Who they are, where they come from: NPR

Cardinals watch when Pope Francis’s body is moved to the basilica on the St. Peter Square in Vatican City on Wednesday. The College of Cardinals is preparing that a conclave chooses the next Pope after days full of funeral rites and observations have been completed.

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The death of Pope Francis in the Roman Catholic Church has set up centuries-old machines: Cardinals come together on the Vatican from all over the world to first mourn and honor Francis and later give their voices for his successor.

But the composition of today’s College of Cardinals and voters, who form the important conclave-but will be different from everyone who has come before.

Here is a short guide:

There are 135 cardinal voters

Not every cardinal can vote in the complain: Those who choose the next Pope must be younger than 80 years old, for example. Of the 252 cardinals at the time of the death of Francis, there are 135 voters.

Francis appointed 108 of the 135 Cardinal voters, as the Vatician emerges from the Vatican.

The rules of the Church require that the conclusions begin or step back 15 to 20 days after the death of a Pope. Cardinals can start the procedure before the 15-day mark, but only if all voters are present.

College of Cardinals is no longer in the majority in Europe

Under Pope Francis, the College of Cardinals came closer to the reflection of the global Catholic Church, a suitable legacy for the first Pope from South America.

With the current composition of the college, this will be “the slightest European conclave in history”, Gregg Gassman, a librarian who is the hosts Machine history Podcast said NPR.

Francis reached far and wide to give countries such as Haiti, Laos and Rwanda their first cardinals. In his papacy, the representation of the Asia on College of Cardinals also increased to 17%with 23 voters – the second only in Europe.

According to the Catholic intelligence service, at least 70 countries now have cardinals from the Vatican, including 10 from the United States, the 2013 conclaves in which chosen Francis from cardinals from 48 countries.

Europe accounts for about 40% of voters, while the Vatican has a little more than 20% of the Catholic community in the world in March. The 53 voters are more than twice as many other geographical region, but the composition of the new conclave is still reflected in a century of change.

Only Europeans took part in the consequence of 1922, said Gassman. Of four cardinals in North and South America at that time, he added, three could not get to Rome quickly enough by boat after the complies began, and the fourth did not decide to travel.

“They had to extend the rules to enable more travel time,” said Gassman. “And as soon as they did, planes became more of a matter of one thing.”

How the conclave will play

According to experts such as Massimo Faggioli, a church historian and professor at Villanova University, the consequence of 2025 promises to be a complex meeting outside of Philadelphia.

“This time it is really a much more complicated chemistry,” said Faggioli from Leila Fadel from NPR. “Because there is also a very complicated international situation that affects different cardinals, different local churches in different ways. This time it is even more difficult than usual to make predictions, even on the agenda of the conclave.”

It is particularly difficult that several experts said to predict how the opinions of a historically diverse group of voters will merge to select the successor of Pope Francis.

On the one hand, there are concerns that the size of the College of Cardinals with more than 130 voters could make it difficult to reach a consensus.

“You don’t know each other. You rarely meet and only for some celebrations,” said Kurt Martens, ordinary professor of canonical law at the School of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, as he added, it is that factions may jump up and share the consequence.

“What the conclave and the next Pope cannot do is to ignore and deny the changing characteristics of global Catholicism, which is much less European, much less, less North American and global, said Villanova’s Faggioli,” which is not necessarily liberal, but certainly much more critical against capitalism as it is today. “

Deans have a top -class platform

The task of cardinals in the Vatican and the monitoring of the conclave falls to the Dean of the College of Cardinale. In the film conclaveRalph Fiennes portrays the mighty figure.

Deans have a significant impact on the assembly, including the chairman of a special mass and the provision of a preacher in which you can think of the voters. Some deans were even selected as Pope, including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the 2005 Pope Benedict XVI.

The current dean, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, is 91. Because of his age, he will celebrate the top-class trade fair, but neither re nor the Vice Dean, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri (81), will join the conclusion. Instead, it is supervised by the most high -ranking voters: Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was Francis’ Foreign Minister.

For the cardinal voters, it is “enormous responsibility” to choose the next Pope, said Martens of the Catholic University. “It is an enormous tension that lies on you.”

The uncertainty is an all -round part of the process, added Martens.

“Those who hope that they will be Pope – remember that there is a saying that enters the conclave as a pope comes out as a cardinal, so the favorite never wins.”