VATICAN CITY: Cardinals from the world over might be shut into the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday (Might 7) for a secretive conclave to elect the subsequent head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
Some 133 cardinal electors – aged beneath 80 – have gathered on the Vatican from 5 continents to choose a successor to Pope Francis, who died last month after a 12-year-long papacy.
With consultants singling out liberal and conservative frontrunners from Europe, the USA, Asia and Africa, the race to steer the two,000-year-old establishment seems extensive open.
In a time of geopolitical uncertainty, the brand new pope faces diplomatic balancing acts, in addition to Church infighting, the continued fallout from the clerical little one abuse scandal and more and more empty pews within the West.
The “Princes of the Church” will maintain a pre-conclave mass in St Peter’s Basilica at 10am (4pm, Singapore time), presided over by the dean of the School of Cardinals, Giovanni Battista Re.
It is going to be the final ceremony to be celebrated publicly earlier than the Church’s 267th pope is introduced to the world from a balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, a number of hours or maybe days later.
“If we will witness the white smoke that’d be one thing … that is positively as soon as in a lifetime,” US vacationer Luke Vanderburgh advised AFP on Tuesday.
Each Pope Francis and his predecessor, Benedict XVI, had been elected inside two days, however the longest papal election in Church historical past lasted 1,006 days, from 1268 to 1271.
With clerics from round 70 international locations, this conclave is the biggest ever and the subsequent pontiff should safe a minimum of 89 votes – a two-thirds majority.
The cardinals are staying on the Vatican’s Santa Marta guesthouse – the place Pope Francis used to stay – and Santa Marta Vecchia, a constructing subsequent door normally housing Vatican officers.
At 3.45pm they’ll set off from Santa Marta to assemble on the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, the place a prayer might be held from 4.30pm.
They then proceed into the Fifteenth-century Sistine Chapel for the conclave, which is “some of the secret and mysterious occasions on the earth”, the Vatican stated on Tuesday.
