Black smoke pours from the Sistine Chapel on day 2 of the conclave. We answer your questions on how the next pope will be elected.
Francis died on April 21 at the age of 88, setting into motion a highly choreographed series of events and rituals that culminated in the papal conclave.
Here's a rough guide to how it works.
There are 252 cardinals, but only those under the age of 80 are allowed to participate in the conclave. In this case, 133 cardinals are taking part.
Even with the age cutoff, the average age of this conclave is 70. There are just 15 members who are under the age of 60 and only one who is younger than 50.
This year's conclave has members from more than 70 countries, including 10 from the United States.
Before the conclave began, the cardinals took oaths of secrecy and turned over their cellphones before checking into one of two Vatican guesthouses, where are being sequestered without access to television, newspapers or the internet.
The 133 cardinals convene behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel to cast their ballots in front of Michelangelo's 'Last Judgment.'
A two-thirds majority is needed to declare the winner. If no candidate reaches that threshold, the voting continues, with the conclave holding two votes in the morning and two in the afternoon per day until the next pope is found.
Yes and no. The Academy Award-winning film directed by Edward Berger and starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow gets many of the details right, according to experts and church observers. But it also gets some of them wrong — like receiving information from outside the conclave.
The ballots are burned after each vote, and the smoke from them will emanate from a chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.
Chemicals are added to make the smoke black or white.
Black smoke means no candidate reached the two-thirds majority, and the voting will continue.
White smoke means a candidate received the two-thirds majority, and a new pope has been chosen.
There is no time limit for the conclave to elect a pope, but the last three have taken three days or less:
Pope Francis was elected after five ballots over two days.
Pope Benedict XVI was elected after four ballots over two days.
Pope John Paul II was elected after eight ballots over three days.
In order to become pope, a candidate needs only to be baptized Roman Catholic and male. But for centuries, only cardinals have been chosen for the papacy.
And nearly all have been from Europe. Francis, who was from Argentina, was the first pope born outside of Europe in more than 1,200 years, giving hope to candidates from other places, like Africa and Asia.
The intense secrecy of the conclave process means there's only so much forecasting that can be done ahead of it.
But here are some popular names that may get consideration.
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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
100 days of Pope Leo XIV: A calm papacy that avoids polemics is coming into focus
VATICAN CITY (AP) — When Pope Leo XIV surprised tens of thousands of young people at a recent Holy Year celebration with an impromptu popemobile romp around St. Peter's Square, it almost seemed as if some of the informal spontaneity that characterized Pope Francis' 12-year papacy had returned to the Vatican. But the message Leo delivered that night was all his own: In seamless English, Spanish and Italian, Leo told the young people that they were the 'salt of the Earth, the light of the world.' He urged them to spread their hope, faith in Christ and their cries of peace wherever they go. As Robert Prevost marks his 100th day as Pope Leo this weekend, the contours of his pontificate have begun to come into relief, primarily where he shows continuity with Francis and where he signals change. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that after 12 sometimes turbulent years under Francis, a certain calm and reserve have returned to the papacy. Leo seems eager above all to avoid polemics or making the papacy about himself, and wants instead to focus on Christ and peace. That seems exactly what many Catholic faithful want, and may respond to what today's church needs. 'He's been very direct and forthright … but he's not doing spontaneous press hits,' said Kevin Hughes, chair of theology and religious studies at Leo's alma mater, Villanova University. Leo has a different style than Francis, and that has brought relief to many, Hughes said in a telephone interview. 'Even those who really loved Pope Francis always kind of held their breath a little bit: You didn't know what was going to come out next or what he was going to do,' Hughes said. An effort to avoid polemics Leo has certainly gone out of his way in his first 100 days to try to heal divisions that deepened during Francis' pontificate, offering messages of unity and avoiding controversy at almost every turn. Even his signature issue — confronting the promise and peril posed by artificial intelligence — is something that conservatives and progressives alike agree is important. Francis' emphasis on caring for the environment and migrants often alienated conservatives. Closer to home, Leo offered the Holy See bureaucracy a reassuring, conciliatory message after Francis' occasionally authoritarian style rubbed some in the Vatican the wrong way. 'Popes come and go, but the Curia remains,' Leo told Vatican officials soon after his May 8 election. Continuity with Francis is still undeniable Leo, though, has cemented Francis' environmental legacy by celebrating the first-ever ecologically inspired Mass. He has furthered that legacy by giving the go-ahead for the Vatican to turn a 430-hectare (1,000-acre) field north of Rome into a vast solar farm that should generate enough electricity to meet Vatican City's needs and turn it into the world's first carbon-neutral state. He has fine-tuned financial transparency regulations that Francis initiated, tweaked some other decrees to give them consistency and logic, and confirmed Francis in deciding to declare one of the 19th century's most influential saints, John Henry Newman, a 'doctor' of the church. But he hasn't granted any sit-down, tell-all interviews or made headline-grabbing, off-the-cuff comments like his predecessor did. He hasn't made any major appointments, including to fill his old job, or taken any big trips. In marking the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki last week, he had a chance to match Francis' novel declaration that the mere possession of nuclear weapons was 'immoral.' But he didn't. Compared to President Donald Trump, the other American world leader who took office in 2025 with a flurry of Sharpie-penned executive decrees, Leo has eased into his new job slowly, deliberately and quietly, almost trying not to draw attention to himself. At 69, he seems to know that he has time on his side, and that after Francis' revolutionary papacy, the church might need a bit of a breather. One Vatican official who knows Leo said he expects his papacy will have the effect of a 'calming rain' on the church. Maria Isabel Ibarcena Cuarite, a Peruvian member of a Catholic charismatic group, said it was precisely Leo's quiet emphasis on church traditions, its sacraments and love of Christ, that drew her and upward of 1 million young people to Rome for a special Jubilee week this month. Ibarcena said Francis had confused young people like herself with his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and approval of blessings for same-sex couples. Such gestures went beyond what a pope was supposed to do and what the church taught, she thought. Leo, she said, has emphasized that marriage is a sacrament between men and woman. 'Francis was ambiguous, but he is firm,' she said. An Augustinian pope From his very first appearance on the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, Leo has insisted he is first and foremost a 'son of St. Augustine. ' It was a reference to the fifth century theological and devotional giant of early Christianity, St. Augustine of Hippo, who inspired the 13th century religious Augustinian order as a community of 'mendicant' friars. Like the other big mendicant orders of the early church — the Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites — the Augustinians spread across Christian Europe over the centuries. Today, Augustinian spirituality is rooted in a deep interior life of prayer, living in community, and journeying together in search of truth in God. In nearly every speech or homily since his May 8 election, Leo has cited Augustine in one way or another. 'I see a kind of Augustinian flavor in the way that he's presenting all these things,' said Hughes, the theology professor who is an Augustine scholar. Leo joined the Augustinians after graduating from Augustinian-run Villanova, outside Philadelphia, and was twice elected its prior general. He has visited the Augustinian headquarters outside St. Peter's a few times since his election, and some wonder if he will invite some brothers to live with him in the Apostolic Palace to recreate the spirit of Augustinian community life there. A missionary pope in the image of Francis Leo is also very much a product of the Francis papacy. Francis named Prevost bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014 and then moved him to head one of the most important Vatican jobs in 2023 — vetting bishop nominations. In retrospect, it seems Francis had his eye on Prevost as a possible successor. Given Francis' stump speech before the 2013 conclave that elected him pope, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio essentially described Prevost in identifying the church's mission today: He said the church was "called to go outside of itself and go to the peripheries, not just geographic but also the existential peripheries.' Prevost, who hails from Chicago, spent his adult life as a missionary in Peru, eventually becoming bishop of Chiclayo. 'He is the incarnation of the 'unity of difference,' because he comes from the center, but he lives in the peripheries,' said Emilce Cuda, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Cuda said during a recent conference hosted by Georgetown University that Leo encapsulated in 'word and gesture' the type of missionary church Francis promoted. That said, for all Leo owes to Bergoglio, the two didn't necessarily get along. Prevost has recounted that at one point when he was the Augustinian superior, the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires expressed interest in assigning an Augustinian priest to a specific job in his archdiocese. 'And I, as prior general, said 'I understand, Your Eminence, but he's got to do something else' and so I transferred him somewhere else,' Prevost told parishioners in his home state of Illinois in 2024. Prevost said he 'naively' thought the Francis wouldn't remember him after his 2013 election, and that regardless 'he'll never appoint me bishop' due to the disagreement. Bergoglio not only made him bishop, he laid the groundwork for Prevost to succeed him as pope, the first North American pope following the first South American. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
New York Post
6 hours ago
- New York Post
Even liberal Maureen Dowd of The Times admits DC is crime-ridden
Proving the old saw that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, one of The New York Time's marquee columnists has agreed — grudgingly, stubbornly, kicking and screaming — that President Donald Trump is right: There's too much crime in the nation's capital. And, just possibly, Washington, DC, currently under Democratic control, could benefit from Trump calling in the National Guard and other feds to help restore law and order. 'It's ridiculous to drag F.B.I. agents from their desks to be cops on the beat. And the tableau of National Guard troops — even unarmed — raises the specter of martial law being normalized and weaponized,' Pulitzer Prize-winning DC-based scribe Maureen Dowd wrote over the weekend. Then, hold your horses, La Dowd suddenly hit the brakes, skidded, and did a complete 180. 'It is also true that many D.C. residents are secretly glad to see more uniforms. No matter what statistics say, they don't feel safe.' This about-face was brought on by her sister's close encounter with slovenly car thieves. As Dowd tells it, she was having dinner with her sibling Peggy in the upscale Georgetown neighborhood recently when the metaphorical mugging zapped the liberal right out of her: Peg's beloved Buick vanished from its parking spot by Maureen's house. 'Two polite officers who responded to our call said they could do little, amid a rash of brazen car thefts by teenagers,' Dowd wrote. 'One officer said that, even if they saw the perp driving in her car, they could not chase him, because of laws passed by the D.C. Council.' Dowd initially seemed to dismiss Trump's hard-core stance on juvenile crime as over-the-top payback against two 15-year-olds charged with assaulting and attempting to carjack a former Department of Government Efficiency employee. That is, until Peggy's Buick showed up in a park in nearby Maryland the morning after it was snatched — still running, nearly out of gas, with a $215 tow charge she was required to pay, Dowd griped. There was a half-eaten pizza, grape soda cans, fast-food wrappers, a used condom and a pair of debit cards inside, Dowd reported. But cops said they could do nothing to nail the fiends. Insult to injury, Peggy soon received more than $1,800-worth of speed-camera tickets for driving 70 miles an hour in a 25 mph zone, and had to prove the car was stolen in order to get the summonses tossed. Dowd's co-workers haven't gotten the message. Last week, shortly after the president declared war on DC crime, The Times worked double-time to minimize the threat. One article refuted Trump's statement that the 2023 murder rate was the highest 'probably ever.' False! crowed the paper. The homicide rate of about 40.4 deaths per 100,000 people was the highest in 26 years, not ever. And in 2024, that number dipped to some 26.6 corpses per 100,000 Washingtonians But Dowd is not favorably impressed. 'While the district's homicide rate has fallen,' she writes, 'it's almost as high as New York's at its most dangerous, in 1990.' Dowd, whose father was a cop, confesses she packs pepper spray these days to protect her from troublemakers when walking around town, a habit she adopted years ago when her mother drove her to her college dorm with a butcher knife on the seat between them. Her mom also gave her a Chinese letter opener with written instructions on how to find the jugular of an assailant. Over the weekend, Times reporters visited DC neighborhoods populated primarily with people of color to find out how residents felt about attempts to wipe out crime. Perhaps surprisingly to the Times, not everyone in these communities opposes being safer. Though every attempt was made to find people who said they did not trust the president, others admitted liking to continue breathing. Dowd summed things up, writing, 'But progressives should not fall into Trump's trap and play down crime, once more getting on the wrong side of an inflammatory issue. As with inflation, they should remember that personal experiences can count more than sanguine statistics. 'Even if Trump is being diabolical, Democrats should not pretend everything is fine here. Because it's not.' Finally — all the news that's fit to print.
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
100 days of Pope Leo XIV: A calm papacy that avoids polemics is coming into focus
Leo seems eager above all to avoid polemics or making the papacy about himself, and wants instead to focus on Christ and peace. Advertisement That seems exactly what many Catholic faithful want, and may respond to what today's church needs. 'He's been very direct and forthright … but he's not doing spontaneous press hits,' said Kevin Hughes, chair of theology and religious studies at Leo's alma mater, Villanova University. Leo has a different style than Francis, and that has brought relief to many, Hughes said in a telephone interview. 'Even those who really loved Pope Francis always kind of held their breath a little bit: You didn't know what was going to come out next or what he was going to do,' Hughes said. Advertisement Leo has certainly gone out of his way in his first 100 days to try to heal divisions that deepened during Francis' pontificate, offering messages of unity and avoiding controversy at almost every turn. Even his signature issue — confronting the promise and peril posed by artificial intelligence — is something that conservatives and progressives alike agree is important. Francis' emphasis on caring for the environment and migrants often alienated conservatives. Closer to home, Leo offered the Holy See bureaucracy a reassuring, conciliatory message after Francis' occasionally authoritarian style rubbed some in the Vatican the wrong way. 'Popes come and go, but the Curia remains,' Leo told Vatican officials soon after his May 8 election. Leo, though, has cemented Francis' environmental legacy by celebrating the first-ever ecologically inspired Mass. He has furthered that legacy by giving the go-ahead for the Vatican to turn a 430-hectare (1,000-acre) field north of Rome into a vast solar farm that should generate enough electricity to meet Vatican City's needs and turn it into the world's first carbon-neutral state. He has fine-tuned financial transparency regulations that Francis initiated, tweaked some other decrees to give them consistency and logic, and confirmed Francis in deciding to declare one of the 19th century's most influential saints, John Henry Newman, a 'doctor' of the church. But he hasn't granted any sit-down, tell-all interviews or made headline-grabbing, off-the-cuff comments like his predecessor did. He hasn't made any major appointments, including to fill his old job, or taken any big trips. In marking the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki last week, he had a chance to match Francis' novel declaration that the mere possession of nuclear weapons was 'immoral.' But he didn't. Advertisement Compared to President Donald Trump, the other American world leader who took office in 2025 with a flurry of Sharpie-penned executive decrees, Leo has eased into his new job slowly, deliberately and quietly, almost trying not to draw attention to himself. At 69, he seems to know that he has time on his side, and that after Francis' revolutionary papacy, the church might need a bit of a breather. One Vatican official who knows Leo said he expects his papacy will have the effect of a 'calming rain' on the church. Maria Isabel Ibarcena Cuarite, a Peruvian member of a Catholic charismatic group, said it was precisely Leo's quiet emphasis on church traditions, its sacraments and love of Christ, that drew her and upward of 1 million young people to Rome for a special Jubilee week this month. Ibarcena said Francis had confused young people like herself with his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and approval of blessings for same-sex couples. Such gestures went beyond what a pope was supposed to do and what the church taught, she thought. Leo, she said, has emphasized that marriage is a sacrament between men and woman. 'Francis was ambiguous, but he is firm,' she said. From his very first appearance on the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, Leo has insisted he is first and foremost a 'son of St. Augustine. ' It was a reference to the fifth century theological and devotional giant of early Christianity, St. Augustine of Hippo, who inspired the 13th century religious Augustinian order as a community of 'mendicant' friars. Advertisement Like the other big mendicant orders of the early church — the Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites — the Augustinians spread across Christian Europe over the centuries. Today, Augustinian spirituality is rooted in a deep interior life of prayer, living in community, and journeying together in search of truth in God. In nearly every speech or homily since his May 8 election, Leo has cited Augustine in one way or another. 'I see a kind of Augustinian flavor in the way that he's presenting all these things,' said Hughes, the theology professor who is an Augustine scholar. Leo joined the Augustinians after graduating from Augustinian-run Villanova, outside Philadelphia, and was twice elected its prior general. He has visited the Augustinian headquarters outside St. Peter's a few times since his election, and some wonder if he will invite some brothers to live with him in the Apostolic Palace to recreate the spirit of Augustinian community life there. Leo is also very much a product of the Francis papacy. Francis named Prevost bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014 and then moved him to head one of the most important Vatican jobs in 2023 — vetting bishop nominations. In retrospect, it seems Francis had his eye on Prevost as a possible successor. Given Francis' stump speech before the 2013 conclave that elected him pope, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio essentially described Prevost in identifying the church's mission today: He said the church was 'called to go outside of itself and go to the peripheries, not just geographic but also the existential peripheries.' Prevost, who hails from Chicago, spent his adult life as a missionary in Peru, eventually becoming bishop of Chiclayo. Advertisement 'He is the incarnation of the 'unity of difference,' because he comes from the center, but he lives in the peripheries,' said Emilce Cuda, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Cuda said during a recent conference hosted by Georgetown University that Leo encapsulated in 'word and gesture' the type of missionary church Francis promoted. That said, for all Leo owes to Bergoglio, the two didn't necessarily get along. Prevost has recounted that at one point when he was the Augustinian superior, the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires expressed interest in assigning an Augustinian priest to a specific job in his archdiocese. 'And I, as prior general, said 'I understand, Your Eminence, but he's got to do something else' and so I transferred him somewhere else,' Prevost told parishioners in his home state of Illinois in 2024. Prevost said he 'naively' thought the Francis wouldn't remember him after his 2013 election, and that regardless 'he'll never appoint me bishop' due to the disagreement. Bergoglio not only made him bishop, he laid the groundwork for Prevost to succeed him as pope, the first North American pope following the first South American.
