By Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service
[Vatican City – CNS] – The 135 cardinals eligible to elect the next pope will enter the Sistine Chapel to begin the conclave May 7, the Vatican announced.
The cardinals will first celebrate the “Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff” in St. Peter’s Basilica that morning before processing into the Sistine Chapel that evening.
The Vatican Museums announced that the Sistine Chapel would be closed to visitors beginning April 28 to allow preparations for the conclave to begin. The preparations include the installation of a stove to burn the cardinals’ ballots and a chimney on the roof to signal the election results to the world.
The date for the conclave was set during the fifth general congregation meeting of cardinals April 28, Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, told reporters at a briefing later that day. The general congregation meeting was the first after a two-day pause to allow cardinals to participate in the funeral rites for Pope Francis.
More than 180 cardinals attended the April 28 meeting, including over 100 cardinal electors. During the session, about 20 cardinals offered reflections on the state of the church, its mission in the world, the challenges it faces and the qualities needed in the next pope, Bruni said.
Topics addressed included evangelization, interfaith relations and the ongoing need to address clerical sexual abuse, he added.
The cardinals also discussed whether Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who relinquished the rights associated with being a cardinal after he was forced to resign in 2020, would be permitted to participate in the conclave. Bruni said no decision had yet been made, and Cardinal Becciu has been attending the general congregation meetings.
Looking ahead to the next session, Bruni said the general congregation meeting April 29 would open with a reflection by Benedictine Father Donato Ogliari, abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome and a member of the Dicastery for Bishops.
As cardinals entered the Vatican for the morning’s session, Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Stockholm was asked by reporters if he expected a long conclave. “I think it will be,” he said, “because up to now we don’t know each other.”
Meanwhile, Cardinal Walter Kasper, former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity who is past the age limit to vote in the conclave, told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that he hopes the cardinal-electors “come to a consensus on the next pope very soon, in the footsteps of Francis.”
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Conclave has most cardinals, widest geographical mix in history
By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service
[Vatican City – CNS] – The conclave that begins May 7 is expected to be the largest in history, with a wide geographical mix of cardinal-electors.
There are 135 cardinals under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a papal election. By contrast, 115 cardinals took part in the conclaves in 2005 and 2013.
The cardinals represent 72 different countries if one counts the nations where they are serving and not just where they were born. Take the example of three Italians: Cardinals Pierbattista Pizzaballa is the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem; Giorgio Marengo is the apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and Mario Zenari is the apostolic nuncio to Syria.
The cardinals’ average age on April 28 was 70 years and 5 months. That is slightly younger than the average age of electors who participated in the last conclave in 2013, which was 71.8 years.
According to “Universi Dominici Gregis,” the document giving rules for the election of a new pope, cardinals who celebrate their 80th birthday before the day the Apostolic See becomes vacant — that is, with a papal death or resignation — do not take part in the election.
The oldest among current voters is Cardinal Carlos Osoro Sierra, the retired archbishop of Madrid, who turns 80 May 16.
The youngest member of the conclave is 45-year-old Ukrainian-born Cardinal Mykola Bychok of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne, Australia. He is one of 17 Gen X cardinals, those born between 1965 and 1980.
Only five of the cardinals eligible to enter the conclave were created cardinals by St. John Paul II and 22 were created by Pope Benedict XVI.
That means 27 of them took part in the conclave that elected Pope Francis, and five of those also participated in the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict.
But that also means voting in a conclave will be a brand new experience for 108 of the electors.
While the geographical breakdown of conclave voters has become more diverse since 1978, Europeans are still the largest block. Fifty-two of the electors, or 37%, come from Europe.
However, Asia is more represented now than ever before with 24 electors or almost 18% of the total. There are 23 cardinal-electors representing Latin America, about 17% of the total, followed by Africa with 18 electors. North America now trails behind Africa and Asia with 14 electors, representing about 10%, and Oceania has four voting-age cardinals, about 2.9% of the total.
In the country-by-country breakdown, Italy has 16 voting-age cardinals, followed by the United States with 10, representing 7% of the voting total.
Brazil has seven voting-age cardinals; Spain and France have five each, and Poland, Portugal, India, Argentina and Canada have four each. England, Germany and the Philippines have three cardinal-electors each. Fifty-nine countries are represented with one or two cardinal-electors.
In terms of influence, the Vatican as an institution will be heavily represented, with 27 members of the Roman Curia voting in the conclave — 19.7% of the total.
Since a two-thirds majority of the cardinal-electors who participate is needed to elect a pope, if all 135 men were to attend, there would need to be at least 90 votes for one candidate to emerge as the winner.
Among the voting-age cardinals, there are 33 members of religious orders, including: five Salesians, four Jesuits, four Franciscans and three Conventual Franciscans.
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Cardinals from around the world lined up in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel March 12, 2013, to take their oaths at the beginning of the last conclave, to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI. The following day, on the fifth ballot, they elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, who chose the name Francis. The cardinals will again gather May 7, 2025, to elect a a successor to Pope Francis, who died April 21. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
The next pope: Lists abound, certainty does not
By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
[Vatican City]- After the funeral and burial of Pope Francis April 26, the attention of the world turned to who would be the next pope.
The news media, blogs, pundits and people on the street all seem to have their favourite candidate or a list of “probable” next popes, but the College of Cardinals as a whole does not.
The conclave to elect a new pope is scheduled to begin May 7 in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican.
The cardinals who were in Rome when Pope Francis died April 21 began meeting in “general congregation” the next morning. Each day more cardinals arrived.
The general congregation is open to all cardinals, including those who are over 80 years of age and not eligible to enter the conclave to vote for a new pope.
The general congregation handles “important matters” in the continued operation of the Roman Curia, but it also is the place where cardinals from across the globe have an opportunity to speak about the needs of the church and the world and the kind of person who could respond to those challenges as pope.
In the four daily general congregation meetings before Pope Francis’ funeral, 67 cardinals spoke during the “shared reflection on the church and the world,” according to Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office. Another 20 spoke in the morning April 28.
Comments from cardinals who elected Pope Benedict in 2005 and Pope Francis in 2013 indicated that the final vote depended largely on what they had said during those pre-conclave meetings. Pope Benedict’s prominent role as dean of the college during the “sede vacante” following St. John Paul II’s death also gave him a platform for speaking out about the needs of the church.
Most lists of the “papabile” or potential popes were compiled while Pope Francis was alive and have nothing to do with the current discussions in the general congregation.
In fact, as the cardinals arrived in Rome and joined the meetings, they were required to take an oath to “promise, pledge and swear, as a body and individually,” to observe the rules for the meeting and the coming conclave and “to maintain rigorous secrecy with regard to all matters in any way related to the election of the Roman Pontiff.”
The lists compiled and published before Pope Francis’ funeral had five names in common:
- Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, 70, Vatican secretary of state under Pope Francis.
- Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, 67, who had been pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization.
- Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo, 72, archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest.
- Italian Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, 60, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.
- French Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, 66, archbishop of Marseille.
When Pope Francis was hospitalized in March, Catholic News Service spoke about the process of electing a new pope with Kurt Martens, a professor of canon law at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
Making lists of “papabile,” he said, “is a nice hobby.”
The lists, Martens said, usually are prompted by the concerns and viewpoint of the person making the list.
But to know “who is a possible pope in the eyes of the cardinals,” he said, “you have to ask yourself the question: What are they looking for? How do they look at the church and the world today? And what is the best profile of someone to become a pope then?”
As the general congregation meetings proceeded, the answer to those questions should have become clearer to the cardinals. How much they might share with the public is a different question.
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© OSV News / Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2025 – from CNS Vatican bureau, used with permission.
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