Accounts differ somewhat regarding exactly what happened with Pope Francis this past month, but everyone close to the situation agrees that he was very sick and is still recovering. He seems to have stabilized somewhat at this point, but his courtiers are still all aflutter. Speculations abound about what’ll happen when he actually dies, with the hardline faction looking hungriest for the funny white hat.
Today, let’s explore the process of electing a new pope, meet a few of the current shortlist for the title, and—most of all—marvel at what it reveals about the extremely earthly nature of the biggest Christian group on Earth.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 3/4/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now!)
Situation Report: The sudden hospitalization of Pope Francis
This past Valentine’s Day, Pope Francis entered the hospital for “double pneumonia,” meaning an infection of both lungs. Last Friday, he had a “bronchial spasm” after inhaling some of his own vomit. For the weekend, doctors had him on a ventilator. As of Monday, he was still in “guarded” condition, meaning he wasn’t entirely out of danger yet.
Due to his illness, Pope Francis has not made public appearances. However, he has sent out a message for the public. In it, he thanked his doctors for their diligence and his followers for their prayers. Apparently, he considers his hospitalization to be some kind of spiritual unification with everyone around the world who is sick.
It seems likely that Pope Francis will recover and return to work soon. But this hospitalization seems to have spooked a lot of Catholic leaders who are now wondering which of them will become his successor.
Pope Francis is now 88 years old. For years already, speculation has already lurked around the edges of Catholic discourse over who’ll be the next pope. In the wake of his hospitalization, that speculation emerged into the open. A number of candidates are creeping forward to reach for the prize: Leadership of one of the largest, most successful, and most lucrative businesses in all of humanity’s recorded history.
The list of papabile, or Pope-able cardinals
When a Pope dies, a bunch of Catholic cardinals meet together to elect a new one. With all the ceremony and mysticism that accompanies these elections, you’d never guess the Catholic Church is just another big-name corporation beholden to its human masters.
This election meeting is called a conclave. It’s all hush-hush and medieval-feeling. The participants even send literal smoke signals up the chimney to signal how far along the election process they’ve gotten. (A movie even came out in 2024 about a fictitious conclave. Unsurprisingly, it’s called Conclave.)
Unsurprisingly given the generally power-hungry nature of Catholic leaders themselves, the men casting the votes in these conclaves often did so for decidedly secular political reasons. As well, some Catholic rulers wrangled themselves the right to a veto of the vote if they didn’t like the winner.
In 1996, Pope John Paul II reformed the conclave process to make political interference less of a problem. He also decreed that conclaves must take place in the Sistine Chapel, “where everything is conducive to an awareness of the presence of God.” Additionally, only a candidate who wins a 2/3 supermajority of the votes gets the prize.
All the cardinals together are called the College of Cardinals. But not all of them can vote. Only cardinals under the age of 80 may participate in the election at all. Thus, that gives us about 140 voters out of a possible 253 cardinals. Therefore, whoever wins will need to earn about 105 of these votes. Here’s how The Week describes the entire process:
Four rounds of ballots are held each day until a candidate receives the required majority. Ballot papers are burnt after each session, giving off the smoke that can be seen by onlookers outside. If the smoke is black, the cardinals have failed to reach a decision. White smoke signifies a new pope has been chosen.
In the 15th century, Italian watchers of the Vatican came up with a word to describe the men most likely to become Pope. They were the papabile, or the Pope-able cardinals. Nowadays in Italian, the word also means the short list of people who are either the most likely to win an important role or the best-suited for it.
Let’s meet some of the most Pope-able cardinals!
These days, the papabile are almost always cardinals—and high-ranking ones at that. Here are some of the most promising somewhat-more-progressive candidates, with others taken from a list from the College of Cardinals’ own report:
Pietro Parolin, current Vatican secretary of state and highest-ranked cardinal in the conclave. Politically, he’s considered a moderate. In 2014, Francis elevated him to the rank of cardinal of a titular church, Santi Simone e Giuda Taddeo a Torre Angela. Titular churches are real churches in Rome. The Pope assigns them to cardinals to symbolize their connection to the Vatican.
Luis Antonio Tagle, cardinal of the titular church San Felice da Cantalice a Centocelle. Tagle is a vocal opponent of women’s reproductive rights and what he calls “practical atheism.” However, within Catholic leadership he’s still considered progressive. Elevated in 2012 by Benedict.
Matteo Zuppi, another cardinal of a titular church, Sant’Egidio; also the Archbishop of Bologna. According to observers, he’s Francis’ favorite. He’s one of the most progressive guys on the shortlist. Elevated in 2019 by Francis.
And here are the more conservative papabile:
Peter Erdö, Cardinal of Esztergom-Budapest; also Primate of Hungary. Besides those, he’s held other lofty titles in the past. Conservative; he opposes allowing divorced Catholics to receive Communion. Elevated in 2003 by John Paul II.
Raymond Leo Burke, yet another titular cardinal. He’s also a canon lawyer and quite traditionalist. He loves him some Latin Mass and hates him some gays! Occasionally, he tries to pull rank on American Catholic politicians. Several sources mention that he’s not only a big critic of Francis but also the unofficial leader of the cardinals’ conservative faction. Elevated in 2010 by Francis’ predecessor, the ferociously traditionalist Benedict.
Angelo Bagnasco, titular cardinal of Gran Madre di Dio. Very conservative. Officially, he retired in 2020. Currently, he’s 82. Elevated in 2008 by Benedict.
Oh to be a fly on the Sistine Chapel’s wall
This is quite an interesting list of names, but the politics behind the list interests me even more.
You’ll notice that most of these guys are fairly new to the scarlet robes. They’re not the only ones. In fact, Francis also appointed 111 of the 140 eligible conclave voters! And they sure won’t be my grandparents’ cardinals, either. As America (a Jesuit publication) revealed this past October, thanks to these appointments this conclave won’t look much at all like previous ones:
It will be less Italian, less European and less curial but will be more Asian and African. For the first time in history, a majority of the cardinals at the next conclave will be from outside of Europe, quite a change from the conclave that elected Pius XII in 1939, which was 89 percent European.
As well, many of the cardinals Francis has appointed are way younger than the norm. His appointments have lowered the average age of a cardinal from 72 to 62. In a round of promotions this past December, he elevated a 44-year-old and a half-dozen others in their 50s. For cardinals, that’s barely out of training pants.
According to America, Francis likes to elevate men who “reflect his pastoral orientation and concern for the poor.” I’m sure that pleases the conservative faction to no end. I suspect that they think that about the only good thing about all these new cardinals is that fewer of them are based full-time in Rome. That means they can’t make political connections and cultivate cronies quite like the local cardinals can.
Pope Francis rules at a polarized time in Catholic history
For years, a fight has been brewing in the Catholic Church between ultraconservatives and their slightly-less-conservative enemies. Pope Benedict was the ultraconservative faction’s darling. They loved his take-no-prisoners approach to ruling Catholicism. They loved his insistence on LAW LAW LAW LAW LAW. And oh, they loved his ruthless approach to forcing Catholic politicians in secular governments into line by threatening their eternal souls.
In America, in particular, a new breed of extremely hardline Catholics, often called tradcaths, has emerged. They take particular delight in the cruelest, most insectoid of Catholic dogmas and policies. And they hate Francis.
Tradcaths take everything in Catholicism super-seriously except obeying the Pope! But most of them appear to be converts from Calvinist/Reformed evangelicalism—which reminds me powerfully of those vegans who go raw-food or even fruitarian because veganism just wasn’t hardcore enough for them. Obedience to a central authority just doesn’t come naturally to them. They approach Catholicism exactly like the Protestants they will always be at heart. They don’t realize that the Pope doesn’t care what they think, much less that he will never even need to pretend to care.
The problems even Pope Francis can’t fix
While all this maneuvering takes place, Catholic leaders still have to deal with a dizzying array of problems that their business has never faced before:
- Their child-rape crisis is still getting figured out, with victims’ lawsuits still working their way through various countries’ legal systems. These lawsuits tend to get settled for amounts that can bankrupt entire dioceses.
- New scandals besides child rape keep getting exposed—particularly regarding financial chicanery and abusive leaders.
- All through more prosperous Western countries, Catholicism is taking a nosedive in both numbers and credibility. It grows only because of a lack of family-planning resources and human-rights protections in areas like Southeast Asia and Africa. Francis’ racially-diverse cardinal elevations are likely one response to that demographic shift. But I don’t think Western Catholics generally understand just how pronounced this shift really is.
- Churn is still a major problem. Except for the tradcaths, people aren’t converting into Catholicism. Instead, Catholic families in poorer countries are just outbreeding the ones who leave in the West.
- Catholic priests and nuns are aging in place, with too few new ones to replace the ones who need to retire. Tradcaths are giving the priesthood a shot in the arm, but there still aren’t enough.
- (Sir NotAppearingInThisList: You’d think Catholic leaders’ draconian stance on abortion care would matter to more potential converts and current Catholics, but it really doesn’t. To me, all that should be necessary to sour people on Catholicism—if the whole child-rape thing wasn’t already enough on its own to do the job—is telling them that Catholic leaders think women with ectopic pregnancies should undergo humiliating struggle sessions to get treated or else just die. Even the supposedly progressive papabile refuse to support women’s reproductive rights—or really any rights at all.)
So far, Catholic leaders are dealing with all of these problems in the most quintessential Catholic way they possibly could: With lots of bluster and new bells and whistles that ignore the actual problems causing their religion to be in decline everywhere that people have a choice about affiliation—and more than that, effective resources to handle their own family planning.
Begun, the Succession Wars have
When Benedict resigned his post and Francis stepped into it, the tradcaths fumed and gnashed their teeth. Many even began to foment rebellion against Francis, though he easily batted their attempts away. A small number of high-ranking conservative Catholic leaders happily pander to them and get their hopes up.
But Pope Francis is the hero to a huge swathe of Catholic pew-warmers. More than that, his style of leadership seems to resonate much more with a much wider range of Catholics. He’s way more user-cuddly and palatable—even to those who oppose Catholicism in general.
Alas, his sun is setting no matter what direction his health takes from here. The next CEO of the Vatican is likely already shmoozing up the future conclave attendees.
What Catholicism really needs is more Trial by Stone competitions
I can’t tell you who the next pope will be. But I can tell you this: The process by which he will win the conclave election is so far removed from divine revelation and the supernatural that it might as well be high school kids polling Asian men aged 45-60 about bubblegum on the perimeters of a shopping mall. Those voters face days of arguing, forming cliques, re-forming them, arguing a lot more, and hopefully landing on someone who pisses most of them off the least.
The entire conclave process is the polar opposite of what I’d expect out of the highest-level ambassadors conceivable of the god of the entire universe.
When Francis actually does die or retire, what I really want is for the papabile to give us a re-enactment of the Trial by Stone from The Dark Crystal, with each contender grabbing a big sword and swinging at a magic rock to see who can chip off the biggest piece (local archive):
Really, Trial by Stone isn’t any weirder than sending smoke signals though the chimney to let everyone know they’ve figured out who their next CEO will be. And the stakes in each respective fantasy setting couldn’t be more similar, either:
Ownership of vast power and wealth, yes, but of an empire that is in decline with no turnaround in sight—and with their fellow leaders living in fear of the brave heroes rising up to right the many wrongs they keep committing against others.
NEXT UP: Spiritual warfare! Yes, evangelicals are still laser-focusing on their imaginary battle tactics against imaginary foes on an imaginary field with imaginary weapons and armor. We’ll check out some of the new bullshit they’re saying about this time-honored Christian happy pretendy fun time game. See you soon! <3
Please support my work!
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of our community! Here are some ways you can support my work:
Endnote
Media: I run it
Politicians: I own ’em
Wars: I don’t condone but I still bankroll ’em—
Wait! Uhh, I mean allegedly!
‘Cause what goes on in my ledger you’re not allowed to see![“The Pope Rap,” Trevor Moore]
0 Comments