The Vatican announced Friday that the Catholic church’s College of Cardinals will begin the closed-door papal conclave meetings to elect the new pope on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 12.
All cardinals under 80 years old are eligible to vote for the successor to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who retired on February 28. That leaves 115 cardinals who will vote at the Sistine Chapel up to four times a day until two-thirds (77 cardinals) agree on who the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church should be.
The conclave to elect Benedict in 2005 lasted only two days, which signaled that cardinals generally agreed on the election, but conclaves can potentially last much longer if there’s no consensus.
« The eighth General Congregation of the College of Cardinals has decided that the Conclave will begin on Tuesday, 12 March 2013, » said a statement sent by the Vatican press office. « A pro eligendo Romano Pontifice Mass will be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica in the morning. In the afternoon the cardinals will enter into the Conclave. »
Typically, conclaves are supposed to happen at least 15 days and no more than 20 days after a pope dies or leaves office, but Benedict changed the rules in the last days of his papacy to allow an earlier start. Cardinals have met eight times in General Congregations since Monday to discuss priorities for the church and pick a conclave date, but were delayed in deciding on a date because a handful of cardinals had not arrived at the Vatican until the last three days. Before Tuesday’s conclave, cardinals are expected to keep meeting in General Congregations on Saturday and Monday.
When not in the conclave in the Sistine Chapel, cardinals will stay closely guarded in the Domus Sanctae Marthae (Casa Santa Marta), a Vatican residence. They are banned from contact outside the conclave, including the use of cell phones, social media and the Internet.
After each set of votes, ballots are burned and colored smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel twice daily, with black smoke meaning cardinals have failed to agree on the new pope and white smoke indicating that they’ve picked their new leader. On all days of voting except the first afternoon, there will be two votes twice per day (two in the morning, two in the afternoon).
There are a handful of cardinals who are rumored to be in running to be pope, though no clear front-runner has emerged. As HuffPost Italy reported on Friday, two cardinals that have been the focus of the Italian press this week are Brazilian-born Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer and the Archbishop of Milan, Angelo Scola. Two Americans, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, are also considered long-shot candidates.
Many cardinals whose names have been floated as possible papal candidates — as well as a significant portion of the cardinals who will vote in the conclave — are from
