The cardinals consider that the body of Pope Francis is transferred Wednesday to the Basilica of St Peter’s Square in the city of the Vatican. The Cardinal College is preparing for a conclave to elect the next pontiff, after the days of rites and funeral observances.
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The death of Pope Francis has set in motion searge machines in the Roman Catholic Church: around the world, the cardinals converge in the Vatican, first to cry and honor François, and later, to vote for his successor.
But the composition of today’s Cardinal College – and voters who will form the very important conclave – is different from those who preceded.
Here is a brief guide:
There are 135 cardinal voters
Not all cardinals cannot vote in the conclave: those who choose the next pope must be under 80 years old, for example. Of the 252 cardinals at the time of Francis’ death, 135 are voters.
Francis appointed 108 of the 135 cardinal voters, according to the Vatican tally.
Church rules call for conclaves to start 15 to 20 days after the death of a Pope or to resign. Cardinals can start the procedure before the 15 -day brand, but only if all voters are present.
The Cardinal College is no longer the majority-European
Under Pope Francis, the Cardinals College got closer to reflecting the world Catholic Church, an appropriate heritage for the first Pope in South America.
With the current composition of the college, it will be “the least European conclave in history”, Gregg Gassman, a librarian who publishes the Pontifact Podcast, said NPR.
Francis has reached far to give countries like Haiti, Laos and Rwanda their first cardinals. Its papacy also saw the representation of Asia at the college of cardinals to go to 17%, with 23 voters – just behind Europe.
At least 70 countries now have electoral cardinals, known as the Vatican, including 10 from the United States, on the other hand, the 2013 conclave which elected Francis was made up of cardinals from 48 countries, according to the Catholic News Service.
Europe represents around 40% of voters, while holding just over 20% of the world Catholic community, said the Vatican in March. Its 53 voters are more than double the number of any other geographic region, but the composition of the new conclave will always reflect a century of change.
Only Europeans participated in the 1922 conclave, Gassman said. Of the four cardinals who were in the United States or Canada at the time, he added, three could not go to Rome fairly quickly by boat before the conclave, and the fourth chose not to travel.
“They had to extend the rules to allow more journey time” after this conclave, said Gassman. “And then as soon as they did, the planes became more something.”
How the conclave will take place
The 2025 conclave promises to be a complex gathering, according to experts like Massimo Faggioli, church historian and professor at the University of Villanova outside Philadelphia.
“It is really a much more complicated chemistry this time,” Faggioli told Leila Fadel of NPR. “Because also, there is a very complicated international situation which affects different cardinals, different local churches in different ways. So, this time, it is even more difficult than usual to make predictions, even on the agenda of the conclave.”
It is particularly difficult, have declared several experts at NPR, to predict how the opinions of a group of historically diversified electors will merge which will succeed who succeeds Pope Francis.
On the one hand, it is feared that the size of the college of Cardinals, with more than 130 voters, could make it difficult to obtain a consensus.
“They do not know each other. They rarely meet, and only for certain celebrations” which do not last long, said Kurt Martens, ordinary professor of canon law at the school of canonical law of the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, the result, he added, is that the factions could be more likely to set up and divide the Conclave.
“What the conclave and the next pope cannot do is to ignore and deny the changing characteristics of global Catholicism, which is much less European, much less white, less North American and more from the world of world,” said Faggioli de Villanova, “said not necessarily liberal but surely much more critical towards capitalism as it is today.”
Deans have a high-level platform
The work of calling the cardinals to the Vatican and supervising the conclave falls to the dean of the College of Cardinals. In the film ConclaveRalph Fiennes portrays the powerful figure.
The deans have a significant influence on the rally, in particular by presiding over a special mass and by delivering a homily in which they can suggest themes and priorities to the voters to consider. Some deans were even chosen as Pope, including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benoît XVI in 2005.
The current dean, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, is 91 years old. Due to his age, he will celebrate high-level mass, but neither Re nor the vice-dean, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, 81, will join the conclave. He will rather be supervised by the most senior voter: Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was Francis’ secretary of state.
For cardinal voters, “it’s a huge responsibility” to choose the next Pope, said Martens of the Catholic University. “It’s a huge tension that is.”
Uncertainty is a secular part of the process, added Martens.
“Those who hope that they will become Pope – remember that there is a saying, the one who enters the conclave while Pope comes out as a cardinal, so the favorite never wins.”
