A word from the editor in chief: We’ll be featuring updates and reflections from different members of our team here in Rome in these Conclave Diaries each day. We want to give our readers both a sense of who is keeping you informed and explaining the flood of news coming your way during the conclave and also to give you a sense of what it feels like to be here in Rome. As Colleen Dulle unpacks below, there can be a lot of technical, bureaucratic and political detail about how authority works in the church during a time when the church’s central authority is in transition.
But there’s also the reality—never more apparent than in the moment in between popes—that authority is exercised by people. Who those people are, what experiences have formed them and how they have learned to care for their flocks are vitally important to the choice of the next pope. We’ll keep working to help you understand those more human and spiritual qualities alongside all the complexities of how the process works. – Sam Sawyer, S.J.
If there’s no pope, who says whether or not a cardinal is eligible for a conclave?
The neighborhood around the Vatican was surprisingly quiet this morning: The throngs of young pilgrims in matching T-shirts attending the Jubilee of Teenagers were now gone, as were many of the journalists who had come to town to cover Pope Francis’ funeral. This “interregnum” period between papacies is now truly feeling like an “in between” time, a period for the church to stop and evaluate its direction and to reflect on what’s next, embodied by the silence of the eucharistic prayer where we used to say “Francis, our pope.”
That pause during Mass can be quite awkward, and indeed, there is some awkwardness in the church’s administration today. The heads of the Roman Curia offices have all officially lost their jobs, with the expectation that they will be at least temporarily reinstated when the new pope is elected. Some friends have told me they feel unsettled knowing there is no pope, not having realized that his presence was something they had subconsciously understood as unchangeable.
The cardinals likewise feel that awkwardness: Canon law does not give much specific direction about who can make decisions for the church during the interregnum. Just this week, there was the dramatic case of Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was convicted of embezzlement in 2023. Because his conviction was under appeal, he argued, perhaps his right to vote in a conclave could be restored for this election. Some speculated the cardinals may have to take the matter to a vote: The problem was, even the College of Cardinals voting as a body does not have the authority to make Cardinal Becciu an elector again, as that authority lies solely with the pope. This morning, Cardinal Becciu announced he would not participate in the conclave.
One way to get over awkwardness is simply to embrace the awkward situation, and that appears to be the approach the cardinals are taking inside their general congregations, the morning meetings in which they are discussing the needs of the church and what they are looking for in a future pope.
In this regard, at least, perhaps things are less awkward because the cardinals have had so much practice with conversations like this one: 61 of the now-133 cardinal electors, or nearly 46 percent, participated in the Roman sessions of the Synod on Synodality in 2023 and 2024. Although not seated at round tables in the Paul VI Hall as they were in those sessions, they were encouraged to speak about their experiences of the church in their home countries, which is exactly what the Vatican says they are discussing now.
French newspaper Le Monde quoted an anonymous “Vatican insider” this morning who said that the cardinals highlighting their own experiences was perhaps a way for them to put forward their own candidacy without seeming self-promotional. Perhaps, though, it’s also just what they’ve learned works—one of the lessons of the Francis papacy they can fall back on even amid the awkwardness of Francis’ physical absence.
Here are the other stories you need to read today:
- “[Pope] Francis’ critics wrongly assume that his warmth, affection and informality could somehow impede or confuse the content of his teaching,” David Albertson and Jason Blakely, write in an article for America titled, “What Pope Francis taught us: Church teaching finds clarity and power in acts of mercy.”
- Clarity, confusion and unity: the code words in the pre-conclave meetings
- The staff driving, cooking, cleaning and caring for the cardinals who will elect a new pope will swear an oath of perpetual secrecy on May 5.
- Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was stripped of his cardinal privileges and convicted of embezzlement, issued a statement the morning of April 29 saying, “I have decided to obey—as I have always done—the will of Pope Francis not to enter the conclave, while remaining convinced of my innocence.”
- In an exclusive interview with America’s Gerard O’Connell, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, S.D.B., 70, the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, says reflects on the legacy of Pope Francis as “a force for unity in the world.”
- Who was the oldest person elected pope? Youngest? Some fun facts about the history of papal elections.
