More than 130 Cardinals will start voting on who gets Simon Peter’s job — the job he had before becoming St. Peter — after Pope Francis, starting next Monday.
“Conclave to elect new Pope to begin on May 7th”
Lisa Zengarini, Devin Watkins; Vatican News (April 28, 2025)“…The Cardinals present in Rome have agreed to begin the conclave on May 7th, 2025.
“The date was set on Monday morning by the approximately 180 cardinals present (just over a hundred of whom are electors) gathered for the fifth General Congregation in the Vatican.
“The conclave will take place in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, which will remain closed to visitors during those days….”
- Viewpoints and Background
- The Catholic Church: Unchanging Basics, Changing Details
- Newfangled Architecture, Old-Fashioned Attitudes —
- — and a Reasonable Request
Viewpoints and Background
Earlier this week, coverage and discussions of the Catholic Church and the upcoming conclave ranged from the retrospective to the silly:
- “Convicted cardinal skips conclave to elect new pope to succeed Francis”
Joshua McElwee, Philip Pullella; Reuters (April 29, 2025) - “Graham jokingly asks conclave, Catholics to ‘keep an open mind’ about Pope Trump”
Lauren Irwin, Blog Briefing Room, The Hill (April 29, 2025) - “Cardinal Becciu renounces participation in upcoming conclave”
Vatican News (April 29, 2025) - “How African popes changed Christianity — and gave us Valentine’s Day”
Catherine Heathwood, BBC World Service (April 28, 2025)
I’ve seen a few discussions of what will be happening at the conclave. So far, this is among the most detailed:
“Conclave to elect new Pope to begin on May 7th”
Lisa Zengarini, Devin Watkins; Vatican News (April 28, 2025))“…What happens during the conclave?
“The conclave will be preceded by a solemn Eucharistic celebration with the votive Mass Pro Eligendo Pontifice attended by the Cardinal electors.
“In the afternoon, the Cardinal electors proceed in a solemn procession to the Sistine Chapel, where the Conclave begins to elect the new Pope….”
“…They also pledge to maintain absolute secrecy regarding everything related to the election of the Roman Pontiff and to refrain from supporting any attempts of external interference in the election….”
The Cardinals also take an oath to faithfully carry out the Munus Petrinum if they’re chosen as the next pope. That’s Latin for Petrine Office: the pope’s job. “Pro Eligendo Pontifice”, mentioned in that excerpt, came out as “For Electing a Pope” when I ran it through Google Translate.
My Latin’s rusty, at best, but that sounds about right.
I’ll be mildly surprised if nobody complains about the “absolute secrecy” angle.
Expectations
“Transparency” has been a buzzword for some time now. Understandably, considering the opportunities we’ve had to notice disconnects between what folks with influence and authority say, what they do, and what they’re — I’d better stop now.
So, how come I’m not ranting and raving about the upcoming ‘lack of transparency’, and how not allowing “attempts of external interference in the election” would keep me from lobbying the cardinals? Or reading what some editor thought about the latest juicy details?
It’s complicated, but basically — I figure that enough folks will be upset as it is, when the College of Cardinals picks someone they wouldn’t have.
Getting even more of these easily-offended folks upset by letting them know why their personal preferences don’t dominate the College of Cardinals strikes me as pointless, and maybe unkind.
Cardinals: Not Just European
It’s been about two decades since the College of Cardinals picked a new pope.
I’d enjoy digging into the institution’s history, seeing what the process was then and how it’s changed. That’s not going to happen, since I’m dealing with a time-and-effort-draining medical situation. Nothing major, but it’s been distracting.
So I took a quick look at a few resources, including this article:
“Conclave: Who will elect the next Pope”
Lisa Zengarini, Tiziana Campisi; Vatican News (April 29, 2025)“…The 135 Cardinals Electors of the College of Cardinals hail from 71 different countries across the five continents….
“…During his 12 years of pontificate Pope Francis significantly reshaped the College of Cardinals, making it a less Euro-centric and a more international body. This reflected both the late Pope’s personal inclination to shift the centre of gravity of Catholicism toward the Global South, with a focus on the ‘peripheries’, and the broader trend that the Church of the future will likely have an increasingly non-European face….
“…However, Europe still carries a significant weight in the College of Cardinals. The old continent is represented by 53 Cardinal electors (some of whom head Dioceses and Archdioceses in non-European countries, or serve as Apostolic Nuncios abroad or in the Curia), with Italy still having the largest number (19), followed by France (6) and Spain (5)….
“…37 Cardinal electors are from the Americas (16 from North America, 4 from Central America, and 17 from South America), 23 from Asia, 18 from Africa, and 4 from Oceania….”
Let’s look at those numbers, how many Cardinals are from which continents:
- 58 Europe
- 37 the Americas
- 17 South America
- 16 North America
- 4 Central America
- 23 Asia
- 18 Africa
- 4 Oceania
Adding those up, I got 140 Cardinals. Five of them apparently aren’t eligible to vote for our next pope:
“…Of the 135 Cardinals eligible to vote, two have confirmed they won’t be able to attend the Conclave for health reasons bringing the total down to 133….”
(“Conclave: Who will elect the next Pope” Lisa Zengarini, Tiziana Campisi; Vatican News (April 29, 2025))
I hadn’t expected to see that many Cardinals from North America. Maybe Vatican News sees North America as extending beyond Mexico, maybe — and very likely — my knowledge of global demographics is a tad out of date.
At any rate, I didn’t mind seeing so many Cardinals from my part of the world. I also didn’t mind seeing that the College of Cardinals is reflecting changes in what I’ll call Catholic demographics.
We’ve been καθολικός, katholikos, universal, catholic, from very early on. It’s becoming increasingly obvious, and that’s another topic.1
The Catholic Church: Unchanging Basics, Changing Details
One thing I like about being a Catholic is that we have roots, depth.
Each time I’m at Mass, I take part in a ritual that’s been essentially the same for two millennia: and will stay essentially the same for however many millennia lie ahead.
By any reasonable standard, it’s a big deal.
“EUCHARIST: The ritual, sacramental action of thanksgiving to God which constitutes the principal Christian liturgical celebration of and communion in the paschal mystery of Christ. The liturgical action called the Eucharist is also traditionally known as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is one of the seven sacraments of the Church; the Holy Eucharist completes Christian initiation (1322 ff.). The Sunday celebration of the Eucharist is at the heart of the Church’s life (2177). See Mass.”
“MASS: The Eucharist or principal sacramental celebration of the Church, established by Jesus at the Last Supper, in which the mystery of our salvation through participation in the sacrificial death and glorious Resurrection of Christ is renewed and accomplished. The Mass renews the paschal sacrifice of Christ as the sacrifice offered by the Church. It is called ‘Mass’ (from the Latin missa) because of the ‘mission’ or ‘sending’ with which the liturgical celebration concludes (Latin: ‘Ite, Missa est.’) (1332; cf. 1088, 1382, 2192). See Eucharist; Paschal Mystery/Sacrifice.”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, Glossary)
Another thing I like about being a Catholic is that trying desperately to live as if it’s still the first century, the 1950s, or some other ‘good old days’ is not a core principle.
We have, over the last two millennia, changed some of our rules, adopted new styles — one of these days I’ll talk about Baroque, but not today.
I figure these changes will continue inspiring fervent pearl-clutching among folks who I’ll hope and assume equate their youth’s fashions and mores with virtue.
Some of our rules we can’t change.
For example, Jesus said we should love God, love our neighbor, and see everybody as our neighbor. Everybody. No exceptions. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 6:31, 10:25–37; Catechism, 1789)
Putting it mildly, that’s not easy. But it has been and will continue being one of the rules we’re told to live by. Some of us don’t love our neighbors, or don’t love them consistently, but it’s still a rule.
Moving along.
A Millennium of Cardinals: Very Briefly
The College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church hasn’t always been there. They’ve been the part of the Roman Curia that decides who becomes the next pope since 1059, but the College didn’t exist before 1050.
Rules for the College of Cardinals have been changing over the last millennium.
Starting in the 12th century, Cardinals living outside Rome could be part of the College. We were going through a rough patch at the time — so starting in the 13th century, Cardinals selecting a pope were isolated from outside influence, and the rest of us kept in the dark about what was going on inside. I talked about “transparency” earlier.
Changes in how the College of Cardinals operates didn’t stop then. From the 13th to 15th century, there weren’t usually more than 30 members. Pope Sixtus V made it a rule that there wouldn’t be more than 70 in the College of Cardinals.
Today we’ve got upwards of 200 Cardinals, with 130-plus able to vote on who our next pope will be. That’s more than 60 over the total I got from that Vatican News article, and I haven’t found where the ‘extra’ Cardinals come from.
Pope Sixtus V’s rule obviously got changed somewhere between the 16th and 20th centuries. But finding, sorting, and making sense of a half-millennium’s accumulation of commentary on the College is far more than I’ve got time or resources for. So I’ll wrap this bit up, talk about more stuff that keeps changing, and call it a day.
Besides picking our popes, I gather that the College of Cardinals is an advisory council.2
The Last Supper: da Vinci, Dali, and Me
About five centuries back, Leonardo da Vinci painted a mural that’s arguably today’s most famous image of the Last Supper.
There’s a scaled-down and re-done framed poster of da Vinci’s painting some 15 feet from my desk, with the door that was cut in the refectory’s wall edited out and a bit of embellishment on the viewer’s side of the table.
I’m drifting off-topic, or maybe not so much.
For many folks, da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” may be the definitive image for that event. That might account for a Protestant theologian calling Salvador Dali’s “The Sacrament of the Last Supper” “junk”.
I agree that the 20th century artist didn’t paint something that looks like it was made in the 15th century. But I think a Catholic theologian was nearer the mark in assessing Dali’s painting:
“Dalí’s true intention, which he has masterfully accomplished on this canvas, is to remind us of what is occurring in every celebration of this mystery of bread and wine: that the worship here on Earth makes present the realities of worship in Heaven.”
(“Misunderstood Masterpiece”, Catholic Theologian Michael Anthony Novak. (2012) via The Sacrament of the Last Supper, Symbolism and interpretations, Wikipedia)
I don’t and won’t insist that everybody should like Dalí’s painting better than da Vinci’s. But I do think that both are, arguably, examples of sacred art:
“2502 Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in faith and adoration, the transcendent mystery of God — the surpassing invisible beauty of truth and love visible in Christ, who ‘reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature,’ in whom ‘the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.’ This spiritual beauty of God is reflected in the most holy Virgin Mother of God, the angels, and saints. Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to prayer, and to the love of God, Creator and Savior, the Holy One and Sanctifier.”
“2513 The fine arts, but above all sacred art, ‘of their nature are directed toward expressing in some way the infinite beauty of God in works made by human hands. Their dedication to the increase of God’s praise and of his glory is more complete, the more exclusively they are devoted to turning men’s minds devoutly toward God’ (SC 122).”
(Catechism, 2502, 2513, and see VI. Truth, Beauty, and Sacred Art) [emphasis mine]
About those two paintings of the Last Supper: I’m convinced that artworks, and ideas, aren’t good because they’re old and bad because they’re new — or that new is always good and old always bad.3
Life, and reality, isn’t that simple.
Newfangled Architecture, Old-Fashioned Attitudes —
Then there’s newfangled architecture, ecclesiastical and otherwise: like the Paul VI Audience Hall, just south of St. Peter’s Basilica. It seats 6,300, serving as a conference site and an alternative to St. Peter’s Square for a pope’s audiences.
It’s not a church building, used for worship, so the Paul VI Audience Hall isn’t, strictly speaking, ecclesiastical architecture.4
But it’s just simply crawling with Catholic cooties, so I ran into discussions of it’s snaky and sinister Satanic symbolism.
Maybe that should bother me more than it does, but after a lifetime’s exposure to my native culture’s quirks — it’s pretty much what I’ve come to expect from the frightfully fervent faithful.
Personally, I like the looks of the Paul VI Audience Hall. Not that my opinion counts for much in the great scheme of things.
I also learned a bit about the new(ish) building, including a smaller meeting hall that’s on an upper level. Spinning what I found into a spine-tingling description of ‘secret chambers’ where deviously deep, dark and dastardly deeds are discussed is an option. But not, I think, a reasonable one.
Instead, I’ve made a few notes about what I’ve been finding, and may talk about Vatican City’s architecture. Eventually.
— and a Reasonable Request
Finally, getting back to the College of Cardinals and picking our next pope, they’ve made a prayer request or two:
- “‘Cardinals need prayers of the humble and little ones, each of us’”
Delphine Allaire, Vatican News (May 1, 2025) - “Cardinals ask faithful to pray for their discernment for new Pope”
Vatican News (April 30, 2025)
Makes sense to me, particularly since the more recent article won’t let me use the ‘I’m not qualified’ excuse. So I’ve added a short prayer to my daily routine.
Now, the usual links to more-or-less-related stuff:
- “Choosing a New Pope: Change and Constants”
(April 24, 2025) - “Venice Biennale Holy See Pavilion: Art and Cities of Refuge”
(May 4, 2024) - “Pope Francis, Politics and Being Catholic: Briefly”
(August 28, 2023) - “Taking People, Pride and Dignity Seriously: June 2022”
(June 11, 2022) - “Infallibility?”
(July 30, 2017)
1 Cardinals, popes, a little history, and a literally universal Church:
- Wikipedia
- Cardinal (Catholic Church)
- Catholic Church
- Catholic (term)
- Central America
- College of Cardinals
- External cardinal
- List of popes (266 and counting)
- North America (the place I call home)
- Pope
- South America
- We’re καθολικός, universal, and I like it
- “We are Many, We are One” (June 4, 2017)
2 A (very) little more history:
- Wikipedia
- 1950s
- Baroque
- College of Cardinals
- List of current cardinals
- Papal conclave (the College of Cardinals, convened to pick our next pope)
- Pope Sixtus V (1521-1590)
- Roman Curia
- The College of Cardinals
Roman Curia, The Holy See- “The College of Cardinals General Documentazion” (updated: February 17, 2014)
- The College of Cardinals [From the Historical Notes in the “Annuario Pontificio 2013”]
- “The College of Cardinals General Documentazion” (updated: February 17, 2014)
3 A famous mural, a 20th century painting, and dubious performance art:
- Wikipedia
- 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony
- The Last Supper (Leonardo) (ca. 1495-1498)
- Last Supper in Christian art
- The Sacrament of the Last Supper (Salvidor Dali’s depiction of The Last Supper. (1955))
- Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan (“Holy Mary of Grace”, a church and Dominican convent in northern Italy; UNESCO World Heritage Site)
- “French Bishops lament ‘scenes mocking Christianity’ at Olympic Ceremony“
VaticanNews.va (July 28, 2024) - My take on performance art that was, and then wasn’t, based on a da Vinci painting
4 Architecture, interior decor, and a Pope:
- Wikipedia
- Church architecture (AKA ecclesiastical architecture)
- Paul VI Audience Hall (newfangled architecture, finished in 1971)
- Pope Paul VI (now Pope St. Paul VI)
- Raphael Rooms (definitely not newfangled)
- St. Peter’s Basilica (the current one, also not newfangled)
After learning about St. John Nepomucene’s story, I further appreciate that talk about transparency. That, and I’m reminded about how God teaches us that believing comes before knowing, and that can lead us to seeing Him in what most of us would consider the unlikeliest of places.
St. John Nepomucene – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Nepomuk – thanks for the heads-up. He’s new to me. And yes – another angle on the ‘transparency’ thing: a case where being “transparent” in the sense of broadcasting information was not a good idea. The king’s name did sound familiar: Wenceslaus IV.
The Wenceslaus I’d known about was Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia: and recognized as a Saint – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenceslaus_I,_Duke_of_Bohemia .
And, yeah: after a while, we’ll be seeing God **everywhere.** 😉
You’re very welcome, Mr. Gill!