VATICAN CITY — As the cardinals prepare to enter the Sistine Chapel in procession Wednesday for the start of the conclave to pick the next pope, talk is swirling that the throne of St. Peter could go to a first pontiff from the United States. Just as many voices herald the chances of three Italians and a come-from-behind Spaniard serving in Morocco. A Filipino, a Frenchman, a Congolese and a long-monastic Swede are talks of the town too.
Yet as all eyes wait for the billowing white smoke that signals Habemus Papam — “We have a pope” — the wisest watchers have a warning.
Nobody really knows who will be the next pope, at a time of deep church division.
Once they enter the chapel at 4:30 p.m., the cardinals under 80 — including nearly two dozen from countries that have never had a voice in a conclave before — will be sequestered for votes, released only to retire to their boardinghouse for meals and rest, until a new pope is found. Under the ceiling depicting Michelangelo’s outstretched God creating Adam, there will be no interpreters, no speeches, no lobbying (theoretically). There will be only prayer, chatter and votes.
To keep themselves pure of secular influence — and, in 2025, viral social media posts — the serene prelates will be asked not to bring their cellphones. One of the cardinals who is sick, however, may earn the right to vote from his room.
In the hour or so after white smoke, but before the new pope’s name is announced in Latin from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the tea leaf reading will commence. Should a decision come Wednesday — when there is just one ballot, during which consensus is rarely reached — the choice could signify the elevation of a familiar cardinal viewed by his peers as a pillar of stability in unsettled times. Or, that a star somehow electrified the conclave.
Bracing for a marathon
After Wednesday night, four votes will be held during each full-day session. Francis and Benedict XVI were elected in five and four votes, respectively. Should that pattern be followed again, a decision would come Thursday. If the choice bleeds into a third day — or, shockingly, longer — the narrative of a house divided will begin to take hold. The last time a conclave went five days was more than a century ago, in 1922.
Since Francis’s death, cardinals have laid out conflicting visions for the future of the church, and some have been bracing the faithful for what could be a nail-biter of a marathon. In the largest conclave in history — there are 133 voting members in Vatican City — so many cardinals are new and unfamiliar to their peers that the prelates, who normally meet in pre-conclave morning assemblies, held an extended afternoon session this week. Adding to the challenges, not all of them speak fluent Italian — Vatican City’s lingua franca.
“We hope the new Pope will arrive in three [or] four days,” Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako told journalists this week.
In an act of high ceremony, most cardinals, singing the Litany of the Saints as they approach the chapel, will wear red garments with a sash, a rochet vestment, a mozzetta cape, and a pectoral cross with red and gold cord, along with a ring, zucchetto skull cap, and the biretta peaked hat. The Cardinals of the Eastern Churches will wear their own “choir dress,” according to the Vatican.
The news media will find out who the new pope is along “with the rest of the people of God” — when the birth and papal names of the new pontiff are heralded to a throng in St. Peter’s by a senior cardinal, the Vatican said. When the new pontiff emerges for his address, the scrutiny will begin.
Will he select the simple white robes and black shoes of Francis, or return to the bling-y red slippers and red velvet mozzetta favored by Benedict? Will he address the crowd, as Francis did, by humbly calling himself the “bishop of Rome” and, in lieu of a lofty blessing to the faithful, ask the faithful to pray for him instead?
“Popes are always compared to their predecessors,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, 80, a veteran Vatican watcher now in Rome, and who was also in the city for the 2005 and 2013 conclaves. “Catholics tend to support whoever is pope,” he added. “But who knows this time in the age of social media.”
It’s long been said that no one from the United States will be pope, based on the argument that the country already enjoys outsize global power. But there have been whispers in recent days about the rising odds for Cardinal Robert Prevost, a Chicago native who has spent most of his career in Peru and Rome, as well as the traditionalist Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
An American? A Spaniard? A monastic Swede?
Prevost is regarded as a pragmatist who was selected by Francis to lead the powerful bishop-picking department at the Vatican, making him extremely well-known among the voting cardinals. Dolan, perhaps the most recognized bishop in the United States, is a St. Louis native who worked in Milwaukee before he went to New York: a gregarious, TV-friendly figure who prayed at President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
Some experts have noted that with so many new cardinals and in such a big conclave, Dolan’s high profile could help him break through the Vatican’s American taboo.
Several Vatican watchers have been dazzled by Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, a humble Spaniard said to have impressed his peers during his pre-conclave speech and interactions, as Francis did before his election.Romero is the archbishop of Rabat, Morocco.
“I’m fully in tune with everything Francis proposed — his way of acting, speaking, and leading,” López Romero told the news agency of his Salesian religious order last week. “But I don’t say ‘I belong to Francis,’” he said. “I’m of Christ. I’m of the Gospel. And if I love Francis, it’s because he’s pure Gospel.”
As is customary, no contender is publicly advocating for the job, and most are demurring, saying they don’t want the nod. Swedish Cardinal Anders Arborelius, a Catholic convert in a Protestant-dominant country who spent decades in monastic life, said he has been mobbed by patriotic Swedes celebrating his chances.
“It’s a bit ridiculous in Sweden that Swedes are so nationalistic,” Arborelius told The Washington Post. Someone the cardinal knows, he said, had asked an AI bot what his chances were. Arborelius said he was relieved when they were in the single digits.
“I was very happy. Because I don’t have this strong leadership — what do you call it? — management type,” he said.
He candidly outlined the struggle among cardinals over the criteria for the next pope. He said cardinals wanted an evangelizer to cope with “many difficult issues” including the “war in Europe” and “Trump in America.” But less clear is whether the faith needed a “prophetic figure” who was “charismatic,” or someone more reflective and transitional, “like Benedict” was between John Paul II and Francis.
One refrain being echoed, he said, was concern for migrants — many of whom are Catholic.
“If you take that issue, migration … we know it’s a political issue in many countries, but it’s also kind of biblical,” he said. “The people of Israel, Abraham, migrated,” he said. “The church is built up from migrants.”
“It’s part of human history where God brings people to different places. And when we look for a person to guide the church, it has to be someone who somehow answers what we would have seen in Jesus himself, who somehow has to reflect something of his mystery.”
Asked about the harsh critiques of Francis being leveled by some cardinals ahead of the conclave, Cardinal Michael F. Czerny, a Czech-born Canadian prelate and longtime senior Vatican official, described them as typical of an era of social media saturation and intense news cycles where “everything goes without restraint.”
But “Francis invited debate,” he said. “He would not want to be seen as beyond criticism.”
Asked if nationality was being taken into consideration in the selection process, he said, “I hope not, because it shouldn’t be.”
On Sunday, several of the top contenders celebrated Mass in Rome at their so-called titular churches, or the local houses of worship where far-flung cardinals serve as ceremonial patrons. Their homilies are often viewed as papal auditions.
Behind a photo of Francis set among devotional candles at Santa Maria ai Monte, an ornate Roman church completed in the 16th Century, a cleric who was among the late pope’s favorites — Cardinal Jean-Marc Noël Aveline of Marseille — appeared to take a page from Francis’s book of inclusion. “Let’s be unafraid of those who are different from us, because every man and every woman is a brother and a sister for whom Christ died,” Aveline, an Algerian-born Frenchman, told a standing-room-only Mass.
A few blocks away, a favorite of church conservatives — Hungary’s Peter Erdo — defended the traditions of the faith at the Basílica di Santa Francesca Romana. “The main [source] of our knowledge of the historical Christ is the sacred scripture, but also the tradition of the church,” he said. “Tradition is not [just] a counter-history, but rather a testimony.”
