It's Sunday morning and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, is getting ready for Mass. Every member of the College of Cardinals is assigned a Roman church that they're nominally in charge of. And days before the beginning of the conclave to select the next pope, Dolan is visiting his church to celebrate 1115 Mass.
The ceremonies and rituals surrounding the death of one pope and the election of another all take place in ornate ancient cathedrals. That is not the scene at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mount Mario, in a residential Roman neighborhood. It looks like scores of other parish churches around the globe. The statue of Jesus isn't sculpted by Michelangelo. It's a painted plaster of Jesus with a sacred heart and red robe. The prayers of the faithful are read by an Italian teenager wearing a hoodie.
Dolan delivers his homily in Italian. He tells the congregation that Our Lady of Guadalupe is his second parish after St. Patrick. And he asked them to pray for him and the other cardinals, saying they need the Holy Spirit as they enter the upcoming conclave. E adesso ricordo le parole di Papa Francesco. Then he says he recalls Pope Francis' advice to keep homily short and says,
Enough. The mass ends. Cardinal Dolan stands at the door of the church greeting parishioners, posing for pictures of children and babies. And after that, he spends a few minutes with another important contingency, the media. Reporters from all over the world crowd around him asking questions about the coming conclave. and what he wants to see in the next pope. You know we're blessed because with all the popes we've recently had, you see so many great characteristics, and you kind of hope.
that maybe we could blend them all. I'm thinking obviously of Papa Francesco. I think, though, of Benedict XVI with his intense intellect. I'm thinking of Pope St. John Paul II with his courage and his call to... to follow Jesus. If we get a beautiful combination. What are you taking from your experience in 2013? How has that affected? It helps. I was so nervous last time, and I thought, now what do I do? But now I feel kind of seasoned, a little more relaxed. Consider it.
Cardinal Dolan begins this week as a member of the College of Cardinals. Starting Wednesday, he, like any of his peers, could become the next pope. Coming up, NPR's Sylvia Pejoli explains what happens in a conflict. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.
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In the wake of 9-11, anthrax-laced letters unleashed a new wave of terror across the nation. But who was behind the attacks, and why has America nearly forgotten this story? Listen to Aftermath Hunt for the Anthrax Killer now. It's Consider This from NPR. It is a bright, sunny day here in St. Peter's Square. The square is filled with tourists and religious pilgrims, which is common. What's uncommon are the signs of preparation for the conclave all around us. The conclave begins Wednesday.
There are big platforms with TV lights for the media, huge TV monitors around the square so that people can watch. feeds of the Sistine Chapel chimney. There are wooden fences to corral the expected crowds of hundreds of thousands who will crowd the square when a pope is chosen. Sylvia Paglioli has covered the Vatican and several conclaves for NPR, and she joins me on the edge of Vatican City.
to talk through what's to come. Welcome, Sylvia. Thank you for having me here. Let's start with this setting. You and I are both looking out at St. Peter's Basilica, the square right now. And if we crane our necks just enough from where we're sitting, we can see... the edge of the Sistine Chapel chimney that was just put in place.
Can we start by talking about the significance of where we're located right now? Well, that Sistine Chapel, it's the one with all the wall and the ceiling, magnificent frescoes that Michelangelo completed in 1512. We can't see it, but there's a copper pipe that leads from the chimney to a cast-iron stove inside the chapel where the cardinal's ballots will be burned. The color of the smoke will signal the results of the balloting, black for no pope elected. white smoke when there is a new probe.
On one hand, this is an election just like any other election, right? There's caucusing going on. There's votes that are going to be cast. On the other hand, there's this extreme pageantry and ritual. You've covered a number of conclaves. What makes this process so unique?
Well, precisely that. I think the colorful ritual and, of course, the secrecy. When they enter the conclave, the cardinals take an oath of secrecy on penalty of excommunication, and they must make their decision without any outside influence. to ensure they'll be held in comunicado from the rest of the world as they vote. Mobile phones are banned. There's no TV, no radio, no newspapers.
In addition, Vatican workers have installed a raised wooden flooring, not just to protect the marble floors below, but perhaps also to hide. electronic jamming equipment, and Vatican security will sweep the chapel for hidden microphones and other listening devices. Despite our best attempts, I guess. Obviously, the focus is on this ritual that begins on Wednesday. But a lot's going on right now, and that's a process that's pretty important to the eventual outcome.
Walk us through what the Cardinals have been up to in the days since Pope Francis' funeral. Well, all the Cardinals, voting age, and even the over 80-year-olds, have been meeting in what are called congregations. discussing many issues that the Catholic Church is now facing. A serious deficit in the Vatican finances.
to clerical sex abuse scandals that have come to light throughout the world. And these are scandals that have been dealt with very, very poorly by most of the national churches. The Cardinals are expected to observe secrecy, but there have been some leaks. that suggests the various factions have begun to face off. The progressives who embrace the reforms of Pope Francis, the conservatives and traditionalists who want to slow down the pace of reform, if not reverse it completely.
and the centrists who are somewhere in between. Who makes up the College of Cardinals? There are 53 voting age cardinals from Europe, 17 from South America, 16 from North America, 18 from Africa, and 23 from Asia. The total comes to 135. Two are too sick to attend, which means 133 will elect the new pope compared to 115 in the last conclave that elected Jorge Bergoglio. The novelty this time is that many of the carnals have never met.
So they're now getting to know each other, making alliances and promoting their candidates or even themselves as future popes. When we think about the blocks here, there's a lot of focus on the geography. You just mentioned the different locations they come from. There's also this focus on which...
Pope appointed them. Are these both the important factors to think about? Yeah, very much so. Pope Francis appointed some 80% of the voting cardinals, and he chose men from faraway countries where there had never been cardinals before. His picks are not necessarily all progressive. but they reflect the fact that the growth of Catholicism has shifted from Europe and North America to the global south.
So let's look ahead to Wednesday morning when you and I and the rest of the NPR team will be settling in here to look at a chimney with binoculars. What all is going to happen to begin this ritual? A mass will be celebrated in St. Peter's in the morning. And in the afternoon, the cardinals will be escorted by Vatican gendarme to the Sistine Chapel. Once inside, the master of liturgical celebrations will say the words extra omnis, meaning all who aren't cardinal electors, get out.
After that, the door is shut. Conclave, after all means, with key. And the waiting begins. So when they're in the Sistine Chapel, they're sitting there in silence. But can we assume that there is politicking? There is debating, there is campaigning going on in the other spaces when they're all together. Well, many of us have seen the movie Conclave that suggested that there's quite a lot of communication and scheming between cardinals and nuns and other Vatican prelates.
at the residence where the Cardinals take their meals and are lodged when not in the Sistine Chapel. I think that's pretty exaggerated, but there's no question that they certainly do talk and caucus among themselves.
And I want to ask you the two questions that I feel like you've probably been fielding from everybody you've come across the last couple of weeks. The first question is, how long do you think it's going to take? Do we have any sense how long this could be? My guess is that the latest by Friday, we should hear the name of the new pope.
And second question, do you have a guess on who it might be or at least the type of person we're thinking about? Well, I can tell you who the favorites are according to the leading Vaticanisti. Those are the veteran journalists who cover the Vatican. There's the current Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, 70 years old, a veteran diplomat. He's the architect of the Vatican's rapprochement with China, which makes him disliked by many conservatives.
he could be described as a centrist. Then there's another Italian, Pier Battista Pizzaballa, the 60-year-old Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, who offered himself in exchange for Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. and he's said to have support of both ends of the conservative and progressive spectrum. Then there's Luis Antonio Tagle, 67 years old, from the Philippines, Asia's biggest Catholic country, who's seen as very much in the Francis mold.
And then there are several others who have been mentioned in the last few days. At the same time, there's also been an uptick in negative rumors and fake news on social media about some of the frontrunners. And that's a sign that there are some very strong possibly possible popes. That is NPR's Sylvia Poggioli. Thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you. This episode was produced by Tyler Bartlom and edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Ettingen.
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