Vatican sets Tuesday as date for Papal election
Date for cardinals to elect new pope set for March 12
Cardinals have set Tuesday as the start date for the conclave to elect the next pope, signaling that they were wrapping up a week of discussions about the problems of the church and who best among them might lead it.
The conclave date was set on Friday afternoon during a vote by the College of Cardinals. Tuesday will begin with a Mass in the morning in St Peter’s Basilica, followed by the first balloting in the afternoon.
In the past 100 years, no conclave has lasted longer than five days.
That said, there doesn’t appear to be a front-runner in this election, and the past week of deliberations has exposed sharp divisions among cardinals about some of the pressing problems facing the church, including of governance within the Holy See itself.
US Cardinal Timothy Dolan, considered a papal contender, said in a blog post on Friday that most of the discussions in the closed-door meetings covered preaching and teaching the Catholic faith, tending to Catholic schools and hospitals, protecting families and the unborn, and supporting priests “and getting more of them!”
“Those are the ‘big issues,”‘ he wrote. “You may find that hard to believe, since the ‘word on the street’ is that all we talk about is corruption in the Vatican, sexual abuse, money. Do these topics come up? Yes! Do they dominate? No!”
Early in the week, the Americans had been pressing for more time to get to the bottom of the level of dysfunction and corruption in the Holy See’s governance that were exposed by the leaks of papal documents last year. But by Thursday afternoon, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles tweeted that the discussions were “reaching a conclusion” and that a mood of “excitement” was taking hold.