Pope Idol: Your step-by-step guide to understanding the Papal conclave.

By MARY WARD

Tonight, the Papal Conclave will begin in Rome to decide who will become the next Pope.

As a Catholic, and a politics major, this is sort of like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one.

It’s a game I like to call Pope Idol. And if you’re playing along at home, here’s what you need to know.

Papal What-clave?

Papal Conclave. It’s a conference where all of the eligible Cardinals elect a new Pope. The new pope will need a two-thirds majority to be elected.

What makes an eligible Cardinal/are they all going to show up?

Cardinals who were under the age of 80 the day before the Pope’s resignation are eligible. Two of them aren’t going (a guy from Indonesia who is going blind and a guy from Scotland who is currently embroiled in so much scandal that he decided that it would be best if he stayed home.)

That makes 115 in attendance.

The Pope resigned ages ago, why is this taking so long? C’mon, Catholic Church, it’s a 24hr news cycle!

Two answers:

1) The timing of the Conclave has been put out by one teensy little thing: the current Pope being alive and… not dead. This has made planning proceedings tricky, because all of the time specifications about the Conclave are based upon the previous Pope being dead.

The Conclave is supposed to start between 15 and 18 days after the Pope’s death. This is hard to measure if the old Pope is still kicking around, going on bus trips to the RSL or doing whatever it is that retired people do.

Faced with this conundrum, the just made the date March 12th. No real reason why, but it gets it all out of the way before Easter.

2) The Cardinals have had to travel to Rome. The vast majority of these guys are in their 70s. Have you ever travelled with your grandparents? Travel makes older people tired. Give them a break.

Can they pick me to be Pope?

Maybe they can, but I don’t like your chances.

If you are the average Mamamia reader, the answer is no. To be chosen you have to be an unmarried man over the age of 30. You don’t have to be Catholic, provided you’re willing to convert upon election. For a while, you could technically be married and be elected as Pope, but then they changed the rules so that to become a Cardinal you had to be unmarried (and you are made a Cardinal – if you aren’t one already – before you become Pope.)

So, if you have a son over the age of 30 who refuses to get married and move out, get him on the next flight to Rome! Nothing will impress your friends at bingo quite like: “Oh, yeah, Joe’s new job is going really well. We saw him say mass in St Peter’s Square when we were over at Christmas…”

(In all seriousness, though, the last time that someone who wasn’t a Cardinal was elected was in 1379. So don’t get your hopes up.)

Will there be debates, and sledging ad campaigns, and all of the other fun that we have come to expect from election time?

No. The Cardinals aren’t allowed to communicate with the outside world during the Conclave. If you have a funny story about your cat, send it to a Vatican media outlet now because they’re going to be facing some really slow news days.

Did you vote for these Cardinals/do different Cardinals represent different countries/is this in any way democratic?

Well, it’s more democratic than how the Church of England finds their figurehead… But the quick answer to all three of those questions is: no.

These Cardinals do not represent every country. New Zealand, for example, doesn’t have a Cardinal at all, and plenty of countries have more than one.

Cardinal Pell is just a Cardinal from Australia, he is not the Cardinal OF Australia (in the way that Julia Gillard is the Prime Minister OF Australia). Pell is not in Rome voting on behalf of Australian Catholics, he’s voting on behalf of himself.

Also, it’s not like a certain number of Catholic adherents in a country = one Cardinal. A simple illustration of this is found in the case of Italy. Despite there being 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide, 28 of the 115 Cardinals attending the conference will be from that little nation of 60 million.

Who should I namedrop to make me sound like I know what I’m talking about?

The ‘frontrunners’ (to the extent that a secret election that none of the participants are allowed to talk about can have ‘frontrunners’) are referred to as the Papabili. Lots of (secular and religious) media outlets publish their lists of the Papabili. Here are five of the more interesting ones that keep on popping up:

Tarcisio Bertone

This 78-year-old Italian was one of the frontrunners for the Papacy after the death of Pope John Paul II. If you’re after a Pope who will say crazy things all the time, Bertone’s your guy. During his time as Cardinal, he has proposed that the Church excommunicate drug dealers, and that the Vatican should compete at the Olympics.

On a serious note, Bertone has criticised the media for over-reporting scandals in the Vatican and under-reporting acts of charity, supports free and universal access to anti-AIDS drugs and is an advocate of inter-faith dialogue.

Marc Ouellet

Ouellet, the Canadian Cardinal in the race, is very conservative. (And, keep in mind that the Catholic definition of ‘conservative’ sits a few miles right of the general definition.) He believes that the reforms introduced by Vatican II (nutty, leftist ideas like being allowed to say mass in languages other than Latin and having female altar servers) were too liberal.

He is a very popular candidate for the Papacy. At just 68, he’s (comparatively) sprightly and he’s from outside of Europe, which appears to be desirable at this Conclave. Despite these factors in his favour, the thing stopping Ouellet becoming Pope is that he doesn’t want to be Pope. In 2011, he was quoted as saying that becoming Pope “would be a nightmare.”

Peter Turkson

America was ready for a black president, but is the Catholic Church ready for a black Pope? 64-year-old Turkson is from the West African nation of Ghana. Given that Africa has basically escaped the recent sex abuse scandal, Turkson is sitting in a good position to take out the Papacy.

Turkson is aligned with the Vatican’s left factions. He believes that Church leaders should do more for LGBT rights (mainly when it comes to legal discrimination in African nations) and although he opposes the use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS in Africa, it is only because he thinks that the condoms manufactured in Africa are pretty shoddy, and would much prefer sufferers were given free anti-retroviral drugs.

Timothy M. Dolan

At 63 years old, the Archbishop of New York is a youngin’, but he’s done a fair bit in his time. One of his greatest achievements was leading an enquiry into sex abuse cases in St. Louis, which has been well regarded as both thorough and victim-driven.

In terms of inter-faith relations and ecumenism, Dolan is all for it. In 2009, he signed the Manhattan Declaration, which is a pledge involving evangelicals, Catholics and the Orthodoxy. The pledge is about taking a hardline stance on political issues that go against their religious conscience (like same-sex marriage) but, hey, small gains.

George Pell

Despite the fact that he made worldwide headlines with his criticism of the Pope’s resignation, the reality is that Pell barely registers as a blip in worldwide Catholic politics, and his chances of taking the Papacy are slim to none.

The Aussie media are talking about Pell as a chance for Pope for the same reasons they painted Hugh Jackman as being a favourite for the Oscar. It’d be great for a ‘local boy done good’ story if it happened.  But it won’t.

Are you interested in what’s going on in Rome? Who’s your pick for Pope?

Mary is an intern at Mamamia, and a Media and Communications/Law student from Sydney. She can do the splits, wiggle her ears and tell you who won Eurovision in 1973. You can follow her on Twitter here.