Choosing the next pope after Francis

May 06, 2025

By Jonathan Y. Tan
As the cardinals gather for the 2025 papal conclave to vote for the next pope, predicting the next pope is tricky. Should the next pope be non-European? Would the Catholic Church be best served by a pope from a region where the Catholic Church is expanding? Should the new pope be someone who will reinvigorate the papacy in innovative and creative ways, as Pope Francis did?

The most obvious frontrunner may not be the one who will secure the two-thirds vote. In a scenario where no frontrunner is able to secure the needed two-thirds majority, the cardinal electors would end up picking a third candidate to break the impasse.

As masters of papal politics, the Italians have several pithy aphorisms. These include chi entrapapa in conclave, ne esce cardinale (whoever enters the conclave as a pope, leaves it as a cardinal), seguite sempre un papa grasso con sottile (always follow a fat pope with a thin one), and un papa grasso, ne seguiva uno magro (a fat pope, followed by a thin one).

A non-European pope?
Within the two-thousand-year history of the Catholic Church, the popes of the first Christian millennium were more diverse before the papacy became exclusively Eurocentric in the second Christian millennium.

The first century of the Christian era welcomed two popes who were Jewish — the first pope, Peter, and Pope Evaristus (circa 99-108), a Jewish Christian from Bethlehem. During the first 500 years of its existence, the Catholic Church had three indigenous African Berber popes from Christian Northern Africa: Victor I (189-199), Miltiades (313-314), and Gelasius (492-496).

The first 800 years witnessed five Syrian popes hailing from the Christian Levant or West Asia: Anicetus (2nd century/c157-168), Sergius I (650-701), Sisinnius (Jan 15 – Feb 4, 708, 20 days), Constantine (708-715), and Gregory III (731-741). Of these five Syrian popes, the last three hailed from Muslim ruled lands: Sisinnius from the Rashidun caliphate, and Constantine and Gregory III from the Umayyad caliphate.

Until the election of Pope Francis, Pope Gregory III was the last non-European pope, the last pope from Syria and Asia, and a Muslim land.

Ad extra and ad intra ecclesiam considerations
In choosing the next pope, there are two key considerations on the minds of the cardinal electors — the ad extra and ad intra ecclesiam considerations, i.e., the Catholic Church’s external relations with the world vis-à-vis its internal considerations and issues. This dual understanding is exemplified in Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, for ad extra considerations, and Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium focus on the Catholic Church’s ad intra internal issues and questions.

On the ad extra ecclesiam consideration, the question is whether the next pope continues Pope Francis’ engagements, as the first pope from the postcolonial Global South, with the world in all its messiness, pains and struggles, as well as joys and hopes ad extra ecclesiam in the spirit of Gaudium et spes. This ad extra ecclesiam orientation takes seriously the reality that the Catholic Church today is no longer a Eurocentric Church but a truly global, international, and diverse institution.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s 2011 report, Global Christianity:A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population, in 1910, an estimated 65 percent (188,960,000) of Catholics lived in Europe, followed by 24 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 5 percent in North America, 4 percent in Asia, and less than 1 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

One century later, in 2010, Sub-Saharan Africa experienced the largest growth, from less than 1 percent to 16 percent of the global Catholic population, followed by Asia, from 4 percent to 12 percent of the global Catholic population. By contrast, the period 1910-2010 saw Europe decline from 65 percent to 24 percent of the global Catholic population. This same period witnessed a more gradual growth of the Catholic population in North America from 5 percent to 8 percent and Latin America and the Caribbean from 24 percent to 39 percent.

Acknowledging this shift from the Global North to the Global South, Pope Francis has appointed more cardinals from Africa and Asia. In the 2013 papal conclave, Asia and Africa had 11 and 10 cardinal electors, respectively. Under Pope Francis, at the 2025 conclave, there are 18 African cardinal electors (an increase of 7 African cardinal electors or a 64 percent increase) and 23 Asian cardinal electors (an increase of 13 new Asian cardinal electors or a 130 percent increase).

While Europe and North America comprised 64 percent of the 2013 papal conclave, they will only comprise a simple majority of 51.1 percent of the 2025 conclave. These changes, which heavily favor increased representation from Asia, have profound implications for the direction of the 2025 papal conclave. Past assumptions about issues, debates, and voting patterns, which assumed that Europe and North America dominated the debates and voting patterns and cardinal electors selected the next pope based on the concerns and needs of European and North American Catholics, can no longer be taken for granted.

The issues confronting Latin American, African, and Asian Catholics will also play a role in shaping the choice of a pope who can address these concerns. These issues include the challenges of refugees and migrants, communities destroyed by war and hatred, communities displaced by the deleterious impact of climate change, as well as persecution of religious, racial-ethnic, caste, and other minorities, many of whom are Catholics, in their homelands. Many around the world wonder whether the next pope will continue Pope Francis’ legacy of compassion, empathy, solidarity, and mercy for people and communities under attack, as well as care for an environment under siege.

On this issue, candidates from Asia and Africa have emerged as potential frontrunners. The Asian frontrunner is Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, formerly Archbishop of Manila before being named Pro-Prefect for the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches (formerly the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples or Propaganda Fide) in the restructured Dicastery for Evangelization.

The African frontrunner is Cardinal Peter Turkson from Ghana, previously Archbishop of Cape Coast, Ghana (1992-2009), President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2009-2017), Prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development (2017-2021), and currently serving as the chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences.

While both Asian and African Catholics are excited at the possibility of a pope from Asia or Africa, it remains to be seen whether they could secure enough votes to cross the two-thirds threshold.

As for the ad intra ecclesiam considerations, Pope Francis has demonstrated that it is possible for a centralized institution to also be pastoral, humane, and consultative within the hierarchical ecclesial framework that remains centralized in the Vatican, thereby taking steps to promote a less rigidly centralized church framework.

Many Catholics were pleasantly surprised by Pope Francis’ efforts in transforming the papacy away from strict enforcement of theological orthodoxy to the Church as a “field hospital” ministering to everyone.

Pope Francis also introduced the groundbreaking idea of synodality, i.e., consulting and working with levels within the Catholic Church, from bishops to priests, as well as down to ordinary Catholics in the pews, whose concerns are just as important for the bishops and the pope to take into consideration when making decisions on Catholic living. This has led to the beginnings of a more inclusive, although still somewhat tentative pastoral outreach to women and the queer communities within the Catholic Church.

The main question on this second consideration is whether the next pope should continue what Pope Francis has initiated, or return to the path set by his predecessors, namely Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II, who were more cautious on these issues.

Here is where European candidates take centre stage. On the conservative flank, Cardinal Péter Erdö, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest and Primate of Hungary since 2003 and President of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe from 2006-2016 is the leading conservative candidate, reflecting the conservative turn of Hungarian Catholicism and Hungarian society, which has become more pronounced under the right wing premiership of Viktor Orbán. The centrist candidate is Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a career diplomat and the Holy See’s Secretary of State since 2013. Ever the consummate diplomat, Cardinal Parolin is perceived as straddling the middle ground between the conservatives and progressives.

The progressive frontrunner is Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna since 2015 and the president of the Episcopal Conference of Italy since 2022. Cardinal Zuppi, who many see as the European most likely to continue Pope Francis’ legacy, has fought hard against xenophobia, nativism, right-wing populism, and nationalism in Italy. Cardinal Zuppi is also supportive of Pope Francis’ outreach to the queer community and also contributed an essay to Una ponte da construire, the Italian edition of Jesuit Father James Martin’s 2017 book Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity.--ucanews.com