Expert Breaks Down The Timeline For Replacing The Late Pope Francis

Forbes Breaking News

On "Forbes Newsroom," Don Clemmer, a writer and former staffer with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, discussed the process of replacing Pope Francis.

Transcript

00:00right now is it like a presidential transition or when one party is leaving the white house and

00:07a new party is entering everyone's jobs to change um it will be up to the new pope to like reinstate

00:16everybody or you know reinstate them on a uh interim basis however it goes but it's it's more

00:22i mean it is it's more like the succession of a monarch like the the in terms of the pope occupies

00:30the chair of peter and now the catholic church has entered a period called sede vacante the chair is

00:36literally the chair is empty and it's up to the college of cardinals uh these men who are elevated

00:42by uh pope francis himself well and his predecessors who have an age of 80 the the right uh to participate

00:50as an elector in the conclave and that uh is very much not like a presidential election in that uh

00:58two-thirds plus one of that electoral body which i think comes to like 91 votes will determine the

01:05next leader of this uh this religious tradition as you noted well north of a billion practitioners

01:13let's get into some of those numbers and also continuing the timeline so the funeral is slated

01:19to be saturday how many days after the funeral will the college of cardinals first meet uh they'll meet

01:28pretty shortly thereafter i don't remember what the turnaround was uh 20 years ago uh with the death

01:34of john paul ii but um once the study vacante begins it's pretty much uh getting down to to business

01:41they'll have probably the better part of a week of what they call general congregations which i mentioned

01:48the the the open mic you know session earlier it's a time where they get together and have candid

01:55discussions about uh challenges facing the church challenges facing the world um what kind of leader

02:03it would take to approach that and little by little they they kind of start to crystallize a vision of

02:09the profile that they need uh it's not uh nobody is openly a candidate it's kind of like everybody's

02:17a candidate but no one is to be openly campaigning for the job would be um you know tasteless and

02:24ambitious and probably assign a very bad judgment given the responsibilities that await whoever they

02:30choose and um so it's uh um yeah a period of heavy discernment of uh just so that you know these

02:40things so that they have some kind of focus when they finally process into the sistine chapel for the

02:45actual uh election now you mentioned um the age of those who vote so there are if my facts are correct

02:56252 cardinals but not all of them have met the rules to vote why is there that age cut off do we know

03:04um it was actually only in the last 50 or so years that uh pope paul ii who died in 1978

03:13uh put some i think he was looking to foster turnover and kind of fresh blood in the upper echelon of the

03:19hierarchy you could argue that one way or the other but bishops are required to submit a letter of

03:25resignation to the pope at the age of 75 and cardinals lose their voting rights at the age of 80.

03:32so there was a kind of an arbitrary cap of there should be 120 electors we're currently at 135 but

03:40you know it it is what it is and uh but yes they're they're they are the cardinals who have uh the right

03:47to elect and when we talk about these cardinals how many were appointed by pope francis himself

03:54versus his predecessors um well north of three quarters of the electors were were uh appointed by

04:02francis uh the number of john paul electors has dwindled down into single digits i believe and then

04:08benedict has maybe 30 or so um of his appointees left so it's uh it's a system where

04:17the the the the former guy uh has shaped the body that will succeed him now um there's a lot of

04:26you know conversation about how what are you pleased with the direction kind of conversation

04:32and a lot of prayer invoking the holy spirit and uh the the cardinals it's it's kind of them and god in

04:41there like they they have a track record of doing surprising perhaps counterintuitive things uh up

04:48to and including uh up to and including uh the election of pope francis

04:58you

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