On Monday, April 21, 2025, Pope Francis passed away at the age of 88 after serving as pope from 2013 to 2025. He passed away due to a cerebral stroke, and had been in and out of the hospital in recent months due to health issues such as bilateral pneumonia.
Pope Francis, whose real name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was the first pope from the Americas and southern hemisphere, being from Argentina, the first Jesuit pope, and the first pope to choose the papal name of Francis. During his 12 year run as pope, Francis was known for his pastoral approach and being more liberal/progressive in terms of his policy. One of his most famous policies was helping the poor, and he famously called for the church to become “a church of the poor.”
As pope, Francis was an advocate for immigrants, the poor, and other marginalized communities around the world. In regards to the LGBTQ+ community, Francis was seen as more open-minded than his predecessors, famously declaring “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” and “being gay is not a crime.” For his progressive positions on various topics, Francis was beloved by Catholics and non-Catholics across the world.
“He led by example and he was very accepting. Accepting of the LGBTQ community, accepting of immigrants and very understanding of different cultures,” Elijah Smith, a college student from Rockwell, North Carolina and a Lutheran and Southern Baptist, said in an interview with NBC News.
Following Francis’ death his funeral was held at St. Peter’s Basilica, after which his body was moved to Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major, and a nine day mourning period began. Prior to his death, Francis requested to be buried at St. Mary Major instead of being buried in the Vatican. In the time between his death and a new pope being chosen, the camerlengo, the cardinal appointed by the pope to serve when there is no pope, will manage the duties of the pope. The current camerlengo is Cardinal Kevin Farrell, an Irish-born American Catholic and President of the Supreme Court of Vatican City.
To select the next pope, all cardinals under 80 will gather in the Vatican to hold a conclave, a meeting where the cardinals go through the process of voting for the next pope. The conclave will be held at the Sistine Chapel, and will begin on Wednesday, May 7. However, this could be sooner as in 2013 Pope Benedict changed the rules to allow cardinals to start the process earlier if they pleased. Out of the 252 Catholic cardinals in the world, 135 of them are eligible to vote and a ⅔ majority will be required for a new pope to be chosen.
In the past, conclaves have taken weeks or even months, with the cardinals being cut off from the outside world throughout the duration of the conclave. This means they have no access to the radio, newspapers, internet, or their phones. The only communication between the outside world and the conclave will be through smoke in the chapel’s chimney; black smoke means a new pope has not yet been chosen, and white smoke means that a new pope has been chosen.
This particular conclave will face certain hardships when choosing a new pope, as they will have to take current worldwide politics into consideration, such as wars, civil instability, polarization, and the Catholic church’s relationship with other countries. The church also has to decide if they will continue on with Francis’ more progressive policies, or choose a pope with more conservative values.
“So it’s really a much more complicated chemistry this time, because also there’s a very complicated international situation which affects different cardinals, different local churches in different ways,” Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University said.
Another consideration for the cardinals is where the pope will come from. In the present day, the largest growing center of Catholicism is in Africa, which could cause the cardinals to choose a pope from an area other than Europe. They first did this with Francis, who was from Argentina, and will have to decide whether to do so again.
“The Western world is no longer the center of the Catholic world,” Mathew Schmalz, the founding editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism, said.
