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Conclave to elect new pope to start on 7 May, Vatican says Conclave to elect new pope to start on 7 May, Vatican says
(32 minutes later)
About 135 Roman Catholic cardinals will meet at Sistine Chapel to decide the next leader of the global church The 135 Roman Catholic cardinals eligible to vote will meet at Sistine Chapel to decide church’s next leader
Roman Catholic cardinals will meet in a secret conclave to elect the new leader of the global church from 7 May, the Vatican said on Monday. Catholic cardinals from all over the world will converge under Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel on 7 May to begin a conclave, the secret election process to choose the next pope.
The date was decided during a closed-door meeting of cardinals at the Vatican, the first since the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, a source said, speaking at the end of the gathering. An official announcement followed. The date was confirmed by the Vatican on Monday after cardinals gathered for the first pre-conclave meeting since the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday. The 16th-century Sistine Chapel has been closed to tourists to allow preparations for the election.
About 135 cardinals, all under the age of 80 and from across the world, are eligible to take part in the conclave and decide who should be the next leader of the 1.4 billion-member church. The 135 cardinals eligible to vote will be sequestered between the chapel and their lodgings at Casa Santa Marta, the guesthouse where Pope Francis lived during his 12-year papacy, for however long it takes to pick a new pontiff.
The 16th-century Sistine Chapel, where conclaves are held, was closed to tourists on Monday to allow for preparations for the vote. German cardinal Reinhard Marx told reporters on Saturday that he expected the conclave would last “just a few days”. But Anders Arborelius, a Swedish cardinal in the running for pope, told reporters before the meeting that voting could take longer “because we don’t know each other”.
The two most recent conclaves, in 2005 and 2013, lasted two days. But the Swedish cardinal Anders Arborelius said on Monday he expected this conclave could take longer, as many of the cardinals appointed by Francis had never met one another before. Eight in 10 of those eligible to vote in the conclave were appointed by Francis, with 20 only becoming cardinals in December. Francis made a point of selecting cardinals from places where there had never previously been one, such as Myanmar, Haiti and Rwanda. Until this past week, many had never met each other before.
Francis had made a priority of appointing cardinals from places that had never had them, such as Myanmar, Haiti and Rwanda. “We don’t know each other,” Arborelius said. Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, a former chief of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, is also optimistic that the conclave will be done and dusted within a few days. In an interview with Corriere della Sera, he described a “good atmosphere” among the cardinals and “a strong feeling of cohesion”.
The earliest the conclave could have begun was 6 May. Starting it a day later means the cardinals will have slightly more time for general discussions ahead of the momentous ballot. Bassetti said: “I really think that the conclave can offer a beautiful testimony in this world full of war, division and rancour. Certainly, there may be some difficulty because there have never been so many electors and not everyone knows each other.”
The cardinals visited the tomb of Francis in Santa Maria Maggiore on Sunday afternoon. On the bus during their return to the Vatican, Bassetti said: “There was a beautiful, fraternal atmosphere … we spoke to each other like neighbours.”
Most of the cardinals with voting power – 53 – are European. They are followed by 23 cardinals from Asia, 18 from Africa, 17 from South America, 16 from North America, four from Central America and four from Oceania. Together, they represent 17 countries.
There is no clear frontrunner for pope, although Luis Antonio Tagle, a reformer from the Philippines, and Pietro Parolin from Italy are among the early favourites.
As conclave fever builds, a video of Tagle, 67, singing John Lennon’s Imagine emerged on the internet. The clip dates back to 2019 and Tagle can be seen belting out the song with a crucifix behind him. The performance, which has earned him the nickname “Asia’s Bergoglio” in the Italian press, has caused chatter in Rome, and some embarrassment for him.
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Francis, the pope since 2013, died aged 88 on 21 April. His funeral on Saturday and a procession through Rome to his burial place at the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore attracted crowds estimated at more than 400,000 people. “Tagle is terrified,” Anselmo Guido Pecorari, an Italian cardinal, told Corriere. “I don’t think he’ll be going out much.”
The German cardinal Walter Kasper told La Repubblica newspaper that the outpouring of mourners indicated that Catholics wanted the next pope to continue with Francis’s reforming style of papacy. Describing how cardinals spent their time in the days before the vote, Pecorari, a conclave veteran, told the newspaper: “We get to know each other, and suss each other out, before we slowly begin to draw up an identikit of who the next pontiff will be.”
Francis, the first pope from Latin America, largely tried to open up the often staid church to new conversations. He allowed debate on issues such as ordaining women as clergy and outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics. Pecorari said he was among the cardinals who prefered to talk in the more relaxed settings of the restaurants in the area of the Vatican, over a good carbonara, and away from the confines “and prying ears” of Casa Santa.
“The People of God voted with their feet,” said Kasper, who is 92 and will not take part in the conclave. “I am convinced that we must go ahead in the footsteps of Francis.” But not everyone does that, he said, with one cardinal hosting a get-together in his room after dinner, an event that led to him getting a surprise bill after the group emptied the mini-bar.
However, a bloc of conservative cardinals are expected to push back against this and seek a pope who reasserts traditions and restricts Francis’s vision of a more inclusive church. Pecorari said: “I can’t mention his name because he’s a dear friend of mine, but a foreign cardinal thought the drinks were free … only then he was upset to find them added to the bill.”