St. Peter’s Square was full of mourners a few hours after the Vatican announced the death of Pope Francis on Monday morning. Some were shocked; only the day before, he had celebrated Easter mass from the basilica’s loggia. Everyone seemed saddened. A few wept in the warm Roman sun as Vatican workers removed the yellow Easter flowers from the basilica’s steps.
“He was a man of the people and of peace,” said Fabrizio Nina, an engineer from southern Italy who was on holiday in Rome. “He was trying to be an intermediary to bring peace to Ukraine and Gaza.”
The faithful in Rome, and the 1.4 billion other Catholics around the world, now enter a waiting period, possibly several weeks, before they learn the identity of the new pope. The Vatican, the oldest institution in the Western world, has been through this process, steeped in tradition, ritual, intrigue, political manoeuvring and often pleasant or disturbing surprises many times before. There have been 266 popes, dating back to St. Peter in the first century.
When the signs in St. Peter's Square announced Pope Francis's death, it had been less than a day since worshippers crowded the space to hear his blessings on Easter Sunday.Yara Nardi/Reuters
The Pope's residence since 2013 has been the Casa Santa Marta, where his coffin will lie in the chapel until burial.Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
What happens when the pope dies?
The body of Francis, who was 88 and had been pope for 12 years, will be laid in a coffin in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta, his simple residence behind St. Peter’s Basilica (Francis refused to live in the opulent Apostolic Palace), starting at 8 p.m. local time. His death would have been confirmed by the camerlengo, or chamberlain, the Irish Cardinal Kevin Farrell. No autopsy is to be performed.
Cardinal Farrell has sealed Francis’s small apartment and destroyed his lead-seal ring, which was used to authenticate official documents, so they cannot be used by anyone else.
A period of mourning, known as the Novendiale, will last nine days. It is up to Cardinal Farrell to decide when the body will be moved to St. Peter’s Basilica so the faithful can pay their respects before the burial.
The Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore is a less traditional final resting place for a pope, as is the method by which Francis chose to be buried here. Watch to learn more.
The Associated Press
When and where will Pope Francis be buried?
Typically, popes are buried four to six days after their deaths. As of Monday evening, Rome time, the Vatican had not set the funeral date.
What is known is that Francis will not be buried in the crypts beneath St. Peter’s, as most popes have been in recent centuries (the National Catholic Register says the coffins of 140 popes are in the crypts).
He chose to be buried instead in his favourite church, Santa Maria Maggiore, one of Rome’s four main papal basilicas, in a simple wooden casket lined with zinc; his predecessors were buried in three nesting coffins made of cypress, lead and oak. Francis was said to be particularly captivated by the basilica’s venerated image of the Virgin Mary, an oil painting known as the Salus Populi Romani, which arrived in Rome from Crete in 590 AD.
The funeral will no doubt turn into a media frenzy. An estimated 300,000 mourners and 100 world leaders assembled in St. Peter’s Square for the funeral of John Paul II in 2005. The funeral of Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned in 2013 and died in 2022, attracted far fewer. Given Francis’s popularity among Catholics and non-Catholics alike, his funeral is expected to be almost as big as John Paul’s, perhaps equally so.
How will a new pope be elected?
The papal conclave – the vote for the new pope – must begin no earlier than 16 days after a pope’s death and no later than 21 days, meaning the Vatican will have a new pontiff in early to mid-May. Since Francis had been ailing for months and had spent five weeks in hospital in February and March, there is little doubt the Vatican is fully prepared for the conclave.
The conclave process has not changed since medieval times. Cardinals vote in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece. No electronics are involved, and the winner is not known until he steps out on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and greets the crowd. Secrecy is crucial. The goal is to prevent a repeat of the 2005 conclave, when a German cardinal leaked the identity of the winner – Joseph Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict – to a German TV network before his name was officially announced.
Electronic scrambling devices will be installed to ensure that anyone involved directly or indirectly in the voting process – cardinals, assistants, Swiss Guards, elevator operators – cannot use any electronic gadgets to communicate with the outside world. The Sistine Chapel and the Vatican residence where the cardinals stay and eat during the conclave, the Casa Santa Marta, are to be swept for electronic bugs.
Cardinals queue to swear on the Bible during the last conclave in 2013, where they promised not to reveal their secret talks.OSSERVATORE ROMANO/AFP via Getty Images
The pope is chosen by the cardinal electors – those who are under the age of 80. At last count, there were 138 cardinals, 110 of whom were appointed by Francis.
The vote can last days or months to reach the required two-thirds majority. The longest in modern history – the Vatican considers the 1700s the beginning of the “modern” era – lasted 181 days, for the 1740 election of Benedict XIV. It was so long that four of the 51 cardinal electors died during the conclave. The shortest was the two-day, three-ballot wonder in 1939, when Pius XII emerged as the prince of princes. Francis’s election was also short; he emerged on top after only five ballots.
When the new pope is elected, a representative of the College of Cardinals says in Latin: Habemus papem – We have a pope.
White smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney signifies that a new pope is elected. These plumes were for Francis on March 13, 2013.Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images
Who are the front-runners to become the next pope?
The horse race has begun, and several cardinals are already considered front-runners. According to various reports, among them are Jean-Marc Aveline, archbishop of Marseille, who is French; Pietro Parolin, who is Italian and was the Vatican’s secretary of state under Francis; Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, who is Filipino and is often called the “Asian Francis”; and Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, who is Maltese.
There are five Canadian cardinals, four of whom are under 80. Quebec’s Gerald Lacroix is considered the front-runner among them, though Vatican watchers do not consider any of the Canadians to be serious contenders.
Since the vote is secret, cardinals can risk voting independently, not in packs, meaning the outcome is often a surprise, as Francis, the first non-European pope, was. The big question is whether the cardinals will elect an African or an Asian pope to reflect the growth of the Church in those regions. But after three non-Italian popes – John Paul, who was Polish, Benedict, who was German, and Argentina’s Francis – the Italian cardinals may want one of their own back on the papal throne. There are 17 Italian cardinal electors, more than any other nationality.
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