Church could do worse than choose Tagle, at 55 relatively young, as its next leader.

“The Filipino cardinal, Luis Antonio Tagle, will be a long-shot but he could be considered because he is also known as a Vatican insider and a former adviser of the pope,” said Joselito Zulueta, a teacher, journalist and analyst of church affairs in the Philippines.

Tagle’s personal appeal has been compared to that of the late Pope John Paul and he worked with Pope Benedict at the International Theological Commission.

Father Francis Lucas of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines said a Filipino pope would be like “a dream”.

“He is humble, he’s meek, he’s simple, he’s spiritual, he’s media savvy, he’s very bright.”

But Tagle’s youth, and the fact that he only became a cardinal late in 2012, may work against him. “What we should do is not pray for Cardinal Tagle but pray for the right pope, as inspired by the Holy Spirit, to be elected by the cardinal members of the conclave,” Lucas said.