So the Pope is stepping down and it’s made me curious.
Is the Vatican closed during the Conclave?
Will the conclave start now or wait until March 1st?
Would it be weird to choose the successor while the current pope is still in office or did he announce in advance to help with an orderly transition. I guess an orderly transistion is a weird concept for an office that usually goes to death with no preplanned successor but still
I’ll admit my curiousity is self motivated, I’m scheduled to be in Rome from May 1 - 5 and I’ve got a Vatican tour booked for May 2nd and now I’m wondering if I am going to be able to execute those plans.
From what I’ve read, conclave will begin after the resignation is official, so March. The rules from what I can tell are that the conclave is convened when there is no pope. Since there IS still a pope, no conclave.
Will be interesting, though. Wonder if Benny will attend his successor’s inauguration…
I understand your worries, I’m in Rome on 21st Feb and have plans to visit the Vatican.
From what I have read so far, I believe the cardinals will go into conclave after the Pope has left office at the end of Feb and someone has been quoted as saying they hope to elect a new Pope by the end of March. Fingers crossed!
The only part of the Vatican likely to be closed during the conclave is the Sistine Chapel. So you can still go see the warehouses crammed with art treasures, the unbelievably gaudy interior of St. Pete’s, and the gaping lady-parts on the pillars of the central podium thing.
He’ll be Pope until the 28th, then we’ll have a Sede Vacante, where the Camerlengo (basically the Chief of Staf) takes charge of the administrative aspects of the Holy See until the new Pope is elected. There’ll be a no-Pope period.
He’ll also go into a cloistered community so he won’t be issuing statements or stuff like that.
I wonder who gets to smash Benedict XVI’s ring. Since he’s alive, could he do it himself?
Your main worry should probably be getting to close to the cloud of cardinals desperately looking for anybody able to take on the job. You wouldn’t want to end up pope by default.
What I’m wondering is, would he still retain his position as a cardinal, and hence be able to take a direct hand in the selection of his successor?
And even though the process can’t officially start until a vacancy exists, I’m sure that all of the cardinals are already very busy thinking, praying, and meditating about who would be a good choice.
And above all discussing. I read or heard somewhere that the main reason for his resignment now is that he thinks that he is too old and frail to be able to perform his duties during Easter.
Cardinals above the age of 80 don’t get a vote, so he won’t get an (official) say in his successor regardless of whether or not he becomes a Cardinal after his succession.
I have been wondering about Easter. It seems like there is a chance we won’t have a Pope by then, so who will preside over Holy Week? Also, all the Cardinals will be in Rome, so they will be unable to be in their own dioceses for Holy Week. I know the Pope is too old to vote for his successor, but I wonder if he will take part at all.
My thinking is that he wouldn’t have even made the announcement until he’d twisted enough arms to make sure that whoever he wants to succeed him has the votes.
There’s no clear “movement” of any kind. And while an Italian is not out of the question, the demographics of the college of Cardinas has changed drastically over the past few decades, and Europeans (let alone Italians) are no longer securely in the driver’s seat.
Joseph Ratzinger was the only cardianl, last election, who had a solid bloc of admirers set to vote for him. Nobody else has any comparable core of supporters this time out… so it’s really anybody’s guess.
There absolutely, positively will NOT be a U.S./American Pope. Almost anything else is within the realm of possibility- an African, a South American…
Yes, the conclave is in the Sistine chapel. They may or may not close ti early as preparation. Nowadays, IIRC, they include a lot of the side rooms in the “locked area” (After all, they have to include toilets) so it’s not like everyone bunks on the floor of the chapel, staring up at Adam and Eve. they’ve had centuries to expand and include the creature comforts in the locked area.
So I guess you’ll find out when you get there, but if it is open, by all means make Sistine Chapel the first stop because it probably will close soon after.
It’s after a long walk through a series of corridors/galleries of art (not warehouses), so it’s debatable to what extent they will close the Vatican museum complex and/or arrange a detour around the Sistine.
Not sure why the sarcasm; any long-running institution from Europe is going to be crammed with art. What would you expect them to do- sell it all? it would still end up in another museum and still be on display. Instead, they display it there.
Right, because what’s the worst that could happen to them after Benedict leaves, that they go to Hell? These are intelligent men. You know they don’t believe in Hell.
The nice thing about secret ballots is that all bets are off.
With a bunch of guys who think they are guided by God, and from all around the world, Isusspect getting a 2/3 majority of anything by armtwisting is impossible. Most have been thinking about this for 10 eyars, and of course, as the results of each ballot are announced, they go “Oh, yeah! There’s that guy too.”
Cardinals are like normal people or business excutives; getting even a majority to agree on anything is close to impossible.
Anyone who thinks the Catholic church or any organization is a bunch of sheep marching in lock-step (to mix metaphors) is barking up the wrong tree and sadly misinformed about human nature.
Also - a pope elected now, 70 year old or less, would be in their 20’s during the 1960’s; so likely to have a very different world-view than someone growing up in WWII. It’s only going to get more so as time goes on.
Not like sheep, but like nearly any legislative body in the world; you don’t intentionally force a vote (which is exactly what this resignation is doing) unless you are sure of the outcome.
