Pope Francis has died at the age of 88 following a short illness.
This Insight looks at how a new pope will be chosen and examines the status of the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom.
Who is the pope?
The pope, also known as the Bishop of Rome, is head of the Catholic Church and sovereign (or head) of the Vatican City State.
The Holy See governs the Catholic Church and the Vatican. The duties of His Holiness are both spiritual and temporal/political. They include blessings, leading religious celebrations and meeting with bishops from around the world.
Canon 332 of the Church’s Code of Canon Law states that:
The Roman Pontiff obtains full and supreme power in the Church by his acceptance of legitimate election together with episcopal consecration. Therefore, a person elected to the supreme pontificate who is marked with episcopal character obtains this power from the moment of acceptance. If the person elected lacks episcopal character, however, he is to be ordained a bishop immediately.
This means that, theoretically, any Catholic could become pope, but if they are not already a bishop, they will immediately be ordained.
What happens when a pope dies or resigns?
The process for the election of a pope is set out in the Apostolic Constitution “Universi Dominis Gregis”, originally promulgated by John Paul II in 1996.
When a pope dies or resigns, the day-to-day governance of the Catholic Church passes to the College of Cardinals. Cardinals are bishops from all over the world, personally chosen by the pope and identifiable by their red vestments. If a pope has died, then there is a nine-day mourning period called novendiales.
When there is a vacancy, the College of Cardinals holds a series of meetings at the Vatican known as general congregations. These discuss the needs of and challenges facing the Catholic Church. They also prepare for the upcoming papal election, which is called a conclave. A conclave usually takes place 15 to 20 days after a death or resignation, which allows time for all the cardinals to travel to the Vatican.
How do cardinals elect a new pope?
Only cardinals under the age of 80 (at the time the Holy See is declared vacant) are eligible to vote in a conclave. They are known as the cardinal electors, of whom there can be no more than 120. All are male and come from different parts of the world. The conclave itself takes place in the Sistine Chapel. Cardinal electors take an oath of secrecy before its doors are sealed. Voting takes place under Michelangelo’s painted ceiling.
The cardinals vote by secret ballot, praying before they drop a twice-folded ballot into a large chalice (a standing cup). Four rounds of balloting are taken every day (two in the morning and two in the afternoon) until a candidate receives two-thirds of the vote. The result of each ballot is counted aloud and recorded by three cardinals who are designated as scrutineers. This process usually takes a few days.
If no candidate receives the necessary two-thirds, the ballots are burned in a stove with a mixture of chemicals. This produces black smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney, which indicates that a new pope has not yet been elected. If no pope is elected after three days, the cardinals pause for prayer and reflection before continuing.
What happens when a new pope is elected?
When a cardinal does receive the necessary two-thirds majority, following further prayer and discussion, the dean of the College of Cardinals asks him if he accepts his election. If he does, he is asked by what name he wishes to be called. The new pope chooses a papal name, which is officially recorded. The new pope is then dressed in papal vestments.
When a papal conclave elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as successor to Pope Benedict XVI on 13 March 2013, he chose Francis as his papal name in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi.
The final ballots are burned with chemicals which produce white smoke, signalling publicly the election of a new pope. The senior cardinal deacon announces from the balcony of St Peter’s “Habemus Papam!” (“We have a Pope!”) before the new pope steps onto the balcony and gives his first blessing, Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and the World”).
A papal inauguration takes place a few days later.
What is the status of the Catholic Church in the UK?
Historically, what is now the United Kingdom recognised the authority of the pope. In England (which was then taken to include Wales), the 16th-century Acts of Supremacy established the then King of England as head of the Protestant Church of England in place of the pope. Similar laws passed by the Parliament of Ireland made the English monarch head of the Church of Ireland. The Catholic Church was also outlawed in Scotland by the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560.
By law, the King or Queen of the UK cannot be Catholic, while a Catholic Prime Minister is prohibited from advising the Sovereign on the appointment of Church of England bishops. A recent Act of Parliament removed a restriction that prevented the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from being a Catholic.
Today, the Catholic Church in the UK is organised separately in England and Wales, Scotland and in Northern Ireland (although the church there is organised on an all-Ireland basis).
The Catholic Church in England and Wales has four cardinals. Traditionally, the Archbishop of Westminster is created a cardinal, as Vincent Nichols was in 2014. Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald also became a cardinal in 2019, as did Arthur Roche, the former Bishop of Leeds, in 2022. Most recently, Pope Francis made Timothy Radcliffe a member of the College of Cardinals on 7 December 2024. Only three of the four are cardinal electors, as Cardinal Fitzgerald is over the age of 80.
How many people in the UK are Catholic?
According to data from the 2018 British Social Attitudes Survey, 7% of the population of Great Britain identified as Catholics (equivalent to about 4.5 million people at the time). Another frequently used figure from St Mary’s University estimates that there were around 3.8 million practising Catholics in England and Wales in 2014.
According to the most recent Scottish and Northern Irish censuses, there are around 841,000 Catholics in Scotland and 869,800 Catholics in Northern Ireland (PDF). In the latter case, this is a greater proportion of the Northern Ireland population than Protestants and other Christians.
About the author: Dr David Torrance is the religion specialist at the House of Commons Library
Image credit: David Iliff on Wikimedia Commons, CC By-SA 3.0
