The Sacred College of Cardinals will assemble in Vatican City from tomorrow (May 7) to elect the successor to Pope Francis, who died on April 21 2025, and the leaders of the 1.4 billion Catholics.
In the tradition of the Catholic Church, this position attracts no open campaigns, so no candidates are expected to present or publish their names beforehand.
Not only do the cardinals (electors) take an oath of secrecy, but The Vatican drivers, health care workers, kitchen staff and anyone else in contact with the cardinals will swear an oath of secrecy to never divulge any information pertaining to the papal elections.
While any baptised Catholic male is canonically eligible to be elected a Pope, in practice, the College of Cardinals typically chooses one of its members.
The last time a non-cardinal was elected was in 1378 when Pope Urban VI, then the Archbishop of Acerenza in Italy, was elected.
In the Catholic Church’s tradition, the election of a new Pope will be similar to the process that saw St Peter become the first Pope through a combination of divine appointment and his role as a key figure in the early Church.
The Bible tells us that St Peter denied Jesus three times in his hour of need, yet Jesus still named him the “rock” upon which the Church would be built.
Peter was then given the keys to the kingdom (Matthew 16:19), signifying authority and leadership.
After this, Peter established a Christian community in Rome, which later became the seat of the papacy.
St Peter’s election as the head of the Church was, therefore, divine, a core tenet of the Catholic Church and its related traditions.
These traditions are what should be considered when talking about the forthcoming papal election.
Therefore, any of the cardinals participating in the papal conclave can be elected the next Pope through divine intervention.
The Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis (UDG) says the limit of voting cardinals should be 120.
So, this conclave will have 13 more participants than the College of Cardinals has announced will be participating next week.
However, this is not the first time the number of elector Cardinals has exceeded the 120 limit set by Pope Paul VI on October 1, 1975.
Prior to this, in the consistory of 1969, the College of Cardinals reached 134 electors.
There are 252 cardinals in the current College of Cardinals.
The rules of the Catholic Church, however, state that cardinals must be under 80 years of age to participate in a papal conclave.
This means that those over 80 are ineligible to vote or be elected. The cardinals eligible to vote are 135, but two have opted out of the conclave for personal reasons reducing the number to 133.
The two are Kenya’s Cardinal John Njue and Spain’s Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, both aged 79.
Njue is the second Kenyan prelate to be elevated to cardinal after Maurice Michael Otunga.
Before being created a cardinal in 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI, Njue served the Church in Kenya as coadjutor archbishop of Nyeri and apostolic administrator of Isiolo.
The Vatican recently updated Njue’s birth date record in the latest Pontifical Yearbook to January 1, 1946, meaning the archbishop emeritus holds the right to vote in a conclave until January 1, 2026.
The Church requires at least 89 votes, a two-thirds majority, to elect the new pontiff and successor of Pope Francis to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
The College of Cardinals released a declaration on April 30 recognising the right of all 133 electors to participate in the upcoming conclave and determining that Pope Francis had tacitly dispensed with the legislative provision of UDG when the set limit was surpassed.
During his 12 years of pontificate, Pope Francis significantly reshaped the College of Cardinals, making it less Eurocentric and more international.
This reflected both the late Pope’s inclination to shift Catholicism’s centre of gravity toward the Global South hence the Church of the future will likely have an increasingly non-European face.
Mr Sunguh is a member of the Communications Commission of the Synod of Bishops in the Vatican and the past immediate President of the Union of the Catholic African Press
By George Sunguh