Vatican closes Sistine Chapel for conclave to elect new Pope on May 7

The Vatican on Monday announced May 7 as a day voting by cardinals to elect a new Pope will start.

The date was decided at meeting of cardinals of all ages early Monday, two days after the funeral of Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88.

The Church’s 252 cardinals were called back 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 any of them do not know each other.

But they already had four meetings last week, so-called “general congregations”, where they began to get 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.

The Vatican on Monday 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 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.

While Francis’s efforts to create a more compassionate Church earned him widespread affection and respect, some of his reforms angered the Church’s conservative wing, particularly in the United States and Africa.

Roberto Regoli, a professor of Church history and culture at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, told AFP that the cardinals would be looking “to find someone who knows how to forge greater unity”.

“We are in a period in which Catholicism is experiencing various polarisations, so I don’t imagine it will be a very, very quick conclave,” he said.