Vatican City (Europe Brief News): The death of Pope Francis started the sacred process of selecting the new Pope of the Catholic Church. The Vatican made an announcement about 88 years old Pope Francis’ death in the morning of Monday following his recent hospital release after treating his complex respiratory infection.
The passing of Pope Francis on April 21, 2025 started the traditional and sacred process for selecting a new Catholic Church leader who guides more than 1.4 billion Catholics throughout the world. According to tradition the selection will happen through the Papal Conclave system in the Sistine Chapel where selected cardinals under 80 years old must vote until deciding on a new pope by achieving a two-thirds majority voter agreement.
The vote process is being held in secret, but it will be watched closely by the world and the Catholic Church, an organization whose prestige has been damaged by the scandal of child sex abuse inside its ranks, that have overshadowed previous popes’ achievements.
Who are the leading candidates to become the new Pope?
The College of Cardinal’s Report has listed 22 potential candidates on their website for the position of Pope selection; it classifies these candidates as “papabili.” The College of Cardinal’s Report specifies that papabili cardinals should have three fundamental attributes consisting of spiritual humility together with a strong Catholic devotion and genuine dedication towards good deeds. The document points out that predicting who will become the next Pope is extremely difficult because the chosen candidate could come from different directions than those mentioned by the report. When the cardinal candidates evaluated Pope Francis in 2013 most experts dismissed him because they thought he was too old.
Despite demands at last year’s synod, a summit of Catholic leaders, for more opportunities for women to hold leadership positions within the Catholic Church, women are still not eligible to be ordained as priests and, consequently, are not eligible to be popes. Although it is not stated clearly in any particular Church rule, all popes have held the rank of cardinal prior to becoming popes.
These are contenders for the position of Pope in the future.
- Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, Archbishop of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, aged 65
- Cardinal Anders Arborelius, Bishop of Stockholm, Sweden, aged 77
- Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, Metropolitan Archbishop of Marseille, France, aged 66
- Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop Emeritus of Genoa, Italy, aged 82
- Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar, aged 76
- Cardinal Stephen Brislin, Metropolitan Archbishop of Johannesburg, South Africa, aged 66
- Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect Emeritus of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, aged 76
- Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, Netherlands, aged 71
- Cardinal Péter Erdő, Metropolitan Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary, aged 72
- Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, aged 79
- Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, aged 75
- Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, aged 77
- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect Emeritus of the Dicastery for Bishops, aged 80
- Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, aged 70
- Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, Major Penitentiary Emeritus of the Apostolic Penitentiary, aged 80
- Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, aged 60
- Cardinal Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don, Metropolitan Archbishop of Colombo, Sri Lanka, aged 77
- Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, aged 79
- Cardinal Daniel Fernando Sturla, Metropolitan Archbishop of Montevideo, Uruguay, aged 65
- Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, aged 67
- Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, aged 59
- Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna, Italy, aged 69
Among the 138 eligible voting cardinals 110 were selected by Pope Francis when he took his papal position. A higher Asian and African and Latin American representation exists among this voting group since it reflects Francis’s plan to promote a worldwide Church presence. A Ukrainian clergyman based in Australia holds the position of youngest cardinal elector at 45 years old.
A historical gap in papal selection may end because it seems possible to finally elect a leader of African or Asian origins for the first time since the middle ages.
What is the Process to Select the Pope for the Catholic Church?
When a pope dies the cardinals meet in Rome without access to outside communication to carry out their choice independently and without outside influences. At the start of the conclave a special mass occurs before cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel for seeking agreement to choose the new pope. The voting process continues through successive rounds and each ballot goes through burning after every session. When black smoke rises from the chimney it indicates that no pope has been chosen yet but when white smoke appears the new pope has been selected.
The College of Cardinal Electors operates under a rule of 120 members but has a current voting poll of 138 cardinals. Each member uses secret ballots which are examined by nine randomly selected cardinals during the voting process. Traditional voting procedure requires forty-eight cardinals to agree for the new pope to be elected while this agreement process continues without end.
The requirements for papal candidacy consist of being male and Catholic without any exceptions in actual practices since the selection has always involved cardinals. The position of papacy does not have an official age requirement yet all recent popes were elected at 70 years or older. A new papal leadership approach will guide the religious institution through two possible paths which can extend Pope Francis’ progressive measures or introduce reactionary shifts.
When does the Conclave start and how long does it take to elect a new Pope?
According to tradition the conclave starts between 15 to 20 days after the pope’s demise for mourning along with administrative procedures.
The voting period for selecting Pope Francis as South America’s first pope started only 12 days following Benedict XVI’s resignation as pontiff in 2013.
The selected group of cardinals conducts day to day voting sessions in which they cast ballots to confirm a new pontiff. The conclave performs a maximum of four voting sessions each day during its proceedings to reach the necessary two-thirds majority. Once the number of ballots reaches 33 without a decision the remaining two highest-ranked contenders proceed to a run-off election to decide the new Pope.
The process duration depends on whether the leaders emerge promptly because of a distinct candidate or require multiple days for factions to reach an agreement.
The recent pontiff elections were completed within short timelines as they required three days at most to choose the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
The selection process for choosing new popes used to take excessively long periods until the 13th century papal conclave led by Gregory X that employed three years of endless political conflicts.
When selected through election the new pope was required to acknowledge his position. The chosen pope will first appear to the public from St. Peter’s Basilica balcony and then the new pontiff will step out to address the church and world for the first time. The upcoming leader of the Catholic Church will determine its future direction between maintaining Pope Francis’s direction and selecting a more traditionally doctrinal leadership approach.
As the Catholic world observes Pope Francis’s death it intently waits to see how the Church will select its next leader for guiding its mission during the contemporary era.
