NB: I watch this stuff like people watch college football; the conclave is draft day for 1 guy. I have an advanced degree in medieval history, so this is my chance to scream about this for a short season, only for it to go underground like a cicada, then return in 7-15 years to scream again.
Let's talk about the last 25 years, because they are weird.
Popes have a shelf life. They're generally elected as old men in their own time: prior to the modern era, popes could be in their 40s and 50s. In the modern era, Catholic men in their 60s and 70s are picked because they aren't going to live THAT long. Governance is temporal power -- things that belong to this earth, not to God and the eternal. Nobody wants a pope ruling for decades. There are surprises, however.
In 1978, Paul VI died after a good-size reign of 15 years. Not too short, but getting a little long. The August conclave of 1978 elected Cardinal Albino Luciano, who took the regnal name John Paul. First of his name -- very cute!
He corked it 33 days later.
Just when everyone got home from the conclave, BACK to Rome they went to choose a new guy. Now, the problem is that the consensus candidate was dead -- John Paul had won it in 4 votes. The conclave still only took 3 days, but what ultimately happened was the two remaining heavyweights couldn’t muster enough votes to pull it on either side. Thus, we end up with a 58-year-old Polish Karol Wojtyla. Very young, not Italian – the first non-Italian since Adrian VI in the 1520s. He was considerate enough to take on John Paul as his name too so the monogram would only have to add an II rather than a whole new name.
John Paul’s tenure of 27 years is ridiculously long for a pope. It also proved to be a problem as he began to deteriorate due to Parkinsons’ very publicly. It also didn’t help that he had been a vibrant, young pope who went skiing and was very athletic. The contrast between young John Paul II and the hunched-over, suffering man he was at the end of his life could not be more stark.
And this is where Joseph Ratzinger comes in. To this day, Pope Benedict XVI is still more commonly referred to as Ratzinger, because his body of theology and management of the Vatican precedes his papacy. He was actually ceding power when he became pope; he was head of most of the major bodies of the Vatican under JPII from about 1982 onward. Ratzinger was not a pastoral leader; he did work in churches, but he was more firmly rooted in academia and then in administration. He was brilliant, but cold.
That, and he also preferred the company of cats to people. For me, that’s valid. But it does create a problem when you are the leader of a transnational church that needs a people person to bind them together. Ratzinger could often be clinical in his writing, being very detached from the sinners he wrote about. As a result, it felt as if he had a compassion gap: the person was could be kind to those he met, but the written word was harsh. In conversation, Ratzinger was soft-spoken with the charisma of a parked car.
In the 2005 conclave, the final two men in the ballots were Jorge Bergoglio (future Francis) and Ratzinger; Ratzinger always had a hefty lead, as he was viewed as someone consistent with JPII and would continue the administration. After such a long tenure, a new person was welcome, but perhaps not a theological change. That said, there was a Bergoglio lobby that did not cease to whip votes for him until Bergoglio said openly that he did not want the papacy. If hadn’t, we might have seen Francis start his tenure about 8 years earlier.
When Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, he anticipated he would be pope for a short time… no matter how long God planned to keep him on earth. Ratzinger had been up close and personal with JPII’s decline, and he did not want that to be him, on the world stage, decaying in public.
So Benedict XVI became the first post to resign since the Western Schism of 1378-1417(ish). The Western Schism had seen the election of a Roman pope but then the cardinals had buyers remorse, decamped to Avignon, and then voted in another. Then as it is now, there is no way to de-pope someone without killing them (which is the sin of murder, which is bad). The only way to end a papacy other than death is to willingly resign. In 1417, the competing popes were forced to resign, and nobody really went peacefully….
Benedict retired before he became frail and a spectacle. He willingly resigned. But now there was a theological problem: 2 popes.
Casual viewers of the Catholic Church may notice that Francis and Benedict come from two different ends of the theological spectrum. Despite harping and shrill cries of heterodoxy, neither one is a heretic – the Catholic theological interpretation spectrum is just that big. However, the two of them disagreed on how to approach key issues in the Church. This became a problem under the doctrine of papal infallibility.
Papal infallibility was established in 1870 under Pius IX, the only pope with a confirmed reign longer than John Paul II. He won the papacy at age 54 in 1846 and reigned until 1878, during which time the Papal States were merged into modern Italy. This left the Pope as the lord of a one-square mile country known as Vatican City. It was a huge change. Since the 500s, the Papacy and its curia lived off of and used lands throughout Italy to support itself. When one was elected pope, they were essentially the elected monarch of these lands as well as the international Catholic church.
With the formation of the state of Italy, those lands were now gone. One can interpret the doctrine of papal infallibility as a last grasp at power… or, if one is a believer, a codification of what was already known by Catholics. While the pope is pope, he is theologically infallible. He doesn’t have to be perfect at math or grammar, but if he says something related to theology, it is doctrine. He is infallible in that capacity.
So what happens when you have Benedict XVI as pope emeritus and Francis as the active pope? They come from different ends of the theological interpretation spectrum.
And neither of them are wrong. Both are infallible, somehow.
In short, it got messy fast. Francis would signal support for clerical marriages and making celibacy optional, and Benedict would write an entire book on why that was wrong. Benedict wrote a letter on how the sex scandal within the Church was due to deteriorating Western and traditional values, while Francis blamed the Church institution and the conspiracy of silence: we did it, we need to fix it. LGBTQ issues had the same conflict: Benedict stated these people were constantly in sin and needed to be celibate to participate in church life, and Francis argued it wasn’t his job to judge them, but God’s; they should be included.
This subtweeting and indirect bickering continued almost to the last, with Benedict XVI dying in December 2022, just after Christmas. As emeritus, he didn’t get the big papal funeral, which was fine and understandable. But now Francis himself was starting to decline, and his peak years had been spent with a constant theological debate undermining him among more conservative parts of the Church. This magnified an already dramatic shift from the theology of JPII (which was mostly Ratzinger anyway).
I think – and I think most popewatchers also thought – that Francis might resign when the time came. When he took office in 2013, he said he might make it a tradition, jokingly. Francis was always in favor of a church for the poor and without ego. Resignation is sacrificing your ego as a pope. Francis could live with that…
…but I think he realized that his successor would have the same problems he did if he was alive. There can only be one pope. This is not the Easter Orthodox Church, where the Patriarch of Constantinople is “First Among Equals” in a council. As a result, I think Francis decided to die in the saddle to spare his success the theological problems, especially if they were miles apart.
Now that Robert Prevost of the US has become Leo XIV, that may not be the case. Leo XIII was a pope at the turn of the 20th century that wrote doctrine on the dignity of work, the importance of social justice, using capitalism responsibly, and legitimized unions in order to help these goals along. The name Leo XIV suggests Prevost will be consistent with that mission – and that of Francis, without being Francis II.
Leo XIV is a big surprise, for sure. He is from the Americas, like Francis. He is not Italian, which I thought for sure was going to happen – we haven’t had an Italian since John Paul I in 1978. Prevost does have some questions about two sex scandals around him, though this seems to be heavily disputed; Prevost has engaged the problem and addressed the issue, rather than some of the egregious cases that JPII and B16 just ignored or swept under the table. It’s still unsatisfying, since it doesn’t seem like resolutions have been reached yet, but it’s better than the conspiracy of silence.
That said, he seems to be concerned about the environment (like Francis). He may be onboard for priests marrying, but he’s not overtly in favor of adding women to the diaconate. He seems more reserved about LGBTQ; he decried “more genders than do exist” but he also didn’t support a blanket policy that forbade anyone from blessing same-sex couples; it should be a bishop’s choice in his diocese. He’s ok with giving communion to divorced and remarried Catholics; he won’t stigmatize them or weaponize the sacrament, as some conservatives threaten to do.
Overall, I think he will park the bus on some issues like LGBTQ outreach, but he’ll be more dogged about workers’ rights, protection of migrants, and the environment. I wasn’t joking when I said Prevost might have been elected for the purpose of bitching out American president Donald Trump in English.
Prevost in his style seems to be more traditional, as he let them put the mozzetta on him, while Francis noped right out of that. That said, he picked the name Leo XIV, which conveys the idea of social justice for workers and common people. Leo XIII was the first pope to be recorded in sound or in film – that, combined with the long-ass speech Leo XIV delivered (particularly compared to Francis), suggests to me that the @ pontifex social media may be very active, even if we don’t get as many sit-down interviews or random question sessions like Francis had.
Ok, so I've already started a short essay series to post on this little Hellsite (affectionate), but I wanted to lay out my papal bets before they actually vote a guy in. The last conclave to go beyond a week was the one in 1830-31, so time is short.
NB: I watch Church politics and cardinals like other people watch college football. Draft Day = Conclave, but there's only guy drafted. I do have an advanced degree in medieval history, so I feel relevant for once.
Top pick: Matteo Zuppi of Italy (serves in Milan, born of Rome). Zuppi looks like Big Bird if he was a person. He's anecdotally very kind and humble; he bikes wherever he goes and is nicknamed Don Matteo by the locals. (Don Matteo is also a mystery solving priest on Italian TV, so it's affectionate.) Like Francis, he shuns the swag. He's a street priest -- literally on the ground with people. He is pastoral while also being very academic (5 books with another on the way). He wrote the intro to Fr. James Martin's book on outreach to LGBTQ people. He's ok with LGBTQ parishioners, blessing their unions, and having married priests. Though he's officially stated he wouldn't permit lady deacons, he's academically curious, however. He was Francis' man to go to Ukraine to try to negotiate, and the Ukes liked him even though he didn't come out with a success. He was also Francis's man to start reforming and investigating sex abuse within the Italian Church. He's got the academic, pastoral, and diplomatic street cred, and somehow, he's still a relatable human. He does have a rep of being ferocious when necessary, so I think he could excommunicate someone (with a lot of documentation and footnotes, of course).
Possible alternative: Luis Tagle of the Philippines, who is nicknamed the Asian Francis by some due to how closely their theology and practice are. He is less likely to be ok with women deacons, but would embrace married priests to increase the priesthood in the Philippines. He wrote reforming texts about the sex abuse back in 2003, before the Papacy really got to work on it. He was ahead of the curve. He's very kind and happy, but some worry he won't do well when confronted by antagonism. He also cries very easily; he's one of the younger cardinals at 67, so while that's ok with the younger generation, most of the voters are more uptight about that sort of thing. He also may not lower the hammer on people as hard as Francis did.
Park the Bus: Pietro Parolin of Italy. Parolin looked more likely early on, but his reputation got brigaded by allies of JD Vance and Catholics of that tilt; Parolin was the guy who chewed out Vance and probably bandied about the 'excommunication' word if Vance didn't stop distorting doctrine for political gains (and yes, the Church can kick you out for that). Parolin was very much Francis' right hand man, the Vatican Secretary of State from the moment Francis became pope. Recently, there had been scuttlebutt about Parolin cleaning up B16's abuse mess -- and not telling Francis, which may have caused a rift between the two. Parolin agreed with Francis, but would not take the doctrine further. Parolin always struck me as not having enough pastoral experience; he did 2 years in Nigeria, but all the rest of his work has been in diplomacy and admin -- he doesn't have the same charisma or personable-ness that Francis has. He'd probably read more like Benedict XVI, who was known for his writing and his cats, not his people skills. As the cardinalate trends younger and global and progressive, conservatives may flock to Parolin to stall progress. He may be elected as a 'pause' candidate, to see what happens in the aftermath of Francis' changes.
Dark Horse: Pierbattista Pizzaballa of Italy serves in Gaza. He was the one who answered the phone nightly when Francis called the Christians in Gaza throughout the war. Pizzaballa has been too occupied with his mission in Gaza to tangle in some of the admin business of the Church. We know Francis liked him and his theology. We know he's brave -- he offered himself to Hamas in exchange for the hostages. However, he's not made a lot of statements or done a lot of interviews with the press. He is very well respected, but where he stands on a lot of issues is unknown...mostly because he hasn't had the luxury of discourse when his mission is Gaza. This is a wild card that might happen if the cardinals are in a certain mood.
"We all like this guy. We can't agree on anything else.": Anders Arborelius of Sweden. I've affectionately nicknamed him the Swedish Chef, because he was a Carmelite monk, got called to be a bishop, fell up the ladder, and now he wants to be a monk again so he can cook and watch his mystery TV shows (seriously, he did say this). He handed in his resignation.... then Francis died, so he's stuck being cardinal until this conclave is all over. Being pope would sabotage this, and I totally get why he doesn't want the job...but he might fall up into it again. Also, men who don't want to be pope, end up pope (Francis is the prime example of this -- he waved off the 2005 conclave who wanted him then.) Arborelius is also a convert to Catholicism, so he would be the first non-cradle Catholic to get the post in millennia. He's a Carmelite, so he's fairly mainline Church. His theology is conservative, but not retrograde; he'll talk about the subject, but he's probably not going to push Francis's agenda further.
Wartime Consigliere/"Burn it to the ground" mode: If the cardinals decide to resent efforts to meddle in the election, they may choose someone further 'out there' than Francis to stick it to conservatives. In which case, I think it might be Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg. If you thought Francis was wild, you need to meet this guy. Hollerich has declared Church rules about fornication to be bourgeoisie pearl-clutching. He is not only ok with lady deacons; he's ok with lady priests. He's fine with LGBTQ inclusion and blessings, ending priestly celibacy, giving communion to divorced and remarried people, and wants to work on climate change. You thought Francis was "woke"? Hollerich will make him seem like Naptime Jorge in comparison. This is not going to happen unless there's a particular mood that day. But we've seen stranger things.
Rational follows below:
Universally, it's known that 80% of the cardinals are Francis-appointed. The new guy is likely to be a Francis guy. I do not anticipate a conservative swing in the election; I don't see them undermining the outreach Francis has done. They may not push certain items forward, but they aren't going to turn back and reverse course. So I don't think Erdo of Hungary or Burke of the United States have a shot. The Church struggled with keeping youth and the marginalized prior to Francis. Francis has brought in new Catholics at a surprising rate -- surpassing JP II in the non-European world. More Catholics means more priests, which the Church does need; the Church has had a problem with dwindling and aging populations of monks, nuns, and priests since World War II. The cardinals aren't going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs: for the Church to survive, it must remain relevant and real to people. Francis brought that back, after JPII's declining years and B16's theologian tendencies.
I know there is some rumbling and excitement about the African cardinals, such as Sarah of Guinea, Turkson of Ghana, and Besungu of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The first African pope in 1500 years! However, we must understand that the most conservative part of the Church is in Africa. They are not big Francis fans, particularly for the LGBTQ outreach, but also surprisingly reluctant to permit married priests or give communion to divorced or remarried Catholics. Some quarters of the Church may be on board for this, such as the Americans, but most of the Catholic world trends toward Francis and his progressive approach. The Church needs to grow and change to survive.
One of the first things Francis took a hammer to was the conspiracy of silence surrounding sex abuse. One of the thing all of the cardinals agree on: the Pope cannot be tainted by the sex abuse scandal. He cannot be an offender, an enabler, or someone who helped with the coverup. So if you look up a cardinal and they in some way are being critiqued for how they handled sexual abuse, their chances at becoming pope are lower than someone who was either blowing the whistle or actively investigating…or just wasn't involved because they were too young to have power at that time. (We do have some cardinals in their 40s and 50s, such as Mykola Bychuk of Australia via Ukraine and Jose Mendonça of Portugal.) Parolin has had recent questions pop up; prior to this week, he seemed clean. Prevost and Aveline have had some questions, which is why I've not taken an interest in them here. Tagle had some critique against him, but that rapidly fell apart, particularly when the existence of the 2003-2005 era documents were pointed out to the all-too-eager press.
The one conservative thing that will happen this election: Italian pope. The last non-Italian pope prior to John Paul II in 1978 was Adrian VI from England, serving for less than a year. We've now gone nearly 50 years without an Italian pope (John Paul I was the last; JPII was Polish, B16 was German, and Francis was Argentinian). The cardinals may feel the urge to 'go home', even if they're going more global otherwise.
Well, this IS the hyperfixation dumping ground ...
N.B.: I watch cardinals and rising politics in the Church like someone watches college football, hotly anticipating Draft Day. Papal Election is effectively Draft Day for 1 of them. I have an advanced degree in medieval history, so I'm REALLY into papal elections as a cultural and historical phenomenon.
So what's the big deal about the Pope? How did he get to be leader of the Catholic Church?
This goes waaaay back. A see is a bishop's seat. A bishop is a man who handles the administrative duties of a geographic area known as a diocese, as well as the sacramental (baptizing babies, giving Communion, marrying people, giving Extreme Unction, hearing confessions) and pastoral duties (caring for parishioners, distributing charity, preaching sermons, reading the Bible) of a priest. It's a position of leadership, enabling the bishop to create new priests.
Per Catholic tradition, the first man to be the Bishop of Rome was St. Peter, Jesus's bestie/right hand man/leader of the original 12 Apostles. During early centuries of the Church, the see of Rome was always considered to be a little more special than the other ancient sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Byzantium/Constantinople because of that association. This is called Petrine Doctrine (Rome is special due to Peter being the first holder of the position). This was made concrete in 451, when Bishop Leo of Rome somehow managed to prevent the Huns from sacking the city. It was perceived as a miracle and an indicator that there truly was something special about Peter's See and the man who occupied it. By 500, we have the Pope -- papa, or father, to the whole Church in Western Europe.
It's important to know that minus the Oriental Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church, and a few others that made their own church in response to doctrinal differences, there was only one mainline Christian church across Eurasia. This was the case until 1054.
How did we get a conclave in the first place?
The Papacy -- the government of the Pope -- runs as an elected monarchy. It has done so since 1059. In 1054, the Great Schism between the Western Latin and the Eastern Greek Church happened, wherein the Bishop of Rome (Pope) and the Patriarch of Constantinople mutually excommunicated each other over doctrinal differences, including clerical celibacy, married priests, the dominance (or not) of God the Father, and others.
The Western Latin's Church's response to this was, "We effed up. We need to get rid of corruption." Thus a massive series of reforms followed. Some of these reforms post-1054 included changing the way the Pope was chosen. Prior to this, sometimes, the people of Rome picked him. Other times, the dying Pope chose his successor. And sometimes, kings and emperors would give their input/pressure.
Essentially, there was no systematic way to choose the Pope. That was a vulnerability that led to corruption and abuse of office. Thus the establishment of a papal election. Bishops and Archbishops that were particularly esteemed were given the title of Cardinal and a red hat. The red hat isn't just sartorial -- you can vote for who the next pope is. The first elections were tiny -- less than 10 cardinals. First papal election under this system was Alexander II in 1061.
Conclave -- the election happening in behind closed doors -- only kicks off in the 1200s, when it was concluded that even with only cardinals choosing the Pope, they could still be corrupted by external influences. Also, the number of cardinals -- bishops and archbishops who oversaw an ever-increasing Christian population -- was higher. Somewhere between 30 and 50 cardinals participated in the conclaves regularly during the Middles Ages.
You know that "papal election that took 3 years" that the internet/newspapers are talking about? Yeah, to fix that problem (which was the 1268-71 election of Gregory X), the Church made conclave in 1276. 1276 was a particularly bus-firey year in which 3 conclaves were held, because 3 pope died within 6 months of being elected. Indeed, the last Pope voted in 1276 died in 1277 due to the ceiling collapsing on him while he was working one day (John XXI, who was a doctor of medicine who was still practicing even as Pope).
Conclave and Recent History
English speakers have a tendency to smoosh things together. Char le Magne = Charlemagne. Timur the Lame = Tamerlane. Con clave = conclave. "Con clave" means 'with key', literally. It meant any lockable room, but it's taken on special meaning with the papal conclave, or the secret election of the pope. While the pope is in office nobody talks about what went down in the conclave that elected him. (This did create an awkward situation when Benedict XVI resigned, ending his papacy but not his life; people could talk about his conclave while he was still alive, which is weird. We'll talk about him later.)
When a pope dies or resigns, a conclave is called. The cardinals go to Rome to vote. Since 1492, the vote has been held in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican Palace. Yes, it is a museum today, but it's also a living workplace. I advise you not to rush through the Vatican Museum tour to get to the Sistine Chapel -- it is the last room, and you will miss out on all of the other marvelous artworks commissioned by the Church from Raphael and other great artists.
Up until 1996, the cardinals literally ate, slept, and bathed in the Sistine Chapel. Yes, it sucked as much as you think it did, which is why John Paul II permitted the cardinals to bunk over at the St. Martha Guesthouse. St. Martha's has gotten a lot of attention in recent years because Pope Francis refused to move out -- he came to the conclave as Cardinal Bergoglio, and then returned to his rooms as Pope Francis. Thus he remained, never moving into the Papal Apartments. Francis was notoriously anti-swag, much to the distress of ecclesiastical tailors in Rome -- no more fancy robes to make. As a result, there's literally only one left now within Vatican City walls.
Since the 1830s, the conclaves have taken less than a week. However, there are up to 4 votes a day, so you still get multiple rounds in that time. John XXIII was the last pope to go over 10 rounds, with 11 rounds in 3 days in 1958. This was a byproduct of the Cold War, with two cardinals unable to attend due to Communist regimes. Politics was definitely on the platter, and Roncalli, the future John XXIII, duked it out with a much younger Armenian cardinal, Agagianian. Roncalli won it, despite his age, because Agagianian was not only Armenian (no non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in 1523), but also only 52 years old. Long papacies are not always desirable.
John Paul II is the most recent election that went over 5 rounds. In 1978, conclave was called to elected a pope after Paul VI died. They elected Albani Luciano, who took the name John Paul. Very cute, done in under 5 votes.
Then John Paul corked it 33 days later. The second Conclave of 1978 was complicated by the fact that the consensus candidate was now dead. As a result, after 7 rounds of the Italian heavyweights slugging it out, on the 8th round, a 58-year-old Polish cardinal named Karol Wojtyla was elected in an October Surprise. And again, the non-Italian and age factors do matter.
So since I've hit upon age and national origin, I think that's the topic of the next post.
