Vatican City, Mar 13, 2024 / 12:30 pm (CNA).
The most recent change in the College of Cardinals took place on Feb. 24, when Cardinal José Luis Lacunza Maestrojuán turned 80 and was thus removed from the ranks of cardinal-electors. A few weeks earlier, on Feb. 12, Cardinal Pedro Ricardo Barreto Jimeno also turned 80 and, therefore, is no longer eligible to cast a vote in a conclave.
There are currently 129 cardinals who could vote in a conclave, nine more than the maximum of 120 set by Paul VI and confirmed by all of his successors since.
During the 11 years of his pontificate, Pope Francis has convened nine consistories to create new cardinals. In the process, he has created 142 cardinals, including 113 electors and 29 non-electors, from 70 nations. Of these nations, 22 had never had a cardinal before.
This level of activity stands in contrast with St. John Paul II, who convened nine consistories during a 27-year-long pontificate, as well as Pope Benedict XVI, who convened five in eight years. Nonetheless, the record for new red hats belongs to John Paul II, who created 231 new cardinals during his pontificate.
Were a conclave to begin today, there would be 94 cardinal-electors created by Pope Francis, 27 created by Benedict XVI, and eight made by John Paul II. To elect the pope, a block of 86 votes would be needed (two-thirds of the assembly), and the cardinals created by Pope Francis are more than two-thirds.
What the College of Cardinals will look like at the end of 2024
However, by the end of 2024, 10 more cardinals will lose the right to vote in the conclave. Therefore, if Pope Francis were not to convene a new consistory by the end of the year, the number would return below the maximum of 120 cardinal-electors.
Among the 10 cardinals who will turn 80 in the next few months, there is Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, considered influential but who has long wanted to leave public office, having asked the pope to also be dispensed from participating in the Synod on Synodality. Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for Bishops, will also turn 80.
For the other four cardinals who will turn 80 over the next 10 months, the pope must find a successor for their respective roles, as they are all still in active service. These are the archbishop of Boston and president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley (June 29); the major penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza (Sept. 15); the archbishop of Caracas, Venezuela, Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo (Oct. 10); and the archbishop of Bombay, India, Cardinal Oswald Gracias (Dec. 24).
O’Malley and Gracias are also members of the Council of Cardinals established by the pope for the reform and government of the Roman Curia.
Cardinal Louis-Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun, apostolic vicar of Vientiane, Laos, will also turn 80 in 2024, as will Cardinal Polycarp Pengo, archbishop emeritus of Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania; Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, archbishop emeritus of Bordeaux, France; and Cardinal John Njue, archbishop emeritus of Nairobi, Kenya.
In light of the above, by the end of 2024, the cardinal-electors created by Pope Francis will number 91, while those made by previous popes will have been drastically reduced. In fact, by that time at a future conclave, there will only be 22 cardinals created by Benedict XVI and six by John Paul II.
A Francis-like conclave?
These numbers suggest that the election of a successor to Pope Francis could very quickly be oriented toward a papal profile similar to that of Pope Francis. In reality, however, the outcome of the conclave could be very different.
For the most part, popes have convened consistories to discuss and consult the cardinals on major issues for the life of the Church.
During his pontificate, however, Pope Francis has only convened a consistory three times to discuss issues at hand. This first occurred in 2014, when another consistory accompanied the consistory for the creation of new cardinals to discuss family issues, with a report by Cardinal Walter Kasper.
In 2015, the reform of the Curia was discussed with various reports and in 2022, the pope asked the cardinals to take into account the reform of the Curia he had just established with the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium.
The last consistory’s discussion structure also differed from the usual pattern. The cardinals were gathered in small linguistic groups; not all of them could speak before the assembly and several left written documents on what their speech would have been without presenting it before the other members of the College of Cardinals. While presented as an effort to make the discussion more efficient, this structure took away traditionally important moments of interaction and mutual understanding.
These are not just minor details. The discussions that take place during consistories allow the cardinals to get to know each other and the personalities involved to define themselves more precisely.
For example, the papal candidacy of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla emerged from some of these discussions, along with the fact that Paul VI had called upon him to preach the spiritual exercises of Lent at the Curia in 1976. Although Wojtyla was an authoritative and well-known figure, it would not have been easy to obtain the support of his fellow cardinals if he had not had the opportunity to make himself known in these circumstances.
The next conclave, therefore, will get underway with somewhat of a handicap inasmuch as the cardinals will not know each other as well. This could be a boon, on the one hand, to the formation of pressure groups that could steer the conclave in one direction or another. But, on the other hand, it will also likely make the outcome more unpredictable. For this reason, although Pope Francis has created more than two-thirds of the cardinal-electors, it is by no means a sure thing that the pope who is chosen in a future conclave will have the same profile as Pope Francis.
A reform of conclave rules in the offing?
As things stand, the apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, promulgated by John Paul II in 1996, will regulate the conclave. That constitution provided, among other things, that starting from the 34th ballot (or from the 35th, if the vote was also taken on the opening day of the conclave), an absolute majority is enough to elect a pope.
That provision was modified by Benedict XVI in 2007 with the motu proprio De Aliquibus Mutationibus in Normis de Electione Romani Pontificis. The new rule provides that at the 34th or 35th ballot, in the event of a “deadlock,” a runoff will be held between the two cardinals with the most votes, who, however, will not be able to participate in the ballot. However, the election will take place only if one of the two receives two-thirds of the votes, as expected in all other ballots.
These rules aim to obtain a broad consensus on the elected pope, who can thus count on the support of the entire College of Cardinals.
For some time now, there has been talk of a project by Pope Francis to reform the rules of the conclave. Among the reforms that could be under discussion: the lowering of the quorum for the election of the pope starting from the 15th ballot; the exclusion of cardinals over 80 from the general congregations, i.e. the pre-conclave meetings, in which both voting and nonvoting cardinals participate; and a new structuring of the general congregations themselves, on the model of the last consistory — that is, with the division of the cardinals into working groups and reports entrusted to a moderator.
However, no study for changing the rules of the conclave has been officially announced. Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, who has become the pope’s trusted canon lawyer in recent years, is said to have proposed some draft reforms, but there is no confirmation of this either.
It remains to be seen, therefore, if these rumors about a reform of the conclave’s rules are the result of honest discussions or simply agitation and speculation in the face of the well-known unpredictability of Pope Francis.
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Stacking the College of Cardinals??? Nice. (Sarcasm) And not content with that, apparently Francis plans to exit older ( possibly more conservative??) Cardinals, and slack the number needed to approve a new pope ( guess he needs a fall back in case stacking doesn’t work for some reason). I find it hard to believe the Pope is unaware of the way his actions make the church ,and him, look. Which is to say, not good. His pushing of the gay agenda has resulted in the recent collapse of Ecumenical efforts between the Catholic church and the Churches in the East. Where is the outcry from the high church clerics? His pats on the heads of abortion pushers Biden and Pelosi gave scandal to the Church in the US. But since he loathes the US (but not our money I’ll wager) I guess he doesnt care how it looks. The church is is a bad way, still getting rocked by the occasional rare cleric accused of sexual abuse.Its relative rarity not standing in the way of out-sized publicity. If at some future point, Francis’s Cardinals elect yet another in his mold to lead the church for several decades, I am very doubtful our church will survive. Its nice to know that the churches in the East, who hold fast to moral tradition, WILL survive.They dont appear to be too timid to speak about what they believe. If forced to make a change, I will be certain to take my wallet with me.
And there is always the possibility of a “dark horse” candidate that no one is talking about. That candidate, even though most likely appointed by Francis, might turn out to be quite different from expectations.
Popes don’t usually change doctrine, but do change emphasis. We might even have a Pope from Africa or Asia. I doubt that it will be an American.
There is an easy way to get the college of cardinals to meet more often: elect popes who are well over 80. While such men cannot vote the rules do not prohibit their election, as I understand them, and there are several holy men among them: Zen and Arinze to start with. Sure, the Church will get popes who won’t be traveling much, but that might be a plus too. They would preach and pray and that could be enough.
“it is by no means a sure thing that the pope who is chosen in a future conclave will have the same profile as Pope Francis”
Spot on, for everyone seems to forget that it was Cardinals appointed by JP2 and Benedict who gave us Francis.
We read: “Were a conclave to begin today, there would be 94 cardinal-electors created by Pope Francis, 27 created by Benedict XVI, and eight made by John Paul II. To elect the pope, a block of 86 votes would be needed (two-thirds of the assembly), and the cardinals created by Pope Francis are more than two-thirds.”
Then, after examining the varied shelf-life of the merchandise, Gagliarducci concludes:
…The unconfirmed possibilities that a split-house conclave might settle for a lesser quorum; that the electors might be undiversified (!) by eliminating the more elderly; and that the conclave might consist of working groups filtered by moderators, like any other synodalish town-hall meeting run by a consultant team with flip charts.
Four questions:
FIRST, might we foresee synodal working groups at the “continental” scale, effectively superseding the Second Vatican Council’s “hierarchical communion” of the Successors of the Apostles together with the Papacy (Lumen Gentium, Ch. 3, together with the Explanatory Note)? Very useful in isolating the Church in Africa as only a culturally defective “special case”, but also diluting the Church in Poland, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and parts of Argentina, France, Spain, etc.
SECOND, before speaking might the potentially tie-breaking 22 cardinals—those from nations that have never had a cardinal before—be awakened enough to recall that at Pentecost the tongues of fire were distributed from above, and not assembled from below? Not sensus fidei/vox populi “walking together.”
THIRD, might all of the cardinals get to know each other—beyond any cookie-cutter table arrangement—by reading the profiles of most of the likely papabili–as fairly and competently offered in “The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates” (editor Edward Pentin, Sophia Institute Press, 2020)?
FOURTH, regarding a “couple” of other writings—and recalling the 5,000 words of Fiducia Supplicans—might each Successor of the Apostles be supplied with a 5,000-word extract (equality!) from Peter Damian’s “Gomorrah” (A.D. 1051)?
Andrea Gagliarducci, a perceptive analyzer of Vatican politics adds some drama to an otherwise stacked deck scenario with 98 Francis select cardinals v approx 26 from the previous pontificates. Drama relegated to further machinations regarding the election, simplifying the process which theoretically would favor the first ballot of the 98.
I dislike being cynical but I will be. It appears like a done deal, sort of like the alleged rigging of the last US election, although I don’t think Francis will go so far as to include mail in ballots of bishops, perhaps favoring his appointees. However Gagliarducci reminds us we’re dealing with Francis’ unpredictability syndrome. We may wonder too whether the secretive gay cabal is garnering support [canvassing votes] which is a serious violation noted in Gregis. They [likely] pulled it off previously before the last election and got away clean. No shots were fired. Except for Francis aficionado Austen Ivereigh’s 1st edit of the Great Reformer in which he revealed all, then quickly redacted that from the 2nd edition.
Although the stacking and rigging is presumably in play. Perhaps something intriguing will happen rather than a boring, fixed election process. Something like Ambongo’s codename mistakenly recommended in place of McElroy’s. Wouldn’t that be a happy providential intervention.