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The Vatican announced today that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, also known as Pope Francis, passed away after serving as head of the Catholic Church and sovereign over the Vatican City State since 2013. So what’s next for the world’s largest and oldest Christian denomination?
For starters, the death of Pope Francis begins a nine-day period of mourning for the Catholic Church. Following that period of mourning, the College of Cardinals will convene in no fewer than 15 days but no more than 20 days from today to elect a new pope.
Only cardinals under the age of 80 are eligible to vote for the new pope, which means 135 of the current 252 cardinals will be eligible to participate. That number will likely be even smaller, though, due to a rule instituted by Pope Paul VI that caps the number of voting cardinals at 120.
The election of the next pope will be a very secretive process. All cardinals will have to swear an oath of secrecy, there will be no outside communication about the process, and absolutely no speaking to the press about it.
As far as possible candidates go, hypothetically speaking, any baptized Catholic male qualifies for the position, but normally, a pope is selected from among the College of Cardinals. There hasn’t been a pope selected from outside the College since 1378.
The voting will continue until one man receives a two-thirds majority vote. After each round of voting, the ballots are burned, and a chemical is added to the fire to change its color. If the smoke is black, that signifies that no pope has been elected; if it’s white, that means a new pontiff has been chosen.
After a new pope is elected, he is dressed in white and will address the crowd at St. Peter’s Basilica.