How the Next Pope Will Be Chosen: Inside the Phases of the Conclave

On Sunday, April 6, Pope Francis appeared in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican to the surprise of the more than 20,000 faithful who were following the Sunday Mass in the capital of Catholicism. Absent there since January, hospitalized for several weeks with various health and mobility problems in recent years, his arrival in a wheelchair—pushed by his “savior,” his inseparable personal nurse, Massimiliano Strappetti—was his first public display since March.

With a trickle of voice and weak movements, the pope wished a happy Sunday, in Italian, to those gathered, and thanked them for their presence: “Grazie a tutti!”—the same formula he had used a couple of weeks earlier from the balcony of the Gemelli, the “hospital of the popes” in Rome.

Since his release, after 38 days hospitalized for a respiratory condition that caused fears for his life, the effects of which were still visible in the oxygen cannulas that the pontiff wore, the Vatican had only distributed a photograph of him with his back turned, a “proof of life” with which the Holy See had affirmed that Francis, born Jose Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires in 1936, was back to work, removing any trace of doubt. Sick, weak, and convalescing, the pope was still the pope. And he himself was in charge of reminding others of it in the homily he had written that Sunday, read by Archbishop Rino Fisichella—the usual substitute in his absence. There, in a defense of the sick, among whom he included himself, he demanded not to relegate “the fragile far from our lives, as, unfortunately, a certain type of mentality sometimes does today.” But his health during those weeks—highlighted by press releases from the Holy See, which published twice-daily and meticulously detailed updates on his condition, even including whether the pontiff had slept well or sat in an armchair, coupled with the precedent of Benedict XVI, who abdicated in 2013, becoming the first pope in six centuries to refuse to die on the papal seat—left half the world, or at least the 1.375 million Catholics who exist today, with visions of white smoke and conclaves: that unique way the Vatican has had to elect its rulers for eight centuries. These visions became reality in the early morning of Monday, April 21, a few hours after Francis, his voice reduced, gave the Easter Sunday blessing, urbi et orbi—“to the city and to the world.”

In addition to the influence of films like the Oscar-winning Conclave (Edward Berger, 2024) or series like The Young Pope, (Paolo Sorrentino, 2016), our century had already lived through two conclaves, and Francis himself was aware that his earthly time was limited: In 2024, for example, he dedicated himself to removing pomp and ritual from the funeral rites of the popes.

His death was a sign of normality, because neither the Vatican nor the Catholic Church wanted him to step aside. The pope did not want to either, as he had made clear on several occasions. As long as his mind did not fail, he said, everything else was acceptable or bearable. On the contrary, the abdication of his predecessor, Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), did not sit entirely well with the episcopate 12 years ago when, in February 2013, he made “a decision of great importance for the life of the Church,” as Pope Benedict himself defined it. The man who had been one of John Paul II’s most trusted men endured eight years as pope until he declared, God willing, that he did not have the strength to continue.

To do the work of the pope, Benedict XVI said, “it is also necessary to have the vigor of both body and spirit, a vigor that in recent months has diminished in me to such an extent that I have to recognize my inability to exercise.” Ratzinger, who would spend more time as pope emeritus than as pope, was then 85 years old, three years younger than Francis.

Both Benedict XVI and Francis lived their pontificates under the shadow of the very popular John Paul II.

Alessandra Benedetti – Corbis/Getty Images

The most recent pope was, at 88, one of the longest-living popes of all time. In fact, he has been the longest-living of the last centuries, with the exception of Leo XIII, who died in 1903 at the age of 93. Although he is not a bad example: His last years of pontificate were full of reforms and activity. But being a pope in recent decades is not the same as being a pope in the early 20th century. Not only has the world changed inside and outside the Vatican, but so has the very way of executing the role of pope. Today, even though the impact of the popes already transcends their faith, and their figures are expected to be a world reference even beyond their faithful, the Vatican remains one of the strangest countries in the world. From its very conception, its only reason for being a country has been to provide a state (Vatican City) that hosts the institution that governs the Catholic Church (the Holy See). It has no constitution, but it does have a fundamental law that starts by making things clear from the beginning: The pope is an absolute monarch who rules as “sovereign of the Vatican City State.” He has full legislative, executive, and judicial powers.”

But what does the pope rule over?In addition to his responsibility to those 1,375 million Catholic souls and his duties as bishop of Rome, the pope, head of state, rules over one of the smallest micronations on the planet: 44 walled hectares, erected from the Roman cemetery in which St. Peter would be buried, located on the right bank of the Tiber, on a hill opposite the seven hills of classical Rome, from which it receives its name. It is one of the least-populated: It has only 673 citizens, of whom just over 450 reside in the Vatican. A quarter of these are soldiers, the Pontifical Swiss Guard, who receive temporary citizenship for the duration of their service and who directly defend the pope, not the state. The rest work abroad, mainly in diplomatic missions. It is the only country that has just one demographic column, the one that shows deaths, because no one can be born a Vatican citizen, only acquire citizenship, and always on a temporary basis, for the duration of their mission or service. It is also possibly the only country in the world in which—“at present,” according to the Vatican itself—there are no pets.

The strangeness does not end there. It has no official language (Latin is the language of the Holy See, not of Vatican City), but it does have its own currency. It was formerly the Vatican lira, but since 2002, it’s been the euro, which it can use despite not being part of the European Union. The faces of the three sitting pontiffs since 2002 adorn the currency. The Vatican also has a unique diplomatic body: the apostolic nuncios, who serve as ambassadors to a particular country and act as diplomats to the churches of each nation. There are no hospitals in the Vatican, but there are some 3,500 external workers—a third of which are women. Giving more say to women, both in the secular and episcopal spheres, is one of the milestones that Francis’s pontificate boasted the most. Among these workers there are also some 150 members of the Gendarmerie, the Vatican police, whose commander receives citizenship and holds the rank of prefect, which is more or less equivalent to that of minister.

This division between the Vatican and the Holy See serves another purpose: Although he has power, the pope does not govern the state. However tiny it may be, earthly and day-to-day affairs would consume the real mission of the pontiff. These fall on the Vatican secretary of state, who serves as a sort of prime minister. The post has been held by the Italian Pietro Parolin since 2013. A diplomat of the Holy See since the age of 31, seasoned on three continents and with several services as deputy secretary of the Vatican on missions, he was the most logical choice when his predecessor retired in 2013, when Francis was already serving as pope. He was named cardinal a few months later and has just turned 70. Two other secretaries depend on Parolin, whose main mission is to translate encyclicals and other papal texts into policy: the one for general affairs (who is currently an interim) for internal matters, and the British cardinal Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for relations with states, who could be seen as a foreign minister, one of the most important positions in a country that can be considered a diplomatic superpower.

A diplomacy with centuries of experience, but which has had to be transformed with the passage of time, the stature of today’s Vatican is a shadow of what once were the mighty Papal States: large portions of land of what we now call Italy at the service of the popes and their “courts.” Defended not by 150 soldiers but by armies of thousands of men, cavalry, and artillery units under the command of the captain general of the Church—an office that traditionally used to go to the nephew, grandson, or brother of the pope. For a millennium, the Vatican was a European force to be reckoned with, with enough power to maintain its status as arbiter of the European monarchies. From there also comes the image of games and power play that surrounds the Vatican today: The fame of the Vatican comes from tradition, but the present Vatican is a concession of 1929, a gift from Mussolini to Pius XI restoring the status of nation to the papacy, which had been left with nothing in the 19th century, after capitulating first to France and then to the newly unified Italy. Today’s Vatican has only the physical symbols of what it was as a nation.

Something similar has been happening to the Holy See for half a century. The image of that curia of intrigues has been moving away from reality, little by little, since 1978. The culprit? “John Paul II, who was very badly received for not being Italian [Karol Wojtyla was Polish] in a Vatican that believed itself to be the center of the Church,” according to journalist and writer Juan Vicente Boo, one of the best connoisseurs of the country. The author of essential titles such as Deciphering the Vatican: From Inside and Out (Espasa, 2021), a book that opens with the words of Francis to Boo during one of the pope’s trips: “How do you explain the world inside the Vatican? I don’t even know!” This was one of many exchanges the pope had with the one who was Vatican correspondent for 23 years for ABC, a role that began as an accident, when John Paul II’s health failed in 1998 and the seasoned journalist, an expert in defense and international issues, was “asked to go there for a few months to cover the relay.” But the Polish pope, who had even lost his speech, like Francis in his last days, would recover and make it to 2005: “You never know how the health of a pontiff will evolve.”

For almost two centuries, popes did not leave Italy, but John Paul II took the papacy out of the Vatican and turned the world into his parish.

Bettmann / Getty Images

Health problems aside, John Paul II was already a global pope by 1998. He was a geopolitical figure who had been key in the last decade of the Cold War, an indefatigable traveler, and he took the figure of the head of the Church everywhere, from the podium of the United Nations to the farthest corners of the planet. And that was the key: As soon as he was elected, this pope, whom the curia did not take seriously, became the traveling pope—the one who crossed practically the whole world in endless tours, with more than 100 trips outside Italy. While popes usually did not leave Italy, John Paul II travelled more than a million kilometers. To give us an idea, Paul VI, one of the three popes of 1978 (he was succeeded by John Paul I, who had a heart attack after 33 days and was succeded by Wojtyla), was called “the pilgrim pope” for having made nine international trips in 15 years of papacy—and for being the first pope to leave Italy since the beginning of the 19th century, of course. John Paul II knew perfectly well who he had to convince of his role: everyone outside of those 44 walled hectares, absorbed in their own history.

Incidentally, during those trips, John Paul II gained the unwavering support of the United States—and found personal kinship with Ronald Reagan—in his particular anti-communist crusade. This synergy was literal in some cases: One of the pope’s informal audiences took place during a refueling of his plane in Alaska. All this was taking place at the same time that a profound transformation of the Vatican began, opening doors to the media—a mission entrusted for many years to the Spaniard Joaquín Navarro Valls, one of the architects of the system that lets us known everything about the health of the popes—and turning the internal structure into something more suitable both for a global world and for a pontiff with a charisma out of the ordinary, who wanted to take his message far beyond Catholics, and knew how to do it.

The funeral of John Paul II in 2005 was the largest in living memory: Three million people came to Rome, forming lines of up to five kilometers long to bid farewell to the pontiff. The Vatican hosted diplomatic delegations from 169 countries, and the event, which more than two billion people watched on television, became the largest gathering of heads of state this side of a United Nations General Assembly. No one before or since, not even Queen Elizabeth II, has gathered so many international authorities for their funeral. Until the last moment, John Paul II was loved—or at least respected—by everyone.

“All this was very intimidating for the cardinal electors, who were coming from a long pontificate and had no experience in conclaves,” says Boo, who lived the process closely. And, of course, after John Paul’s death, “nobody wanted his position. It meant replacing a giant. The choice of Joseph Ratzinger—the most deft of the pope’s confidants, but first and foremost a brilliant theologian, whose main passions were study and writing—was a way for the curia to overcome an insurmountable first hurdle: the task of succeeding the most popular pope in history.

Ratzinger, who had officiated at his friend’s funeral, was among those who least wanted the job: He was 78 when he was elected, even though most priests in positions of power in the Vatican have to step down at 75 (although popes can extend their mission), and all he wanted was to retire and devote himself to his pending writings. He had suffered two strokes and had a pacemaker. “He was terrified when he saw that he was being voted in. He was physically exhausted.” The resignation of Benedict XVI, beyond small (a Vatileaks that was given more credibility than it really contained) and large (his inability to deal with the issue of sexual abuse by the clergy, a mission in which Francis had somewhat more success and commitment than his predecessors) scandals, must also be understood as that of a man who accepted a position that no one, not even he, wanted: perhaps the most ungrateful papacy possible, with the mission of replacing one of the protagonists of the history books of the late 20th century.

Benedict XVI made 24 trips outside Italy, an average of three per year. In Madrid, in 2011, Spanish-speakers coined him “Benedict XV Palito.” This shows the difference between the impact of Ratzinger, who was always perceived as distant, and that of Wojtyla, with his hard-earned “John Paul II, the whole world loves you.” Two years later, Ratzinger claimed to have “consulted with God” on whether or not to continue, and the answer was no: “From February 28, 2013, at 8 p.m., the See of Rome, the See of St. Peter, will be vacant and a conclave for the election of the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convened by the competent authority.”

How does a conclave work?The vacant seat, called sede vacante or apostolica sedes vacans, refers to the interregnum between popes. If the pope dies (or leaves, as in the case of Benedict), absolute power reverts to the College of Cardinals, an institution composed of all the cardinals—an honorary title that can only be granted by the pope and that comes with the possibility of electing popes—whose dean is in charge of convening the conclave in which the new pontiff will be elected. Ratzinger knew this very well because, among other things, it was he who had to convene the 2005 conclave, in which he would be elected pope.

On the other hand, conclave is a beautiful word because it was born solely and exclusively to define these meetings. It comes from the Latin cum clave, “with key,” and arose from one of the longest electoral processes ever recorded, papal or otherwise: 34 months of vacancy and pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, back in the 13th century. This was at a time when the Vatican was more the scene of earthly interests than of the redemption of souls, when the cardinals numbered only around 20, three of whom died during the deliberations between 1268 and 1271. And, without a pope, there are no substitutes. In 1274, after the bad electoral ordeal, Pope Gregory X imposed the current rule: All voting cardinals stay under lock and key, and no one leaves until there is no new pope.

The world is bigger today, and since the 20th century, the number of cardinals has not stopped growing. For the 2013 conclave, there were more than 200. Although only 117 of them had the power to vote: Those under 80 years of age, whose attendance in Rome is mandatory for the procedure as long as they don’t resign (which was the case for two cardinals in 2013). All can participate in the first part of the process, liturgies aside.

“In that ‘pre-conclave,’” explains Boo, who covered both 2013 elections, “there are preparatory deliberations, meetings of all the cardinals present. There, for seven, eight, ten days, as many as they need, they deal with all the issues that seem relevant to them: the problems of the Church, the hopes, the issues or changes that need to be undertaken. And from there, a sketch of the possible candidate emerges.”

One of the returning candidates in 2013 was the Jesuit José María Bergoglio, who was among the most-voted after the death of John Paul II (he came second only to Ratzinger). As he packed his bags in his beloved Argentina to go participate in the election, he was already thinking about his return. He wasn’t eager to leave his country, nor was he in the best of physical states: He was 76 years old and had just retired as archbishop. He was also thinking about what his retirement would be like, with a broken back and the orthopedic shoes he had always been forced to wear. Even so, he left convinced that, no matter how long the conclave dragged on, he would be back by Easter—so much so that he bought a return ticket and wrote the homily for Easter Sunday (which fell on March 31 that year). The first part, the cardinal congregation, began on March 4. And after a week of deliberations, it was decided that the conclave as such would begin on March 12. After five ballots, Bergoglio was elected pope.

In these voting rounds, traditionally three a day, one can also see the importance of this “sketch,” especially now that the number of cardinals is high: None of the ecclesiastical factions alone is enough to elect a pope—not even an alliance of a few. The white smoke—lactose and a couple of other chemicals added to the burning ballots—only emerges with a two-thirds majority. If there is not a consensus reached, or the leading candidate does not fit the profile sought after deliberations, the process drags on.

Since then (and this will remain as one of his legacies), Pope Francis carried out another great internal transformation: He simplified a hierarchy with centuries of rigidity, removing superfluous titles and positions that were previously lifelong. “He turned the Vatican into his executive secretariat,” Boo explains. “Before, priests who started working in the Holy See saw it as a career, with promotion after promotion, a kind of cult of bureaucracy in itself. And that has now disappeared. Now priests come in, they have a term or two of five years each, and they go back. If you add to that the change in the hierarchy, where now everyone is equal, and which has appointed lay people and women to positions of responsibility, it’s a complete change of culture.” The latest of these appointees is the nun Simona Brambilla, prefect of one of the dicasteries (the departments into which the Vatican structure is divided), a position that before Francis’s pontificate had only been held by archbishops or cardinals.

A more agile and transparent Vatican for a pope whose intention was to be a missionary. Francis was not as well-traveled as John Paul II—who was under 60 when he was elected, for one thing—but he decided to dedicate a good part of his 47 trips abroad to tour the poorest and most troubled countries, even those where the number of Catholics is minimal. In 2017, for example, he visited Myanmar, a country that was then undergoing ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority. The pope denounced the situation from neighboring Bangladesh, while visiting in a refugee camp.

In Bangladesh there are approximately 0.3% Catholics. In Myanmar, barely 1%. And among those affected by the forced displacement imposed by the Myanmar regime, it is possible that there were no Catholics at all. His visits, in that sense, are reminiscent of those of John Paul II, who made member countries of the Warsaw Pact, where the influence of the USSR had taken almost all power and legitimacy away from the Catholic Church, one of his main targets. Although the difference is that Francis, a pope in favor of total nuclear disarmament, the fight against climate change, and other ideals not compatible with the reactionary wave sweeping the world, did not count on—nor did he seek—the backing of countries like the United States.

Now, the pope who gave impromptu press conferences, who was “joking and friendly” in his travels, and who dismantled a good part of the previous Vatican structures, “has returned to the house of the Father,” as communicated by his camerlengo, or chamberlain, Cardinal Farrell. The last trip for a pope who had spent his last weeks in a wheelchair or blessing the faithful from the popemobile, at an age that no “traveling pope” had reached before. He depended on third parties to transmit his voice through his writings. Like John Paul II, he chose to continue until the end; and the cardinals can now take an example from the weight of age and the election of Benedict XVI, who preferred to live a quiet retirement to make way for a more vital pope. Francis’s last days have been gentler than those of John Paul II, who was devoured by Parkinson’s disease until he was left without strength or speech. “His suffering was almost a form of government,” his successor Ratzinger would later recount.

Ratzinger was also quoted by Bergoglio in the homily he shared during his return to public appearances, two weeks before his death: “The greatness of humanity is essentially determined by its relationship with suffering.” The quote came into the homily because, “at this moment of my life,” Francis wrote, “I share the experience of illness, of feeling weak, of depending on others for many things, of needing support.” But also of a future in which, he quoted Isaiah, “something new is germinating.”

A pope will emerge from a Vatican crafted to the measure of his predecessor, completely different from the one left by those who came before him and with less and less room to turn back. A pope who, between conversations and votes, will have to be chosen by the more than 250 cardinals—149 of them appointed by Francis in the last decade of his pontificate, with hardly any internal resistance—that are part of the Church today.

Original story from Vanity Fair España.

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