Here’s what to know:
- Some 45,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday, according to a Vatican estimate.
- The secretive conclave process amounts mostly to a waiting game, even for reporters who are well sourced at the Vatican. The world will be watching for smoke signals — black meaning an election did not reach the two-thirds majority, white meaning it did — the only communication from inside.
- There was one vote on the first day of the conclave, with up to four votes on each following day. Pope Francis was elected in five rounds of voting, while his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI was elected in four. If this process follows a similar voting pattern, a decision would come Thursday.
- Arriving amid deep church division, this conclave is the most diverse and largest in history, and the least predictable in decades. Top contenders include Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a moderate leader and Francis’s top diplomatic envoy since 2013, and Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, seen as a natural successor to Francis and his reformist approach — but the list is long.
- In procession to the Sistine Chapel to begin the conclave, the cardinals issued a prayer to “evoke without delay the grace of the Holy Spirit so that one from among us might be elected a worthy pastor for the whole flock of Christ.” Once the chapel doors closed, nothing more could be seen by the outside world.
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