The Vatican, on Monday, announced that Catholic cardinals will meet on May 7 to start voting for a new pope, a week after the death of Pope Francis.
According to statement released by the Vatican, the “Princes of the Church” under the age of 80 will meet in the Sistine Chapel to choose a new religious leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
The date was decided at meeting of cardinals of all ages early Monday, two days after the funeral of the 88-year-old Pope Francis, who died on April 21.
The Church’s 252 cardinals were called back to Rome after the Argentine’s death, although only 135 are eligible to vote in the conclave.
They hail from all corners of the globe and many of them do not know each other. But they already had four meetings last week, called “general congregations,” where they began to get better acquainted.
Speaking to Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, 83, a former head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, said there was a “beautiful, fraternal atmosphere.”
“Of course, there may be some difficulties because the voters have never been so numerous and not everyone knows each other,” he said.
On Monday, the Vatican closed the Sistine Chapel, where voting will take place under Michelangelo’s 16th-century ceiling frescoes, to begin preparations.
So far , there are few clues as to who cardinals might choose.
Francis was laid to rest on Saturday with a funeral and burial ceremony that drew 400,000 people to St Peter’s Square and beyond, including royalty, world leaders and ordinary pilgrims.
On Sunday, about 70,000 mourners filed past his marble tomb in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome, after the “pope of the poor” opted to be buried outside the Vatican’s walls.
Bookmakers’ odds
With conflicts and diplomatic crises raging around the world, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was secretary of state under Francis — the pope’s number two — is for many the favourite to succeed him.
According to AFP, British bookmakers William Hill put him slightly ahead of Filipino Luis Antonio Tagle, the Metropolitan Archbishop emeritus of Manila, followed by Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson.
Next in their odds come Matteo Zuppi, the Archbishop of Bologna, Guinea’s Cardinal Robert Sarah, and Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
The vote is highly secretive and follows strict rules and ceremonial procedures. The process could take several days, or potentially longer.
There are four votes per day — two in the morning and two in the afternoon — until one candidate secures a two-thirds majority.
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