THIS MORNING AT 10am Rome time (9am in Ireland), the Cardinals will gather inside St Peter’s Basilica for the Holy Mass for the election of the new pope.
And then, at 4.30pm Rome time, the 133 cardinal electors will assemble in Pauline Chapel in the Apostolic Palace before entering the Sistine Chapel for the conclave.
It’s the largest conclave in history, and could have been larger still but for two absences due to illness.
It’s near impossible that someone will be elected on the first count and black smoke is expected at around 7pm Rome time.
Then it’s back to the Sistine Chapel the following morning for two rounds of voting, followed by two further rounds in the afternoon, until the Catholic Church has a new leader following the death of Pope Francis.
But who are the front runners and what will guide the cardinal electors.
‘I’m going to become pope!’
On a plane to Rome on the day before the conclave to elect the 267th pope, I was sat next to a nun.
When I ask if she is going to Rome for the conclave, she laughs and replies: “Yes, I am going to become the next pope!”
And while Father James Martin told The Journal that “anybody could walk out onto St Peter’s balcony”, even that would take him by surprise.
Fr Martin is editor at large of the Jesuit magazine America and founder of the LGBT Catholic group Outreach.
He is Irish-American, (‘like most Americans’, he jokes) and quickly there was an Irish gathering of sorts, with Colm Flynn of the Catholic TV network EWTN joining us.
Speaking from St Peter’s Square, Fr Martin said the “sadness of the death of Pope Francis, whom I really loved, took a couple days to get over”.
“But now, we’re very excited about who the Holy Spirit is going to help these Cardinal electors choose.”
‘Trust in the Holy Spirit’
Martin is a prominent advocate for the inclusion of LGBT people within the Church and acknowledged that there is “apprehension we won’t get someone who is as welcoming as Pope Francis was”.
He said Francis “did more than all of his predecessors combined for LGBTQ people” but encouraged anyone who is apprehensive to “hope and trust in the Holy Spirit”.
The role that the Holy Spirit plays is a tricky one.
Pope Benedict XVI once remarked that the Holy Spirit doesn’t pick the pope because “there are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked”.
Rather, Benedict likens the role of the Holy Spirit to that of a good teacher: “It leaves us much space, freedom, without entirely abandoning us.”
Meanwhile, there are reports that many of the Cardinals simply don’t know one another.
They have requested lanyards with their name and country, so as to avoid any potentially awkward moments.
Cardinals have also been presented with a massive book running to nearly 450 pages with a large image of each cardinal, alongside some biographical information.
Cardinals going through their book of fellow Cardinals in a pre-conclave meeting
And for the first time, fewer than half of voting cardinals who will choose the new pope are European.
“It’s a sign of how Francis appointed people from very far-flung places that normally didn’t have a cardinal,” said Fr Martin.
“That’s something of a drawback, it’ll take a while for them to get to know one another and know who the best candidates are.
“But it’s a reflection of how universal the church is, and Francis’s appointments reflected that universality.”
Elsewhere, Colleen Dulle, associate editor of America, notes that some reporters are pointing to this lack of familiarity among cardinals as a reason why this conclave could be longer than past ones.
However, she said that these concerns have been “a little bit overblown”.
She also noted that around half of the cardinal electors attended the Synod.
This took place in October of 2023 and 2024, and was an undertaking by Francis to hear from the entire Church about what is happening in local parishes and to ask what the Church can do to make parishes better.
However, she doubted that there will be a “Synod block” of voters and added that there doesn’t appear to be any “strong blocks”.
Meanwhile, yesterday marked the last of the pre-conclave meetings among cardinals.
Cardinals have an opportunity to speak at these meetings and indeed a short, unscripted speech by Francis in 2013 is what clinched the papacy for him.
However, some cardinals have decided to sidestep some of these meetings.
“I don’t know their excuses for not coming, but I’ll choose to assume they were good ones,” said Dulle.
“But I was very surprised to see that for most meetings, there have been about 10 missing – not the same 10 every day, but it is a little surprising.”
However, Flynn noted that some cardinals may simply want a break.
“They’re on a spiritual journey so some of the Cardinals might think, ‘I’ve been to a few of the meetings, it’s getting a bit repetitive, I’m going to take a day off’.
“You’ll often find that some of them miss things because they’re taking a day to pray and reflect.”
‘They’re just looking for someone holy’
There’s a saying in Rome – A fat pope follows a thin one.
It’s not to be taken literally, but rather describes a perceived trend that conclaves tend to counterbalance the preceding pope by electing a new one with a different ideology.
Fr Martin is dismissive of the old adage.
“I don’t know if they’re looking for conservative, liberal, progressive, traditional, fat or thin.
“I think they’re just looking for someone who’s holy, who can proclaim the gospel and who’s a good administrator, and those three things are tough to find in one person."
Flynn is equally suspicious of the idea.
“While Francis could be seen as the reformer, and he did change the tone of the papacy, when you dig into what he actually wrote and believed in, there’s not much of a difference between him and Benedict.
“There are so many cardinals from all over the world, it’s hard to keep up with who they are and what they stand for.
“Not only are they coming from different geographical areas, but they’re also representing different cultures.
“While one cardinal in Germany might say ‘we need a Pope Francis 2.0’, you could have a cardinal from the Congo who says, ‘why is the Church obsessed with this western viewpoint, when our people need clothes and food’.”
Charisma
Francis was able to strike a chord with non-Catholics and had many viral moments during his papacy.
For Flynn, this is both a reflection of Francis and also of the age we live in.
“When Francis stepped onto the balcony of St Peter’s as pope in 2013, there were lots of lights from people’s phones and amid the social media revolution, his moments would go viral.”
He noted that Francis was also able to have viral moments in the English speaking world, despite not speaking English, because of the power of the gestures.
“People would see these iconic images of Francis cleaning the feet of the prisoners, comforting someone severely disabled, and it turned him into this global religious, spiritual superstar.”
Flynn also noted that Francis had a charisma that Benedict lacked.
This wasn’t lost on Benedict, who once said of Francis: “He is simply someone who is very close to people, who stands with them, who is always among them… perhaps I was not truly among the people enough.”
And while Dulle noted that there has been “some pushback against Francis” in the pre-conclave meetings, she said there is “broad support for Francis’s vision of a Church that goes out to the margins, even if the next pope lacks the charisma or the magic of Francis”.
Front runners
When it comes to who will be the next pope, Flynn notes the difficulty in guessing.
“Those who know are not talking, and those who are talking don’t know.”
However, when pressed he gave names such as cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was secretary of state under Francis, and cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, sometimes referred to as the “Asian Francis”.
He also mentioned Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Sweden, who helped transform a popemobile used for a 2014 papal journey of the Middle East into a health clinic for Gaza children.
“But it’s all to play for,” said Flynn.
“Remember, in the last election, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was number 15 in the running among the media and the bookies and he became Pope Francis.”
Meanwhile, Flynn is working from morning till night doing segments on news channels all across the world and said he is taken aback by the “sheer volume of interest” in the conclave.
“I think it’s because of movies like Conclave and The Two Popes, but there’s such global interest in this, I just never would have anticipated it.”