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“I have to be ready even if I think that probably others could do it better,” Ouellet told Mansbridge.

“I will cross the river when I get to the bridge, and we are not there.”

In recent days, Ouellet’s life story has suddenly been thrust into the world’s media spotlight. He was the third of eight children from a family in La Motte.

As a young priest, he travelled to South America to teach in a seminary. But it is his work in senior jobs at the Vatican over the past 15 years that has caught the attention of his fellow cardinals.

“My name is circulating but I am very careful to go beyond this sort of media expectations,” he said in the CBC interview.

Asked if a Canadian would bring “special qualities” to the job of pope, Ouellet was equally cautious.

“It would be a great novelty, obviously, you know,” he said. “I think that many others in other parts of the world are well-prepared.”

Outside of European contenders, Ouellet has been joined by two others widely regarded as possible popes: Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines and Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana.

Ouellet was slightly less restrained in discussing whether it’s time for someone outside of Europe to be chosen pope.

“Maybe, maybe,” he said.

“There was a focus on Europe obviously for centuries, and centuries, and that someday, I think someday it is to be expected that a pope would come from Asia, would come from Africa, would come from America. It wouldn’t be a surprise. Nowadays it wouldn’t be a surprise. And obviously it could bring some new accent.”