Pope Francis has died — here’s what’s next

Written by Max Balzer, 04/29/2025

As The Stand’s Chief Papal Correspondent, I thought I might get a break from writing articles this week because, well, there isn’t a pope right now. However, the last few got such rave reviews and enormous readership (trust me), so here I am.

Pope Francis died early in the morning of April 21 in the Vatican City following a stroke, coma, and cardiac arrest. His Holiness was 88 at the time of his death, which came after several weeks in the hospital in February with double pneumonia. Francis was pope for over 12 years, having served since the resignation of the red loafer-clad Pope Benedict XVI — the pope he succeeded after being elected in a papal conclave.

Papal conclaves are how a new pope is elected in the event that the current one dies or resigns. Popes have been elected through conclaves since the late 1200s, and it’s how the new pope will be chosen next week. The Vatican announced early this week that the 2025 papal conclave would begin on May 7, and as usual, run for as long as it takes to choose a new pope.

The College of Cardinals comprises 252 cardinals, senior members of the Catholic Church, who are just one level below the pope on the Church’s hierarchy. Only cardinals under 80 years old are eligible to vote for the next pope, so 135 cardinals will congregate in the Sistine Chapel to vote until a new pope is chosen from the pool of cardinals. Any baptised Catholic male is eligible to be pope, but it’s been over six centuries since one wasn’t chosen from the College of Cardinals. Due to the public interest in the conclave, cardinals are sequestered within the Vatican until they choose the next pope, and they stay in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a guest house within the walls of the Holy See, which is fortified to prevent any influence from the outside world. 

Candidates for the papacy must receive two-thirds of the votes to be elected pope, and cardinals vote in order of seniority. The College votes in the Sistine Chapel twice in the morning and twice in the evening, and after each vote, the ballots are burned and smoke billows from a chimney above the Sistine Chapel. Chemicals are added to the ballots to make the smoke burn black if a pope has not been chosen, and white if a pope has been chosen. 

Customarily, once a pope has been chosen and he has selected his papal name, the protodeacon of the College of Cardinals takes to the balcony over St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican to declare habemus papam, meaning “we have a pope!” The new pope then comes out on the balcony, adorned with his white papal cassock, to give the filled square their first look at the apostolic successor to Saint Peter. 

The papal conclave was portrayed in the 2024 film Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini. It follows the closed-door meeting of the cardinals after the ageing pope dies, and the responsibility falls on the College to choose the next one. Since Francis’ death, Conclave has seen an increase of +3,200 percent in viewership in the week the pope died. Amazon Prime Video made it available for free to subscribers last Tuesday.

9 days from now, it’s possible we’ll know who the next pope will be — not only important to Catholics, but an essential part of religion worldwide as the only religious leader with this kind of centralized authority, importance, and increasingly, influence.