Conclave convenes: the cardinals enter the chapel

The cardinals of the church gathered in Rome in the first days of May, and the gathering moved, with the rituals that the centuries have fixed, toward the conclave that will choose the successor to the pope who died in April. The congregation of the cardinals, the meetings that precede the sealed election, had been conducted through the final week of April, with the church’s governance administered and the electors’ discussions begun; the conclave itself, the ballots in the chapel, the smoke from the chimney, will open in the days ahead. The electors’ deliberations have been the subject of the speculation that the rare event always invites, and the speculation will end when the smoke rises, white or black, over the square.

The electors’ composition is the part of the story that determines the options before the chapel. The cardinals under the age of eighty, the ones who may vote, number just over a hundred, and the appointments of the late pope dominate the roll: the majority of the electors were created by the pope who died in April, and the appointments carry the balance that he had shaped through his twelve years, the pastors from the growing churches of the South, the reformers who had shared his agenda, the moderates who had managed the compromises of his pontificate. The roll’s shape is the shape of the field: the candidates that the speculation has named are the representatives of the tendencies that the appointments embody, and the tendencies will be weighed in the ballots that the chapel will conduct.

The options before the electors, as the speculation has mapped them, are the options that every conclave faces in its own form. The continuation of the late pope’s path would choose the pastor from the periphery, the cardinal whose biography and priorities echo the emphases of the twelve years, the reformer who would carry the agenda forward; the consolidation of the institutional centre would choose the curial official, the administrator who would govern the church’s institutions through the challenges; and the pastoral priority would choose the archbishop of the growing church, the leader of the flock that the church’s future belongs to. The three tendencies are not mutually exclusive, and the conclave’s work is the weighing of the combinations; the weighing is conducted in the secrecy that the procedures require, and the secrecy is the part that the world’s speculation cannot reach.

The challenges that the successor will face are the ones that the electors carry into the ballots. The church’s practice in the West is declining, and the growth in the South is the demographic that the church’s future rests on; the governance reforms of the late pontificate have opened questions that the successor will have to continue or revise, and the financial scandals that the reforms addressed have left the administrative work that the new pope will inherit; the world’s crises, the wars, the migration, the climate, will call for the voice that the office commands, and the voice’s register will be set by the election’s choice. The electors are choosing not only the person but the response to the challenges, and the response will be tested by the years of the new pontificate.

The conclave’s opening, scheduled for the first days of May, will begin the process that the church has conducted since the thirteenth century, and the process will end, within the days that the procedures anticipate, with the election that the church can unite behind. The smoke will rise, and the world will read the signal, and the new pope will appear on the balcony with the words that every new pope speaks, and the transition that the death in April opened will be complete. The cardinals enter the chapel carrying the church’s questions and the world’s attention; the ballots will answer the first of the questions, and the answers to the rest will be written by the pontificate that the election begins.