A short history of the conclave

After the funeral of Pope Francis, and at the end of the current period of mourning, 135 cardinals will enter a conclave on 7 May to begin the ritual to elect the next pope.

They will vote up to four times a day until one candidate has a two-thirds majority. Ballots are burnt twice a day, sending black smoke out of the chapel’s chimney if no result has been reached. When the onlookers and media assembled in St Peter’s Square see a puff of white smoke, they know the cardinals have made their choice. An hour later, the new pope is presented on a balcony of St Peter’s Basilica.

The conclave is a secretive ritual, whose air of intrigue has been deepened by popular culture. While the cardinals who attend swear not to reveal what takes place during the conclave, something of what happens inside is known, or can be logically deduced. The cardinals are asked to let God guide them in their choice, so the atmosphere is certain to be quiet enough for contemplation. But they do confer with one another, as explained by former cardinals who were part of the conclaves that elected Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. What is said, though, is never revealed.

Popes have not always been elected in the conclave. Early Church records claim the second Bishop of Rome, Pope Linus, was handpicked by the apostles Peter and Paul. Linus was initially considered the first pope, until the Church recognised Peter as the Church’s original leader.

Earlier papal elections were intertwined with local politics and complicated royal and military relationships. It was an often-chaotic process, theoretically controlled by ‘the people of Rome’ but, in reality, by the most powerful faction in the society of the day.

The earliest known written regulation on papal elections dates to AD 499, when Pope Symmachus—who had been elected over a rival claimant only after the intervention of a king—instigated a system that gave the papacy to the candidate who received the majority of clergy votes. In an attempt to reduce the influence of corruption, candidates were forbidden from canvassing support.

Secular influence and even control continued, however. In the 11th century, the future Pope Gregory VII was instrumental in electing Pope Nicholas II after the Roman aristocracy’s choice of Benedict V was opposed by numerous cardinals.

Pope Nicholas’s short papacy left one important legacy to the Church: the reform of the electoral process, taking back control from the Roman aristocracy. The Papal Election Decree of 1059 proclaimed that popes would now be elected by a College of Cardinals.

The highly codified system known as the conclave was put in place in the Middle Ages to avoid fights and political intrigues, which had continued despite the decree of 1059. After the death of Pope Clement IV in 1268, infighting among the cardinals was so entrenched that it took nearly three years before they could agree on who should be the next pope.

The winner, Gregory X, set out to once again reform the electoral process. The formal rules for future papal elections were set out in the constitution Ubi periculum (‘Where there is danger’): cardinals were to assemble within 10 days of a pope’s death, and would be locked in a large room and cut off from outside communication.

As an incentive to reach a quick decision, living conditions would worsen the more days went by without an agreement. After eight days, the cardinals’ meals would be reduced to bread, water and wine. This had been tried during the previous interregnum, c. 1270, when the magistrates of Viterbo—the town where the election was taking place—also took the dramatic measure of removing the roof of the building in which the cardinals were meeting. It was still more than a year before they elected Pope Gregory X.

Fast forward a century, and the French and Italian factions of the Church, never close, were on the verge of the split that came to be known as the Western Schism, or ‘the great controversy of the antipopes’.

The Holy See had effectively moved to Avignon, France, in the early 1300s, and the Church was largely under the control of French kings. The Italian faction continued agitiating for a return to Rome, which Pope Gregory XI did in 1376, famously at the urging of St Catherine of Siena. His successor, Pope Urban VI, was elected after people surrounded the conclave and demanded that the next pope be Roman. (He was actually from Naples, but from the point of view of the cardinals, at least he was not French.)

The French, for their part, soon moved against Urban VI, issuing a manifesto saying the cardinals had kowtowed to the will of a mob and therefore his election was invalid. They elected their own pope, the ‘antipope’ Clement VII, which began the 1378–1417 Western Schism.

The decades of competing popes came to an end with the unanimous election of Pope Martin V by a conclave held during the Council of Constance. His papacy symbolised the return of Church independence, and his diplomatic skills are credited with helping heal divisions.

In the intervening centuries, tweaks and changes have been made to the conclave process, but the idea remains the same: pope-appointed cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel (the conclaves’ location since 1492) after the mourning period for the previous pope is over; the door is locked behind them, and the most important business of their careers begins.

The growing internationalisation of the College of Cardinals in the 20th century led to the rule that the conclave would not begin until 15–20 days after a pope’s death so that cardinals could get to Rome from their home countries. Now with the speed of air travel, even cardinals from as far away as Australia and New Zealand can get to Rome in less than a day, allowing them to take part in the meetings leading up to the conclave as well.

Pope Paul VI set an age limit of 80 for cardinal electors to reduce the burden on older cardinals to get to Rome. His successor John Paul I, though, died aged only 65 after 33 days in office.

This meant that 1978 was a big year for cardinals, with the same 111 entering the conclave twice. In the second conclave, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected as Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.

The last three conclaves saw unprecedented media coverage, with real-time updates and live broadcasting of developments. This modern media presence has transformed how the world observes the election process, making it more immediate.

Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation in 2013, unprecedented in modern times, meant a scramble to determine protocol for electing a new pope while the previous one was still alive. That conclave was the first to allow the use of electronic devices, albeit with restrictions.

Now 135 cardinals from across the globe will enter the conclave on 7 May, while billions of people—Catholics and non-Catholics alike—await the words ‘Habemus papam’, ‘We have a pope.’