How exactly do they go about deciding on a new Pope, let’s find out.

So the Pope’s dead, now what?

When a Pope dies, or in some instances, resigns, there are a whole set of rules and procedures that kick into place. The biggest one being the authority and decision-making passes from the deceased, or retired, Pope to the College of Cardinals, who will manage the Catholic Church until a new Pope can be elected.

You can recognise a Cardinal by their red vestments or robes they wear, and it is their responsibility to decide who will be the new Pope.

While the College of Cardinals are in charge, they sort out a couple of things like the previous Pope’s funeral and burial arrangements and observe the required period of mourning, which usually comes to about 15 days. And stuff that only a Pope can do, like appoint a new bishop, just has to be put on hold and wait until a new Pope has been chosen.

How to decide?

Now the 15 to 20 days following the death of the Pope, allows cardinals to travel from all around the world to St. Peter’s Basilica for a very special Mass. This period is known as the summoning of the Cardinals. And they are brought to Rome to decide on a very serious decision, that of a new Pope.  

Popes can only be chosen by the College of Cardinals, which are the Church’s most senior officials, and these people are personally appointed by the previous Popes themselves.

Once they have all arrived at the Vatican, bar a few who may be too unwell to travel, they create the papal conclave, and this is the process by which a Pope is elected.

Now in order to keep things civil, you’re only allowed to vote in the conclave if you’re a cardinal and you’re under the age of 80, oh and there can’t be more than 120 cardinals doing the voting.

Just before the conclave starts, the cardinals who will be doing the voting, otherwise known as the cardinal electors, all file into the Sistine Chapel where they take an oath of absolute secrecy. What goes on in the papal conclave, stays in the papal conclave.

Once the doors to the Sistine Chapel are sealed the cardinals are on their own. They’re not allowed to have any contact with the outside world. The Sistine Chapel is even swept for hidden microphones before hand, and signal jammers are in place for the duration of the conclave to prevent any electronic communication between the cardinals and those not involved in the conclave. It’s all very hush hush.

Now while we don’t really know the super specifics of what goes on behind those sealed doors, we do have a pretty rough idea of the process the cardinals go through.

Interestingly, when choosing the next Pope, the cardinals don’t have to choose one of themselves, technically they can choose any baptised male catholic to be Pope, though having said that traditionally it is a cardinal that becomes Pope, and that has been the case since the 15th century, but the way things are going you just never know what the next papal election could hold.

While campaigning as a cardinal is forbidden, at its essence the papal election is a political process. So while the cardinals are largely guided by the Holy Spirit, there are also coalitions that forge alliances and even use the influence of senior cardinals who may be too old to vote themselves but can still exert their influence on others. It’s all very political.

The way the cardinals vote is by secret ballot, they each write down a name on a sheet paper, fold it carefully and then one by one they proceed up to Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgement, they say a prayer and then drop their ballot into the chalice.

There are usually four rounds of voting every day, and for a candidate to be successful they must get a two-thirds majority.

After everyone’s voted, the ballots are counted aloud and if no majority has been found then the ballots are burnt, releasing a black smoke through the chimney for the rest of the world to see that no Pope has been chosen.

This process may only take a couple of days, or it may take several weeks or even months, in the past centuries some cardinals have even died while taking part in the conclave.

If there’s been three days and a pope hasn’t been decided upon, then the cardinals will have a day off where they can reflect and pray, and presumably talk amongst each other and try to bolster their alliances.

Once a cardinal finally receives the two-thirds majority, he is asked by the Dean of the College of Cardinals first off if he accepts to be made Pope. Now he’s got two choices here, he can accept and then choose a papal name and get fitted for his papal vestments and proceed out into the world as the new Pope. But he can also tell the Dean that he has no intention of becoming Pope, in which case the voting will start all over again.

Once a new Pope has been decided and has accepted the new role, the ballot papers will once again be burned but instead of black smoke rising from the chimney, the world will see white smoke, an indication that the new Pope has been chosen and his announcement to the world is imminent.

The new head of the Catholic Church

Now that the new Pope has been chosen, the rest of the world must be informed. And this is traditionally done from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica. The senior cardinal deacon steps out on the balcony and announces, in Latin of course, that there is a new Pope, before the new Pope himself steps out and gives his blessing to the City of Rome and the whole world.

It's quite the fanfare, and I can only imagine the crowds the next time a papal conclave is called.

It’s also here that his new papal name will be revealed and his new role will begin as the newly-elected pontiff.

And then of course there’s the pomp and pageantry of a formal coronation that will occur a couple days after the election.

So there appears to be quite an exciting time, and a great deal of history and tradition when it’s time for a new Pope to lead the Catholic Church into the modern era. Can you just imagine what it would have looked like centuries ago when the Pope had so much more political power than they have today. To have been a fly on the wall during those conclaves.

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