Conclave: Cardinals who have a good chance

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On Wednesday, the cardinals will enter the conclave in the Sistine Chapel. On that day, a mass is celebrated first, then the procession into the Sistine begins. The first ballot takes place in the afternoon. As things stand, 133 cardinals will elect the new pope; two prelates have canceled due to illness. The so-called pre-conclave, the informal consultations of the cardinals in the synod hall, is currently underway.

Pietro Parolin is highly regarded
The former Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin (70), is considered an up-and-coming candidate to succeed Pope Francis. The Italian from Schiavon near Vicenza was the “number two” in the Vatican after Francis. He is a very experienced and respected church diplomat who could pacify the divergent poles, reformers, and conservatives. Francis has set many things in motion, and some cardinals are now calling for a man who can bring peace and order back to the Church and its administration. Parolin would be such a man.

The College of Cardinals in this conclave is particularly international and wide-ranging; people are just getting to know each other. So being known is also a trump card. One of the most important questions for the conclave, in which cardinals from 71 countries are taking part, is therefore: who will the newcomer cardinals from the far-flung corners of the world look to for guidance?

Luis Antonio Tagle (67) is also no stranger to the world. The Filipino and former Archbishop of Manila, known as the “Asian Francis,” always radiates cheerfulness and was most recently Pro-Prefect of the Vatican Office for Evangelization. Like Francis, he is a Jesuit and has experience as a diocesan bishop in the Curia. Tagle stands for the up-and-coming Asian Catholicism and is considered a reformer and advocate of a synodal church.

If Francis had been able to choose his successor himself, the choice would probably have fallen on Matteo Zuppi (69), Archbishop of Bologna. He is an exponent of the Roman lay community Sant’Egidio, which is dedicated to helping the poor and marginalized. Zuppi is chairman of the Italian Bishops’ Conference and was appointed envoy for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, albeit without success. The Romans had experience as peacemakers: in 1992, he mediated a peace agreement in Mozambique with Sant’Egidio.

He likes to take on Italy’s right-wing populists in social debates. Zuppi used to be regarded as a “street priest” and would probably follow on seamlessly from Francis’s pontificate. Anders Arborelius from Stockholm and Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille, have also been called “papabili” by the reformers. Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, is considered one of those whose word will be heard in the consultations. As a representative of the Synodal Way in Germany, which is extreme from the perspective of the world church, he probably has no chance as a candidate for the papacy.

The conservative candidates
The conservative faction hopes that one of its candidates will bring order back to the doctrine shaken by Francis. But do the ultras around the ideologues Raymond Leo Burke, Robert Sarah, and Gerhard Ludwig Müller still have enough representatives in the conclave? After all, with 108 out of 135 cardinals, Francis has nominated 80 percent of those eligible to vote.

The Hungarian Peter Erdö (72), Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, who was already a favorite in the 2013 conclave, is considered the conservatives’ top candidate. At the family synods in 2014 and 2015, he opposed any openness. A newcomer among the hardliners is Fridolin Ambongo Besungu (65). The Archbishop of Kinshasa (Congo) led the African protests against the permission to bless homosexual couples. His collegial style is appreciated across all camps.