April 22, 2025 • 12 mins
Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, has died at 88 of a stroke and a heart attack. His death means a process called the papal conclave is about to begin, where senior Church leaders will gather in the Sistine Chapel, sequestered from the world, to elect a new Pope. In today’s episode, we’ll explain what we know about this mysterious process, who the contenders are, and why this all comes down to different colours of smoke.
Hosts: Lucy Tassell and Zara Seidler
Producer: Orla Maher
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this is the Daily This is the Dahlias.
Oh now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to
the Daily Os. It's Wednesday, the twenty third of April.
I'm Lucy Tassel, I'm Zara Seidler. Pope Francis, the head
(00:22):
of the Catholic Church, has died at eighty eight of
a stroke and a heart attack. His death means a
process called the People Conclave is about to begin, where
senior church leaders will gather in the Sistine Chapel, sequestered
from the world, to elect a new Pope. In today's episode,
we'll explain what we know about this mysterious process, who
the contenders are, and why this all comes down to
(00:44):
different colors of smoke. Lucy.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Earlier this week we learned that Pope Francis had died.
We understand that he had been unwell for quite a while,
but that he passed on Monday morning. Can talk to
me about Pope Francis, and I guess, in the first instance,
about his legacy.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Pope Francis will always be known as the first Pope
from South America. His election was also significant because he
was taking over from a pope who had retired for
the first time in six hundred years and only the
second time in the history of the church. He will
also be known for his relatively progressive views and his
(01:26):
care for the disadvantage the discriminated against. An anecdote that
I think really reflects Pope Francis's legacy is that the
pope has an official summer residence and he said, I'm
never going to use it. I won't go on holiday.
Turn it into a museum so people can come and visit.
And that's what he did. He never went on holiday
(01:48):
the entire time, even though he became pope in his
mid seventies, the entire time that he was there, he
really felt like he needed to be in service of
the church and its people. So those are some of
the things that we know about him and about his legacy.
Now there's going to be a new pope, someone who
will go from being someone that maybe only a few
(02:09):
thousand people know to someone that billions of people around
the world know the name of, or rather the assumed
name of. But I'll get to that later.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, and obviously the election of a new pope is
so significant, But I guess before we go into what
the process is for those who are perhaps less familiar
with the Catholic Church, can you just explain what the
role of the pope actually is.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Catholics believe the pope is God's representative on earth and
that any official declarations by the pope can't be wrong
because they come through him from God. The role of
the pope has existed since the earliest days of the Church,
and Catholics actually believe the first pope was one of Jesus'
twelve disciples, Saint Peter. Today, the pope also has a
(02:56):
formal role as the head of state of Vatican City,
which is a city state inside the city of Rome,
the capital of Italy. The Vatican is both a sacred
site for Catholics and it's also the church's headquarters. It
has observer status at the United Nations, and its small
population is mostly people who work for the Church. As
(03:16):
you would imagine, the pope's responsibilities also involve leading masses,
which is like the Catholic religious observance, publishing reflections on
world events and on holidays, and meeting members of the
church and also world leaders. At the Vatican. For example,
it's believed that the last person Pope Francis met with
(03:38):
was US Vice President JD. Vance, who of course converted
to Catholicism a couple of years ago. Again, we'll touch
on that later.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, okay, and so these are the responsibilities of the pope.
But how does someone ascend to the papacy.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Something I learned while researching this podcast today which is
very surprising to me, is that technically any baptized Catholic
man could become the pope.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
They could all go in there to the secret conclave
and write in JD. Vance if they wanted to. It's
extremely unlikely. Only cardinals, which is a senior church leader,
have been named the pope since the fourteenth century. When
something has existed for as long as the Catholic Church
has as an institution, you tend to get these kind
of very long term trends. Yeah, so seven hundred years
(04:28):
of only cardinals.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
What is a cardinal?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
A cardinal is a senior advisor to the pope. The
pope can appoint them from different places around the world.
They vote on who becomes the pope. They're part of
an organization called the College of Cardinals, and so they
are the ones who vote in a process called the Conclave,
which gave its name to an Oscar winning movie.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
He's going to say, people might be familiar with the
name of that process now.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
And that film actually, despite having very dramatic developments, I
think the process, to my understanding, is depicted fairly accurately,
which is all these senior advisors from all around the world,
they gather in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and
they vote until they have decided on who will be
the next pope. They're not allowed to speak to anyone
(05:17):
in the outside world while this is happening. It's called
being in seclusion. And also only cardinals under the age
of eighty are allowed to vote, I imagine, because it's
about who will be taking the church into the future.
That means about half of the current number of cardinals
are not going to be voting. And they vote until
(05:37):
they secure a two thirds majority of votes, until one
candidate does rather, and then something really exciting happens, which
is they release white smoke into the air to let
the world know we have chosen a pope. At the
end of every previous vote that does not result in
unelected pope, they release black smoke.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And I learned while I was your post that smoke
is in part formed by burning the ballots that people
are voting with or the cardinals are voting with.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, the level of seclusion extends even to who voted
for what and how many people got yeah wow vote.
We really don't know. That's what's kind of bananas about
this process in the modern world. It is truly a mystery.
We only know the basic mechanics. We will never know
who voted for whom and how many people were contenders
and then fell away. We can get a rough sense
(06:30):
of how many rounds of voting they were by how
many times the black smoke is released, but other than that,
we have no idea what the discussions were.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Wow, it's fascinating. And so you're saying, black smoke shoots
up if they are unsuccessful in choosing a pope. But
when that two thirds majority is reached and a pope
is declared, white smoke comes up. Yes, what happens after that?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And I'll also note if it's cloudy, the white smoke
can be really hard to spot. Yeah. Interesting in an
issue in the past.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
So then the head of the College of Cardinals comes
out on a balcony. It's Saint Peter's Basilica. Typically thousands
of people are gathered in the square waiting, or they've
gathered after seeing the white smoke to say, Okay, we're
going to go and see the new Pope. The Dean
of the College of Cardinals comes out onto the balcony
and says a Latin phrase, hebemus popham, which means we
(07:19):
have a pope. And then the new Pope comes out
and says hello, I'm the Pope. Hello to the billions
of Catholics around the world. My new name is blank.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Talk to me about that new name part, because again
I'm not overly familiar with certain parts of Catholicism, and
so learning all of this has been so fascinating for me.
Where do popes get their names from.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
They choose it from a name within the church's history
that they want to guide them as they enter this
new kind of enormous role. So, for example, Pope Francis
is named Francis after Saint Francis of Assisi, because he
said he wanted to emulate his care for the poor
and the downtrodden in the past. If you take the
(08:05):
same name as a previous pope, then you add a
number to your name. So, for example, if the new
pope takes John, he'll be John the twenty fourth because
there have been twenty three previous Johns. He might be
taking that to represent John the Baptist, an important Catholic figure.
He might be saying, I want to be just like
John the twenty third. It's any number of reasons which
(08:27):
will be explained.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, it so so interesting and so just on that.
We are at this point now where there will be
a new pope and this conclave process will now unfold.
Do we know who is I don't know. I guess
a front runner to become the next pope. What do
we know about that?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
There's a saying I've just learned in the process of
researching this, which is you enter a conclave a pope,
but you leave a cardinal, which basically means you can
enter as a front runner, and then things can go
completely differently once they're in seclusion and sequestered from the
rest of the world. But international media has speculated and
here are three main contenders from what I saw. So
(09:07):
the first is Cardinal Luis Tugley. He's the former Archbishop
of Manila. He's widely considered to be the closest to
Francis in terms of caring about social justice and in
terms of how they think about leading the church. He's
sixty seven, and if he's elected, he would be the
first pope from East Asia. I specify this because there
(09:29):
are a couple of popes from Syria in the church's
first thousand years, but not since then it's mainly been European.
The next one is Cardinal Peter Erdo, who's the Archbishop
of Budapest. He's a conservative, but he worked effectively with Francis,
a progressive. He's seventy two, and he has strong connections
(09:49):
with European and African bishops, so that could mean that
they joined together to vote him in. It's entirely possible,
we don't know. And then the third one I wanted
to raise is Cardinal Pietro Paroline. He was the Pope's
second in command. He's seventy and he worked for a
long time as a diplomat for the Church. He negotiated
(10:10):
a number of key agreements. He also met with US
Vice President JD. Vance last week, and a Vatican statement
about that meeting said it included, quote, an exchange of
opinions about migrants, refugees and prisoners, so could be interesting
if he is elected to see how he navigates the
Church's relationship with the world. But as I said before,
(10:35):
we just don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I mean, it seems like we're going to have to
wait and see what happens and wait for that white smoke.
When does this process actually kick off? Though you said
it can take a number of days, When does it begin.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
It doesn't actually begin for a couple of weeks, okay,
So the Vatican is in an official period of mourning,
then there'll be meetings among the cardinals ahead of the conclave.
Many of these cardinals are bas at the Vatican, but
plenty are also coming from all over the world, so
we have to account for travel time, including for Australia's
Cardinal Mikhola Beachuk. He's forty four, which makes him the
(11:11):
youngest member of the College of Cardinals, and he was
actually only made a cardinal last year by Poete Francis.
He was born in Ukraine and moved to Australia in
twenty twenty one when he was given a senior position
in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church based in Australia. This
church is a subsidiary of the larger church. The fact
that he was elected so recently, the fact of his age,
(11:34):
the fact that he's from a subsidiary branch all mean
it's unlikely that he becomes the pope, but never say never,
Never say never. It's unlikely, but it's certainly possible. The
conclave is a mystery.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Wow, it really is. Lucy. Thank you so much for
explaining that. It's such a fascinating topic and has so
much influence on the rest of the world, and yet
we know so little about what actually goes on. So
thank you for shedding a bit of light there, and
thank you for joining us for another episode of The
Daily Oas. We'll be back later today with the day's headlines,
but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Bungelung Kalkatin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
s right island and nations. We pay our respects to
the first peoples of these countries both past and present.
Already and this is the Daily This is the Dahlias.
Oh now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to
the Daily Os. It's Wednesday, the twenty third of April.
I'm Lucy Tassel, I'm Zara Seidler. Pope Francis, the head
(00:22):
of the Catholic Church, has died at eighty eight of
a stroke and a heart attack. His death means a
process called the People Conclave is about to begin, where
senior church leaders will gather in the Sistine Chapel, sequestered
from the world, to elect a new Pope. In today's episode,
we'll explain what we know about this mysterious process, who
the contenders are, and why this all comes down to
(00:44):
different colors of smoke. Lucy.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Earlier this week we learned that Pope Francis had died.
We understand that he had been unwell for quite a while,
but that he passed on Monday morning. Can talk to
me about Pope Francis, and I guess, in the first instance,
about his legacy.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Pope Francis will always be known as the first Pope
from South America. His election was also significant because he
was taking over from a pope who had retired for
the first time in six hundred years and only the
second time in the history of the church. He will
also be known for his relatively progressive views and his
(01:26):
care for the disadvantage the discriminated against. An anecdote that
I think really reflects Pope Francis's legacy is that the
pope has an official summer residence and he said, I'm
never going to use it. I won't go on holiday.
Turn it into a museum so people can come and visit.
And that's what he did. He never went on holiday
(01:48):
the entire time, even though he became pope in his
mid seventies, the entire time that he was there, he
really felt like he needed to be in service of
the church and its people. So those are some of
the things that we know about him and about his legacy.
Now there's going to be a new pope, someone who
will go from being someone that maybe only a few
(02:09):
thousand people know to someone that billions of people around
the world know the name of, or rather the assumed
name of. But I'll get to that later.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, and obviously the election of a new pope is
so significant, But I guess before we go into what
the process is for those who are perhaps less familiar
with the Catholic Church, can you just explain what the
role of the pope actually is.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Catholics believe the pope is God's representative on earth and
that any official declarations by the pope can't be wrong
because they come through him from God. The role of
the pope has existed since the earliest days of the Church,
and Catholics actually believe the first pope was one of Jesus'
twelve disciples, Saint Peter. Today, the pope also has a
(02:56):
formal role as the head of state of Vatican City,
which is a city state inside the city of Rome,
the capital of Italy. The Vatican is both a sacred
site for Catholics and it's also the church's headquarters. It
has observer status at the United Nations, and its small
population is mostly people who work for the Church. As
(03:16):
you would imagine, the pope's responsibilities also involve leading masses,
which is like the Catholic religious observance, publishing reflections on
world events and on holidays, and meeting members of the
church and also world leaders. At the Vatican. For example,
it's believed that the last person Pope Francis met with
(03:38):
was US Vice President JD. Vance, who of course converted
to Catholicism a couple of years ago. Again, we'll touch
on that later.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, okay, and so these are the responsibilities of the pope.
But how does someone ascend to the papacy.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Something I learned while researching this podcast today which is
very surprising to me, is that technically any baptized Catholic
man could become the pope.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
They could all go in there to the secret conclave
and write in JD. Vance if they wanted to. It's
extremely unlikely. Only cardinals, which is a senior church leader,
have been named the pope since the fourteenth century. When
something has existed for as long as the Catholic Church
has as an institution, you tend to get these kind
of very long term trends. Yeah, so seven hundred years
(04:28):
of only cardinals.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
What is a cardinal?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
A cardinal is a senior advisor to the pope. The
pope can appoint them from different places around the world.
They vote on who becomes the pope. They're part of
an organization called the College of Cardinals, and so they
are the ones who vote in a process called the Conclave,
which gave its name to an Oscar winning movie.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
He's going to say, people might be familiar with the
name of that process now.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
And that film actually, despite having very dramatic developments, I
think the process, to my understanding, is depicted fairly accurately,
which is all these senior advisors from all around the world,
they gather in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and
they vote until they have decided on who will be
the next pope. They're not allowed to speak to anyone
(05:17):
in the outside world while this is happening. It's called
being in seclusion. And also only cardinals under the age
of eighty are allowed to vote, I imagine, because it's
about who will be taking the church into the future.
That means about half of the current number of cardinals
are not going to be voting. And they vote until
(05:37):
they secure a two thirds majority of votes, until one
candidate does rather, and then something really exciting happens, which
is they release white smoke into the air to let
the world know we have chosen a pope. At the
end of every previous vote that does not result in
unelected pope, they release black smoke.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And I learned while I was your post that smoke
is in part formed by burning the ballots that people
are voting with or the cardinals are voting with.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, the level of seclusion extends even to who voted
for what and how many people got yeah wow vote.
We really don't know. That's what's kind of bananas about
this process in the modern world. It is truly a mystery.
We only know the basic mechanics. We will never know
who voted for whom and how many people were contenders
and then fell away. We can get a rough sense
(06:30):
of how many rounds of voting they were by how
many times the black smoke is released, but other than that,
we have no idea what the discussions were.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Wow, it's fascinating. And so you're saying, black smoke shoots
up if they are unsuccessful in choosing a pope. But
when that two thirds majority is reached and a pope
is declared, white smoke comes up. Yes, what happens after that?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And I'll also note if it's cloudy, the white smoke
can be really hard to spot. Yeah. Interesting in an
issue in the past.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
So then the head of the College of Cardinals comes
out on a balcony. It's Saint Peter's Basilica. Typically thousands
of people are gathered in the square waiting, or they've
gathered after seeing the white smoke to say, Okay, we're
going to go and see the new Pope. The Dean
of the College of Cardinals comes out onto the balcony
and says a Latin phrase, hebemus popham, which means we
(07:19):
have a pope. And then the new Pope comes out
and says hello, I'm the Pope. Hello to the billions
of Catholics around the world. My new name is blank.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Talk to me about that new name part, because again
I'm not overly familiar with certain parts of Catholicism, and
so learning all of this has been so fascinating for me.
Where do popes get their names from.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
They choose it from a name within the church's history
that they want to guide them as they enter this
new kind of enormous role. So, for example, Pope Francis
is named Francis after Saint Francis of Assisi, because he
said he wanted to emulate his care for the poor
and the downtrodden in the past. If you take the
(08:05):
same name as a previous pope, then you add a
number to your name. So, for example, if the new
pope takes John, he'll be John the twenty fourth because
there have been twenty three previous Johns. He might be
taking that to represent John the Baptist, an important Catholic figure.
He might be saying, I want to be just like
John the twenty third. It's any number of reasons which
(08:27):
will be explained.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, it so so interesting and so just on that.
We are at this point now where there will be
a new pope and this conclave process will now unfold.
Do we know who is I don't know. I guess
a front runner to become the next pope. What do
we know about that?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
There's a saying I've just learned in the process of
researching this, which is you enter a conclave a pope,
but you leave a cardinal, which basically means you can
enter as a front runner, and then things can go
completely differently once they're in seclusion and sequestered from the
rest of the world. But international media has speculated and
here are three main contenders from what I saw. So
(09:07):
the first is Cardinal Luis Tugley. He's the former Archbishop
of Manila. He's widely considered to be the closest to
Francis in terms of caring about social justice and in
terms of how they think about leading the church. He's
sixty seven, and if he's elected, he would be the
first pope from East Asia. I specify this because there
(09:29):
are a couple of popes from Syria in the church's
first thousand years, but not since then it's mainly been European.
The next one is Cardinal Peter Erdo, who's the Archbishop
of Budapest. He's a conservative, but he worked effectively with Francis,
a progressive. He's seventy two, and he has strong connections
(09:49):
with European and African bishops, so that could mean that
they joined together to vote him in. It's entirely possible,
we don't know. And then the third one I wanted
to raise is Cardinal Pietro Paroline. He was the Pope's
second in command. He's seventy and he worked for a
long time as a diplomat for the Church. He negotiated
(10:10):
a number of key agreements. He also met with US
Vice President JD. Vance last week, and a Vatican statement
about that meeting said it included, quote, an exchange of
opinions about migrants, refugees and prisoners, so could be interesting
if he is elected to see how he navigates the
Church's relationship with the world. But as I said before,
(10:35):
we just don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I mean, it seems like we're going to have to
wait and see what happens and wait for that white smoke.
When does this process actually kick off? Though you said
it can take a number of days, When does it begin.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
It doesn't actually begin for a couple of weeks, okay,
So the Vatican is in an official period of mourning,
then there'll be meetings among the cardinals ahead of the conclave.
Many of these cardinals are bas at the Vatican, but
plenty are also coming from all over the world, so
we have to account for travel time, including for Australia's
Cardinal Mikhola Beachuk. He's forty four, which makes him the
(11:11):
youngest member of the College of Cardinals, and he was
actually only made a cardinal last year by Poete Francis.
He was born in Ukraine and moved to Australia in
twenty twenty one when he was given a senior position
in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church based in Australia. This
church is a subsidiary of the larger church. The fact
that he was elected so recently, the fact of his age,
(11:34):
the fact that he's from a subsidiary branch all mean
it's unlikely that he becomes the pope, but never say never,
Never say never. It's unlikely, but it's certainly possible. The
conclave is a mystery.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Wow, it really is. Lucy. Thank you so much for
explaining that. It's such a fascinating topic and has so
much influence on the rest of the world, and yet
we know so little about what actually goes on. So
thank you for shedding a bit of light there, and
thank you for joining us for another episode of The
Daily Oas. We'll be back later today with the day's headlines,
but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Bungelung Kalkatin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
s right island and nations. We pay our respects to
the first peoples of these countries both past and present.
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