On May 7, 133 cardinal voters will lock themselves in the Vatican Sistine Chapel and start the secret process of electing the next Pope.
Although a large part of the process is wrapped in mystery, what is known is that four voting cycles take place daily until a cardinal receives a majority of two -thirds of the votes.
The process generally lasts between 15 and 20 days.
But with a week to travel until the process of electing the new bishop of Rome begins, which cardinals are “papabile” enough to direct the Roman Catholic church?
Cardinal Pietro Paroline
The 70-year-old veteran diplomat was Pope Francis' secretary of state, essentially making him the Prime Minister of the Holy See. Although associated closely with the pontificate of Pope Francis, the Paroline is much wiser in the personality and diplomatic in his approach to directing that the Argentinian Jesuit that he served and he knows where the Catholic Church could need a correction of the course.
Parolin supervised the controversial agreement of the Holy See with China for bishop's appointments and was involved but was not charged in the sloppy investment of the Vatican in a real estate company in London which led to the loss of millions of euros.
Parolin, who was appointed Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, knows the Latin American Church well and played a key role in American relaxation-Cuba 2014, which the Vatican helped facilitate.
Although he may be a Vatican veteran, he has very little pastoral experience. He entered the seminar at the age of 14, four years after his father's death in a car accident. After his ordination in 1980, he spent two years as a parish priest near his hometown in northern Italy, but then went to Rome to study and entered the Diplomatic Service of the Vatican, where he has remained since.
If it were elected, he would return an Italian in the papacy after three successive foreigners: Saint-Jean-Paul II (Poland), Pope Benoît XVI (Germany) and François (Argentina).
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle
Tagle, 67, is on many lists of bookmakers to be the first Asian pope, a choice that would recognize part of the world where the church develops.
Pope Francis brought the popular Archbishop of Manila, who was appointed Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, to Rome to direct the Missionary Evangelization Office of the Vatican, which meets the needs of the Catholic Church in a large part of Asia and Africa.
His role has gained a greater weight when Pope Francis reformed the Vatican bureaucracy.
Although he has pastoral care, the Vatican and the Tagle management experience would be on the youth side to be elected Pope, the cardinals may prefer an older candidate whose papacy would be more limited.
However, Tagle is known as a good communicator and a teacher, key attributes for a Pope.
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu
Ambongo, 65, has made a cardinal by Pope Francis, is one of the most frank Catholic leaders in Africa, head of the archdiocese which has the greatest number of Catholics on the continent which is considered to be the future of the Church.
ADVERTISEMENTHe has been an archbishop of the Congo capital since 2018 and Cardinal since 2019.
Pope Francis also named it to a group of advisers who helped reorganize the Vatican bureaucracy. In Congo and through Africa, Ambongo was deeply attached to Catholic Orthodoxy and is considered conservative.
In 2024, he signed a declaration on behalf of the Bishops Conferences of Africa and Madagascar refusing to follow the Pope Francis declaration allowing priests to offer blessings to same -sex couples in what was equivalent to dissent on the continent of a papal teaching.
The reprimand criticized both the line of the African church on LGBTQ + Outreach and the stature of Ambongo within the African hierarchy.
ADVERTISEMENTCardinal Matteo Zappi
Zuppi, 69, came as a street priest like Pope Francis, who promoted him quickly; First at the Archbishop of the rich archdiocese of Bologna in northern Italy in 2015, before giving the title of Cardinal in 2019.
It is closely affiliated with the community of Sant'Egidio, a Catholic charity based in Rome which had an influence on Pope Francis, in particular in interconfessional dialogue.
Zappi was part of the Sant'Egidio team who helped negotiate the end of the Mozambique civil war in the 1990s and was appointed envoy of Pope Francis for the Russian War in Ukraine.
He went to kyiv and Moscow after the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the Holy See to obtain aid to win the release of 19,000 Ukrainian children taken from their families and brought to Russia during the war.
ADVERTISEMENTThe mission also took him to China and the United States.
Zappi would be a candidate in the tradition of Pope Francis to serve people on the sidelines, although his relative youth would count against him for the cardinals in search of a short curve.
Forest by Peter Cardinal
Known of his peers as a serious theologian, scholar and educator, ERDő, 72, is a leading competitor among the conservatives.
He has been an archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest since 2002 and was appointed Cardinal by Jean-Paul II the following year.
ADVERTISEMENTHe participated in two conclaves, in 2005 and 2013, for the selection of Popes Benedict and Francis.
Holding doctorates in theology and canon law, Erdő, speaks six languages, is a supporter of doctrinal orthodoxy and defends the church positions on questions such as abortion and homosexual marriage.
ERDő opposes the same -sex unions and has also resisted the suggestions that Catholics who remarry after divorce can receive communion.
He said in 2015 that divorced Catholics should only be authorized if they remain sexually abstinent in their new marriage.
ADVERTISEMENTA defender of traditional family structures, he helped organize the Vatican meetings 2014 and 2015 of Pope Francis on the family.
While taking care to avoid participating in the often tumultuous political life of Hungary, ERDő has maintained a close relationship with the country's right government, which provides generous subsidies to Christian churches.
However, he hesitated to take positions on several of the government's policies that divided society in Hungary such as public campaigns that wanted migrants and refugees and the laws that eroded the rights of LGBTQ +communities.
