The voting to select a new leader of the Catholic Church has finally begun.
All 133 cardinals eligible to elect Pope Francis’s successor have arrived in Rome for the conclave and been locked in to take part in the ballot.
They will take their oaths to observe ‘absolute and perpetual secrecy’ in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday.
The first ballot did not end in a successful vote, with black smoke pouring from the Sistine Chapel at around 8pm GMT confirming that no pope had been elected yet.
A two-thirds majority is needed to be elected pope, meaning the winner must secure 89 votes.
There are no official candidates to succeed Francis and no papal campaigning by any of the cardinals.
However, a small number are seen as ‘papabile’ – or possessing the characteristics necessary to become pope.
Here is a selection of possible contenders, in alphabetical order.
Jean-Marc Aveline
The 66-year-old archbishop of Marseille is known in some domestic Catholic circles as John XXIV, in a nod to his resemblance to Pope John XXIII, the round-faced reforming pope of the early 1960s.
Pope Francis once quipped that his successor might take the name of John XXIV.
Aveline is known for his folksy, easy-going nature, his readiness to crack jokes, and his ideological proximity to Francis, especially on immigration and relations with the Muslim world.
He is also a serious intellectual, with a doctorate in theology and a degree in philosophy.
Born in Algeria to a family of Spanish immigrants who moved to France after Algerian independence, Aveline has lived most of his life in Marseille, a port that has been a crossroads of cultures and religions for centuries.
Under Francis, Aveline has made great career strides, becoming bishop in 2013, archbishop in 2019 and a cardinal three years later.
His standing was boosted in September 2023 when he organised an international Church conference on Mediterranean issues at which Pope Francis was the star guest.
If he got the top job, Aveline would become the first French pope since the 14th century, a turbulent period in which the papacy moved to Avignon.
He would also be the youngest pope since John Paul II.
Aveline understands but does not speak Italian – potentially a major drawback for a job that also carries the title Bishop of Rome and requires a lot of familiarity with Roman power games and intrigues.
Fridolin Ambongo Besungu
The 65-year-old Ambongo is one of Africa’s most outspoken Catholic leaders.
He has been archbishop of Congo’s capital since 2018 and a cardinal since in 2019. Francis also appointed him to a group of advisers that was helping reorganise the Vatican bureaucracy.
In Congo and across Africa, Ambongo has been deeply committed to the Catholic orthodoxy and is seen as conservative.
In 2024, he signed a statement on behalf of the bishops conferences of Africa and Madagascar refusing to follow Francis’ declaration allowing priests to offer blessings to same-sex couples in what amounted to continent-wide dissent from a papal teaching.
The rebuke crystalised both the African church’s line on LGBTQ+ outreach and Ambongo’s stature within the African hierarchy.
He has received praise from some in Congo for promoting interfaith tolerance, especially on a continent where religious divisions between Christians and Muslims are common.
In a country with high poverty and hunger levels despite being rich in minerals, and where fighting by rebel groups has killed thousands and displaced millions in one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises, he frequently criticises both government corruption and inaction, as well as the exploitation of the country’s natural resources by foreign powers.
Péter Erdő
If 72-year-old Erdo is elected, he would inevitably be seen as a compromise candidate — someone from the conservative camp who has nonetheless built bridges with Francis’ progressive world.
Erdo was already considered a papal contender in the last conclave in 2013 thanks to his extensive Church contacts in Europe and Africa as well as the fact that he was seen as a pioneer of the New Evangelisation drive to rekindle the Catholic faith in secularised advanced nations — a top priority for many cardinals.
He ranks as a conservative in theology and in speeches throughout Europe he stresses the Christian roots of the continent. However, he is also seen to be pragmatic and never clashed openly with Francis, unlike other tradition-minded clerics.
That said, he raised eyebrows in the Vatican during the 2015 migrant crisis when he went against Pope Francis’ call for churches to take in refugees, saying this would amount to human trafficking – seemingly aligning himself with Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
An expert in Church law, Erdo has been on a fast track his entire career, becoming a bishop in his 40s and a cardinal in 2003 when he was just 51, making him the youngest member of the College of Cardinals until 2010.
He has excellent Italian, and also speaks German, French, Spanish and Russian — which could help him thaw relations between the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches after the deep chill of the war in Ukraine.
Erdo is not a charismatic speaker, but while this was once undoubtedly viewed as a serious drawback, it could potentially be seen as an advantage this time around if cardinals want a calm papacy following the fireworks of Francis’ rule.
Mario Grech
Grech, the 68-year-old secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, comes from Gozo, a tiny island that is part of Malta, the smallest country in the European Union.
But from small beginnings he has gone on to big things, appointed by Pope Francis to be secretary general of the Synod of Bishops – a heavyweight position within the Vatican.
Initially viewed as a conservative, Grech has become a torchbearer of Francis’ reforms within the Church for years, moving sharply with the times.
In 2008, several gay Maltese citizens declared they were leaving the Church in protest at what they saw as the anti-LGBT stance of the then pontiff – Pope Benedict.
Grech offered them little sympathy at the time, but speaking in the Vatican in 2014, he called for the Church to be more accepting of its LGBT members and creative in finding new ways to address contemporary family situations.
The following day, Pope Francis tapped him on the shoulder at breakfast and complimented him for the speech, marking him out for future promotion.
In 2018, Grech spoke about how he relished the challenges faced by the Church. “We are going through a period of change. And to me, this is a very positive thing,” he told the Malta Today newspaper. He warned that it would not remain relevant to modern society if it did not move beyond nostalgia for the past.
His views have won him some high-profile enemies, and conservative Cardinal Gerhard Muller memorably turned on him in 2022, belittling his academic profile and accusing him of going against Catholic doctrine.
Grech’s allies insist he has friends in both the conservative and moderate camps and that, because of his high-profile role, he is known by many cardinals, a clear advantage in a conclave where so many cardinals are relative unknowns to each other.
Pierbattista Pizzaballa
At 60, Pizzaballa is on the young side to be pope, but he is a favourite of many Italian Vatican watchers eager to see an Italian take back the papacy after nearly 50 years.
He has served in Jerusalem, where he is the Latin Patriarch, for more than three decades, moving to the city from his native Italy just a month after his ordination.
Pizzaballa served as custodian of the Holy Land for 12 years, responsible for all the Catholic properties in the region.
In 2016, Francis appointed Pizzaballa to fill the vacant seat of the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem – the representative of Catholics in Israel, Cyprus, Jordan and the Palestinian territories – and made it official in 2020.
Pizzaballa was elevated to cardinal in 2023.
A fluent Hebrew speaker, Pizzaballa has translated various liturgical texts into the language for the Catholic communities in Israel.
He gained favour in Israel after offering to take the place of children being held hostage in Gaza a week after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Some 251 people, including dozens of children, were abducted.
Robert Prevost
Francis brought Prevost, 69, to the Vatican in 2023 to serve as the powerful head of the office that vets bishop nominations from around the world, one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church.
As a result, Prevost has a prominence going into the conclave that few other cardinals have.
One strike against him, however, is that he’s American, and there has long been a taboo against a US pope, given the geopolitical power already wielded by the United States in the secular sphere.
But Prevost, a Chicago native, could be a first because he’s also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
Prevost was also twice elected prior general, or top leader, of the Augustinian religious order, the 13th century order founded by St Augustine. Francis clearly had an eye on him for years, moving him from the Augustinian leadership back to Peru in 2014 to serve as the administrator and later archbishop of Chiclayo.
He remained in that position, acquiring Peruvian citizenship in 2015, until Francis brought him to Rome in 2023 to assume the presidency of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
In that job he would have kept in regular contact with the Catholic hierarchy in the part of the world that counts still counts the most Catholics.
Ever since he arrived in Rome, Prevost has kept a low public profile, but he is well known to the men who count.
Significantly, he presided over one of the most revolutionary reforms Francis made, when he added three women to the voting bloc that decides which bishop nominations to forward to the pope.
In early 2025, Francis again showed his esteem by appointing Prevost to the most senior rank of cardinals, suggesting he would at least be Francis’ choice in an any future conclave.
Prevost’s comparative youth could count against him if his brother cardinals don’t want to commit to a pope who might reign for another two decades.
Pietro Parolin
The 70-year-old veteran diplomat was Francis’ secretary of state, essentially the Holy See’s prime minister. Secretaries of state are often called the ‘deputy pope’ because they rank second to the pontiff in the Vatican hierarchy.
Parolin is seen as a compromise candidate between progressives and conservatives.
He previously served as deputy foreign minister under Pope Benedict, who in 2009 appointed him the Vatican’s ambassador in Venezuela, where he defended the Church against moves to weaken it by then-President Hugo Chavez.
Parolin was also the main architect of the Vatican’s rapprochement with China and Vietnam.
Conservatives have attacked him for an agreement on the appointment of bishops in communist China. He has defended the agreement saying that while it was not perfect, it avoided a schism and provided some form of communication with the Beijing government.
Parolin was never a front-line or noisy activist in the Church’s so-called Culture Wars, which centred on issues such as abortion and gay rights, although he did once condemn the legalisation of same-sex marriage in many countries as ‘a defeat for humanity’.
He has defended the Vatican’s power over local Church leaders, criticising attempts in Germany to allow priests to symbolically bless same-sex couples. He said local Churches cannot make decisions that would end up affecting all Catholics.
Parolin entered the Vatican’s diplomatic service just three years after his priestly ordination in 1980 so his pastoral experience is limited. But a factor in his favour is that he speaks a number of languages.
Robert Sarah
Sarah, 79, has become something of a figurehead for the conservative wing among cardinals, even if his chances of securing the necessary votes to become pope are now slim.
He was long considered the best hope for an African pope but had a fairly spectacular falling out with Francis that may have spoiled any chance of winning over moderates.
When he was first made a bishop in 1979 by John Paul II, at 34, he was the youngest bishop ever. He headed the Vatican’s charity office Cor Unum and then, under Francis, led its liturgy office.
But he clashed on several occasions with Francis, none more seriously than in 2020, when he and Benedict co-authored a book in advocating the ‘necessity’ of continued celibacy for Roman Catholic priests.
The book came out as Francis was weighing whether to allow married priests in the Amazon to address a shortage there.
Some alleged that Sarah manipulated Benedict into lending the retired pope’s name and moral authority to a book that had all the appearances of being a counterweight to the current pope’s own teaching.
The prospect of a retired pope trying to influence the current pope was the nightmare scenario canon lawyers and theologians warned about in 2013 when Benedict retired and chose to retain the white cassock of the papacy and call himself ‘emeritus Pope Benedict XVI’.
In the end, Benedict removed his name from future editions of the book, but the episode exacerbated the tensions between conservatives and Francis.
Sarah, for his part, insisted he acted in good faith, remained loyal to Francis and denied he had manipulated Benedict.
But in the aftermath, Francis dismissed Benedict’s secretary and several months later retired Sarah as the Vatican’s liturgy chief. Even Sarah’s supporters lamented the episode hurt his future papal chances.
Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle
The 67-year-old Filipino is often called the ‘Asian Francis’ because of his similar commitment to social justice, and if elected he would be the first pontiff from Asia.
On paper, Tagle, who generally prefers to be called by his nickname ‘Chito’, seems to have all the boxes ticked to qualify him to be a pope.
He has had decades of pastoral experience since his ordination to the priesthood in 1982. He then gained administrative experience, first as bishop of Imus and then as archbishop of Manila. Pope Benedict made him a cardinal in 2012.
In a move seen by some as a strategy by Francis to give Tagle some Vatican experience, the pope in 2019 transferred him from Manila and appointed him head of the Church’s missionary arm, formally known as the Dicastery for Evangelisation.
He comes from what some called ‘Asia’s Catholic lung’, because the Philippines has the region’s largest Catholic population. His mother was an ethnic Chinese Filipino. He speaks fluent Italian and English.
Between 2015 and 2022, he was the top leader of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of more than 160 Catholic relief, social service, and development organisations around the world.
In 2022, Pope Francis fired its entire leadership following accusations of bullying and humiliation of employees, and appointed a commissioner to run it.
Tagle, who was also removed from his role, had been nominally president but was not involved in the day-to-day operations, which were overseen by a lay director-general.
Announcing the pope’s dramatic decision, Tagle told a meeting of the confederation that the changes were a moment for ‘facing our failures’. It remains to be seen how the saga will impact Tagle’s chances at the papacy.
Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson
From humble beginnings in a small African town, Cardinal Peter Turkson, 76, has gone on to great things in the Church, making him a contender to become the first pope from sub-Saharan Africa.
He combines a long pastoral background of tending to congregations in Ghana with hands-on experience of leading several Vatican offices, as well as strong communication skills.
The fact he comes from one of the most dynamic regions for the Church, which is struggling against the forces of secularism in its European heartlands, should also bolster his standing.
Pope John Paul II appointed him archbishop of Cape Coast in 1992 and 11 years later made him the first cardinal in the history of the West African state.
Promotions continued under John Paul’s successor, Benedict, who brought him to the Vatican in 2009 and made him the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace – the body that promotes social justice, human rights and world peace.
In that role, he was one of the pope’s closest advisors on issues such as climate change and drew much attention by attending conferences such as the Davos economic forum.
Francis merged Turkson’s department in 2016 with three other offices, leading to what some saw as a power struggle between him and another cardinal.
Turkson resigned from that role in 2021 and was appointed to head two pontifical academies on sciences and social sciences.
In 2023 he told the BBC he prayed ‘against’ the possibility that he would be elected pope but some of his detractors said that given his media appearances it appeared he was campaigning for the job.
Matteo Maria Zuppi
When Zuppi, 69, got a promotion in 2015 and became archbishop of Bologna, national media referred to him as the ‘Italian Bergoglio’, due to his affinity with Francis, the Argentine pope who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Much like Pope Francis when he lived in Buenos Aires, Zuppi is known as a ‘street priest’ who focuses on migrants and the poor, and cares little about pomp and protocol.
He goes by the name of “Father Matteo”, and in Bologna he sometimes uses a bicycle rather than an official car.
In a city that loves its meat products, he once made waves when pork-free tortellini were served, as an option, for the feast day of Bologna’s patron saint. Zuppi called the Muslim-friendly move a normal gesture of respect and courtesy.
If he were made pope, conservatives would likely view him with suspicion. Victims of Church sex abuse might also object to him, since the Italian Catholic Church, which he has led since 2022, has been slow to investigate and confront the issue.
The Italian cardinal is closely associated with the Community of Sant’Egidio, a global peace and justice Catholic group based in the historic Rome district of Trastevere, where he spent most of his life as a priest.
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Sant’Egidio, sometimes called ‘the United Nations of Trastevere’, brokered a 1992 peace agreement that ended a 17-year-old civil war in Mozambique, with the help of Zuppi as one of the mediators.
He has engaged in more diplomacy recently as papal envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, concentrating on efforts to repatriate children who Ukraine says have been deported to Russia or Russian-held territories.
Zuppi is a born-and-bred Roman with a fairly thick regional accent, and solid Catholic family roots.
His father Enrico was the editor of the Sunday supplement of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, while his mother’s uncle, Carlo Confalonieri, was also a cardinal.
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