The day after Easter, Pope Francis passed away due to a stroke and subsequent heart failure. The pope passed away, according to his attendees, in a state of calm, peace, and thankfulness.
Pope Francis was a beacon of kindness and progressivism, bringing about reform in the Catholic church’s views towards divorce, inclusion of LGBTQ+ members, climate change, and immigrants. The pope is the head of the Catholic church around the world, and due to this, his views and statements helped to bring about change and evaluation of their beliefs in Catholics on the issues he spoke on.
Beyond his unprecedented progressivism as pope, Francis was a deeply humble man. This was reflected in his burial. In Catholic tradition, the pope is to be buried in three coffins: one of cypress, one of lead, and one of elm. Despite this, Pope Francis decided to be buried in one single wooden coffin, proving his dedication to humility despite the ultra-powerful position he held in the church.
However, the pope’s death brings up the question of who will be his successor. The process of electing a new pope is quite complicated. A cardinal is a high-ranking clergy member, typically a bishop or archbishop, and the process involves 135/252 of the cardinals holding repeated votes until one of the candidates is able to reach a ⅔ majority. But the question is not as simple as who to choose as the new pope; it is more centered around whether the new pope will embrace Francis’ progressive strides, or whether he will attempt to reverse the progress he made.
Potential candidates for the position include Cardinals Pietro Parolin (from Italy), Luis Antonio Tagle (from the Philippines,) Fridolin Ambongo Besungu ( from the Democratic Republic of the Congo,) Matteo Zuppi (from Italy,) and Péter Erdő (from Hungary). All of these candidates have different stances, beliefs, and identities which could all bring radically different things to the role. For example, Cardinal Tagle is an Asian cardinal, and Cardinal Busungu is African. Each of those choices would result in the first pope of their respective ethnicities.
Some of the candidates are progressive, others are more conservative, and overall the pool of candidates differ greatly from each other. The process of electing a new pope, which will be done by a collection of Roman Catholic cardinals, will happen over the next few weeks to a month.
