Cardinals who will participate in the secret conclave To elect a new Catholic pope began to go to two Vatican hotels on Tuesday, where they will be prohibited from contact with the outside world when they decide who should succeed Pope Francis.
The conclave will start behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday afternoon, all the cardinals under the age of 80 capable of voting on who should be the next church chief of 1.4 billion members.
The race to succeed Francis, who died last month, is considered wide open. Although a few names have been cited as possible, many of the 133 cardinals who should vote in the conclave said they did not know who would become the next pope.
“I have no assumptions,” said Cardinal Robert Mcelroy during a visit to a parish in Rome on Monday evening.
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The conclave process is “deep and mysterious,” said Mcelroy, the Archbishop of Washington, DC “I cannot give you any overview of who is ahead,” he said.
Some cardinals are looking for a new pope who will continue with François’s push for a more transparent and welcoming church, while others are looking for a entrenchment to more traditional roots which grant a bonus on the doctrine.
The conclaves are often spread over several days, with several votes held before a competitor won the majority of the three -quarters necessary to become a pope.
During the conclave period, the voting cardinals will stay in two Vatican guest houses and take an oath to stay in touch with anyone who does not participate in the secret vote.
Francis had the priority to appoint the cardinals of countries who had never had them before, like Haiti, South Sudan and Myanmar.
This conclave will be the most geographically diversified of the church 2,000 years, with clerics from 70 participating countries.
The Japanese cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi told the newspaper at the Repubblica that many of the 23 cardinals of Asia voted in the conclave planned to vote in block.
He contrasted their strategy with that of the 53 cardinals in Europe, which are known to vote in terms of individual countries or other personal preferences.
“We, Asian, are probably more unanimous to support one or two candidates … We will see what name will be the main candidate,” said Kikuchi.