Conclave

Conclave:  late Middle English (denoting a private room): via French from Latin conclave ‘lockable room’, from con- ‘with’ + clavis ‘key’.

May 7, 2025

Today is the start of the Conclave to choose the 267th Pope, the head of Apostolic Christianity.

Cont:

As a note, nobody has a clue who will be picked to be the next Pope, in spite of all the rampaging speculation and commentary.

Cont:

First vote, no Pope selected.

May 8, 2025

The vote this morning did not result in the election of a new Pope.

Cont: 

White smoke.  A new Pope has been chosen.

Cont:

Robert Cardinal Robert Prevost is now Pope Leo XIV.

Related threads:

Reuters getting it wrong.

Lex Anteinternet: The Shoes of the Fishermen, Tax Collectors, Tent M...Twenty-One New Cardinals.

Churches of the East: Neither Conservative nor Liberal

Churches of the East: Neither Conservative nor Liberal:   Neither Conservative nor Liberal

Novemdiales

We, or at least the Apostolic Christian world, is in the Novemdiales, that being a nine day period of mourning which commenced yesterday, with the funeral Mass for Pope Francis.

The whole world is also in the period of rampaging inaccurate punditry about who will be the next Pope.

Nobody knows who is going to be the next Pope.  It could be one of the people mentioned, or might be somebody nobody has ever heard of.  Even if it is somebody nobody has every heard of, the Press will pretend like they've heard of him after the fact.

It's also a series of days in which anti Catholics will increasingly attack the Catholic Church, with those attacks being particularly strong in the United States, and particularly coming from both secular atheists and a certain branch of Evangelical Protestants, although certainly not all of them by any means.  I've already seen one such post loudly complaining that the whole world takes note of a passing Pope while the death of a local pastor is ignored.

Well, there's a reason for that.

The speculation will continue until the shoes of the fisherman are filled, and his seat taken.  During the interregnum the speculation will be rampant, and it will be for a time thereafter as well.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Related Threads:

From City Father:

What's Next?

Passing of Pope Francis.

Pope Francis died this morning at age 88.

A Conclave to choose the 267th successor to St. Peter must commence within fifteen to twenty days of today's date..

Reuters getting it wrong.

From a Reuters news article:

Cardinals under 80, known as cardinal-electors, can enter a secret conclave to choose a new pope from their own ranks after Francis dies or resigns. Francis, the former cardinal-archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected in a conclave on March 13, 2013.

Nope, that's not right.

Now this is, of course, from an article that addresses Pope Francis having appointed new Cardinals yesterday.  Reuters, in this article, attempts explain what that means.

And what it states here is that the Cardinal Electors must choose from their own ranks. They do not have to do that.

The only real requirement to be elected to the Papacy is that the elected figure be a male Catholic, and hence eligible for Holy Orders. That's it.  In order to be elected you do not have to be a "Roman" Catholic, only a Catholic (a man from the Eastern Rite could be elected), nor do you even have to be a Priest.  You do have take Holy Orders in order to become Pope, so under the wild hypothetical of a non Priest being chosen you would have to see something like what occurred occasionally in the past where a layman was ordained and then elevated to Bishop (in this case the Bishop of Rome) in a single day.

Will that happen?  Well, no, its not very likely.

But could the College of Cardinals choose somebody outside their ranks?  It's unlikely, but it certainly could happen.