CATHOLIC cardinals agreed on Monday to begin a conclave on 7 May to elect a new pope, and highlighted clerical sexual abuse as one of the key challenges facing Pope Francis’s successor.So-called “Princes of the Church” under the age of 80 will meet in the Sistine Chapel to choose a new religious leader for the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.The date was decided at a meeting of cardinals of all ages early on Monday, two days after the funeral of Francis, who died on 21 April aged 88. The cardinals outlined the most pressing Church challenges including “evangelization, the relationship with other faiths (and) the issue of abuse”, the Vatican said.“There was talk of the qualities that the new pontiff must possess to respond effectively to these challenges,” it added. The Church’s 252 cardinals were recalled to Rome after the Argentine’s death, although only 135 are eligible to vote in the conclave.They hail from all corners of the globe and many of them do not know each other.But they already had four meetings last week, so-called “general congregations”, where they began to become better acquainted. Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, 83, a former head of the Italian bishops’ conference, said there was a “beautiful fraternal atmosphere”.“Of course, there may be some difficulties because the voters have never been so numerous and not everyone knows each other,” he told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper.On Monday, the Vatican closed the Sistine Chapel, where voting will take place under Michelangelo’s 16th-century ceiling frescoes, to begin preparations.So far there are few clues as to who the cardinals might choose. “I believe that if Francis has been the pope of surprises, this conclave will be too, as it is not at all predictable,” Spanish Cardinal Jose Cobo told El Pais in an interview published on Sunday.Francis was laid to rest on Saturday with a funeral and burial ceremony that drew 400,000 people to St Peter’s Square and beyond, including royalty, world leaders and ordinary pilgrims.On Sunday, about 70,000 mourners filed past his marble tomb in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome, after the “pope of the poor” opted to be buried outside the Vatican’s walls. — AFPSource: The Global New Light of Myanmar
Tue, 29-Apr-2025
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