I have a friend who unintentionally became part of world history a few weeks ago. My friend, a professed brother in the Marianist order, had the amazing privilege with the rest of his community to go to Rome for the Triduum and the Easter Octave, getting to enjoy Easter Sunday and the Octave in Rome before planning to attend the canonization of the first Millennial saint, Carlo Acutis, on Divine Mercy Sunday, the 27th of April. I couldn’t believe it when my friend sent me a picture from St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican on Holy Saturday. What an amazing chance for him to see history in the making!
Well, I was right about him seeing history being made, but not in the way either of us expected. The next day, the news broke that our beloved Pope Francis had somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly died the day after Easter Sunday, a day after he had visited the crowds in St. Peter’s Square. My friend, instead of attending the canonization Mass of the first Millennial saint, instead got to attend a papal funeral, something which very few people in world history have gotten to do. What a wild way to spend the Octave of Easter.
Thankfully, papal deaths are not frequent events. But the gaps between them make the events surrounding them even more poignant. I remember 2005, when John Paul II died; it was very odd for me as a young Catholic not to hear the priest in the Eucharistic prayer pray “together with John Paul, our pope,” or in 2013 to hear a similar gap when Benedict resigned the papacy. Twelve years is long enough to make us used to hearing the celebrant say Francis’ name in the prayers.
There are many Catholics, young ones and converts since 2013, who have never heard anyone else’s name said in the Eucharistic prayers. This past Sunday, the first Sunday since Francis’ death, I had the amazing chance to attend Mass like a true tourist at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. The priest in his homily touched on the legacy of Pope Francis in the context of Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday, but it was jarring to reach the part of the Mass when the priest prayed only for Cardinal Dolan, archbishop of New York, and not Pope Francis by name in the normal place in the prayers: “Together with Timothy, our bishop”—and a slight pause as we all realized what was absent, accentuating the fact that Francis’ name was not said in its regular spot. Instead, Pope Francis’ name was mentioned in the prayers for the dead.
Pope Francis’ death, starting on April 21st and continuing even now, set into motion a long, detailed, ancient process, one developed over centuries and passed down in the Church. Here’s a somewhat brief but hopefully adequately detailed explanation of what happened starting on the day of Francis’ death:
Firstly, making use of modern medical procedures, the medical death of the pope is confirmed. The pope’s baptismal name is called out three times. When he does not respond, the process of mourning him and preparing for his successor begins. His ring is destroyed, a remnant of earlier days when rings which contained leaders’ coats of arms were used to seal official documents and show them as authentic. By destroying the ring of the deceased pope, his reign is shown both symbolically and practically to have ended. The papal apartment is sealed by the cardinals, preventing unauthorized use and keeping it prepared for the next pope. A chosen cardinal runs the Vatican during the so-called interregnum—literally “between reigns” in Latin—and the other cardinals come to Rome and begin selecting the days for the pope’s funeral. Francis’ funeral took place at 10 AM Rome time on Saturday, April 26, 2025, unfortunately in the middle of the night for us here in the United States. The various cardinals’ groups meet and select the date for the beginning of the conclave to select the pope’s successor. Canon law dictates and regulates when the conclave must start, giving a range of days after the pope’s death within which the conclave begins; there is no set end date for the conclave, which ends only when the cardinals select the new pope. The cardinals meet in secrecy in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, burning their ballots after each vote. Earlier conclaves used regular paper and wet straw to produce the different colors of smoke which today indicate to the world whether a new pope has been elected: black smoke indicates no new pope yet, whereas white smoke tells the world that a new pope has been selected by the cardinals. Modern conclaves use certain chemicals and methods to produce more reliable smoke colors.1 Then, the new pope, when he accepts the role, puts on one of three white cassocks (the papal robes, for those who don’t know the word) in whichever size fits him best. Finally, the new pope steps out onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican to the legendary words, Habemus Papam! “We have a pope!”23
So here we are, a few days before the start of the 2025 conclave to select Francis’ successor. The conclave starts on May 7, 2025. There is no question that the selection of a new pope has huge meaning to the Church and to the world; each man who has become pope has had a different personality and different ways of living out the Petrine ministry (that is, the role of being pope). We have been very blessed to have had amazingly holy and good popes for at least 150 or more years at this point, if not much longer.
To be fair, the process to choose a pope does echo some secular election practices. If you’re anything like me, for each U.S. presidential election, I stay up late to watch the coverage on the news as more and more precincts and states report on who has won. It’s meaningful and kind of fun to watch and to see how different places vote. Those who vote can look at the results and think, “Hey, I had an impact on that!” Or they look at it and lament that their singular vote did not seem to have much of an impact on the process. Either way, the selection of new leadership for our country, states, and municipalities can feel exciting but unsettling; we can’t tell with any certainty what each election will cause in the future, though polls and analysts try to parse data sets and guess where each area and state is trending, a process which can sometimes result in surprises or confirm the integrity of the polling methods.
Papal elections are fundamentally different, even though some of the same processes and ways of thinking overlap with secular elections. One major difference is that we “regular” Catholics don’t vote for the pope. In one understanding we have no direct impact on the choice of our new pope. (We of course can and should pray that the cardinal electors consult and listen to the Holy Spirit. That’s the most important and impactful way we can have a hand in the process.) Many Catholic media sources have rightly tried to emphasize that we cannot know who will become the new pope, that we should not allow ourselves to be swept up in concern about the next pope. Even if we think that we know the frontrunner, God alone knows the identity of our future pope.
The whole situation is one of uncertainty. We, whether layperson or cardinal-elector, stand in the interregnum, the in-between. It’s a difficult place to be in, a time of waiting and preparation. Major ecclesiastical decisions can’t be made until we get a new pope, so we won’t get any canonizations between now and then. Bishops’ appointments and resignations have to wait. It’s a lot of “not yet” as we wait. Uncertainty isn’t fun. We want certainty, and having to wait for the Holy Spirit to act in the conclave and cardinal-electors means that we can only watch and pray. The Church as a whole stands in this space of “not yet”, simultaneously mourning Pope Francis while looking forward to the next pope.
This interregnum can lead us to fret and worry about the new pope while we wait—or we can decide to look ahead with hope and faith, trusting joyfully in God’s work in the Church. He will not leave his Church without a pastor on earth.
Though living in the in-between is not necessarily fun, it is an important time and a major opportunity to listen to God and to trust his providence. It also challenges us—and this is something which I keep having to remind myself—because we may want a pope who confirms our own ways of thinking and living. As I mentioned in my last article, I myself have fallen into that trap many times, which at one point led me to dislike Pope Francis for many years before discovering the freedom of trusting in and learning from our pope. If our new pope has ideas and emphases which challenge us—that is good. Christianity should challenge us to look beyond our limited ways of thinking and to allow God to mold us into something bigger and better than ourselves, more docile to his Holy Spirit and more concerned for the poor and marginalized. Waiting for the new pope, and, when he becomes pope, listening to him and learning from him, provides us with a chance to put our faith in something more than ourselves or our personal imperfect ways of thinking about Catholicism. The papacy has a unique role in our lives as Catholics, and we only have to trust in God’s merciful guidance. We don’t have a pope for now. But we will soon have one again, and we will rejoice when that time comes. For now we have a rare chance to dwell in the in-between time and to grow in our trust of God’s gentle guiding hand at work in the Church.
- 1. David A. Pitt, “What is the origin of the papal smoke?” U.S. Catholic, https://uscatholic.org/articles/202504/what-is-the-origin-of-the-papal-smoke/ ↩︎
- 2. “The Rite of the Verification of a Pope’s Death: History, Theology, and Spiritual Guide,” Catholicus.eu English, https://catholicus.eu/en/the-rite-of-the-verification-of-a-popes-death-history-theology-and-spiritual-guide/ ↩︎
- 3. Catholic News Agency, “Ancient tradition for confirming Pope’s death,” The Catholic Telegraph, https://www.thecatholictelegraph.com/ancient-tradition-for-confirming-popes-death/100134 ↩︎