Rome: 133 of the 135 cardinals initially qualified from around the world are meeting in Rome to choose Pope Francis’s successor. The election, which begins this Wednesday, is being held behind closed doors, without any outside observers. In this deliberately opaque election, the cardinals will be completely cut off from the rest of the world to ensure the utmost secrecy surrounding the vote.
According to Burkina Information Agency, cardinals over the age of 80 are not eligible for this election. The Catholic Church has at least 1.406 billion faithful distributed as follows: 47.8% in the Americas, 20.4% in Europe, 20% in Africa, and 11% in Asia. No lay person can claim this position, although lay people undoubtedly constitute the overwhelming majority of the faithful. Furthermore, the cardinals gathered in Rome to elect the head of the Catholic Church are not representatives mandated by the laity to this conclave, but rather autonomous grand electors, appointed by previous popes.
As we know, the rules are clear: it is the Holy Spirit who must inspire the choice of the 267th pope; the elected person must nevertheless obtain two-thirds of the votes beforehand. “We are here to invoke the help of the Holy Spirit so that the Pope may be elected that the Church and humanity need at this decisive turning point,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals, recalled on Wednesday, May 7, during the Mass preceding the start of the conclave.
Among the 133 cardinals, there are 52 Europeans, including 16 Italians, 5 French, 5 Spanish, 4 Polish, 4 Portuguese, 3 Germans, and 3 English. There are also 23 Asian cardinals, 23 from South and Central America, 17 Africans, 14 North Americans (United States and Canada), and 4 Oceanians. Although the election of the Pope is shrouded in secrecy, the fact remains that the resulting choice is generally accepted unanimously by both voters and the faithful, and causes few post-election crises.
Therefore, non-transparent or non-inclusive elections are not necessarily the least sincere or the least credible.