Want: a saint.
Job Description: Leading 1.4 billion Catholic Churches.
Location: Vatican City.
There are no official pope candidates, but some cardinals are considered “Papabir” or possess the characteristics needed to become a pope. St. John Paul II broke hundreds of years of Italian holdings of the pope in 1978, and the field of competitors has expanded significantly.
When the Cardinals entered Sistine Chapel on May 7 to select the successor to Pope Francis, the first Pope, in Latin America, they will first look for a saint who could guide the Catholic Church. Apart from that, they will weigh his administrative and pastoral experiences and consider the needs of today’s churches.
This is a possible competitor choice, without a particular order. The list will be updated as the Cardinal continues to discuss in a closed door, pre-target discussion.
Date of birth: January 17, 1955
Nationality: Italian
Position: Vatican Secretary of State under Francis
Experience: Veteran Vatican diplomat
Become a Cardinal: Francis
The 70-year-old senior diplomat is Francis' Secretary of State, essentially the Prime Minister of the Holy See.
Despite being closely related to Francis' religious beliefs, Parolin's character and diplomatic attitude were more meaner than the Argentine Jesuit he served, and he knew where the Catholic Church needed course corrections.
Parolin oversaw the disputed agreement between the Holy See and China through bishop nominations and participated in the Vatican investment in London real estate venture capital (but not charged), leading to the trial of another cardinal and nine other officials in 2021. Parolin, a former former ambassador to Venezuela, knew the Latin American church well and played a key role in the 2014 Us-Cuba Detente, which the Vatican provided the promotion.
If he is elected, he will return the Italians to the Pope after three consecutive outsiders: St. John Paul II (Poland), Pope Benedict XVI (Germany) and Francis (Argentina).
But Parolin has little experience in pastors: He entered seminary at the age of 14, four years after his father was killed in a car accident. After his 1980 appointment, he spent two years as a parish priest near his hometown in northern Italy, but then went to Rome to study and entered the Vatican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he has been there since. He has served in the Vatican embassies in Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela.
He is widely respected for his diplomatic skills on some of the most difficult archives faced by the Catholic Church. He has long been involved in Chinese archives, and he played a hands-on role in diplomatic reconciliation with Vietnam, which reached an agreement with Vietnam to establish a representative of Vatican residents in the country.
Parolin was also a focus of the Vatican, who ended the Ukrainian and the Middle East in frustration. He tried to express the voice of the church when the Trump administration began to work to end Russia's war in Ukraine.
"We hope that we can achieve a peace that, for firmness and durability, must be just peace, must involve all actors facing threats, and must consider the principles of international law and the United Nations Declaration," he said.
Palorin may find the Trump administration’s revelational geopolitical reality of somehow holding the soft power of the Holy See.
- Nicole Winfield in Vatican City
Date of birth: June 21, 1957
Nationality: Philippines
Position: Francis' relatives, inquirer
Experience: Former Archbishop of Manila, Philippines
Become a Cardinal: Benedict
Tagle, 67, is the first Asian pope on many bookmaker lists, which will recognize a part of the church's development in the world.
Francis brought the popular Archbishop of Manila to Rome to take charge of the missionary office of the Vatican missionaries, which meets the needs of most of the Catholic churches in Asia and Africa. When Francis reformed the Vatican bureaucracy, his role took on a bigger weight. Tagle often quotes his Chinese heritage - his grandmother is part of a Chinese family that moved to the Philippines.
Despite his pastoral, Vatican and management experience, he led the Vatican Federation of Caritas Internationalis charitable groups and then came permanently to Rome - Tager would be elected the pope on the younger side, while the Cardinal might prefer an older candidate whose pap would be more restricted.
Tagle is known as a good communicator and teacher - the key attribute of the Pope.
“The Pope will have to do a lot of teaching, we have to face the camera all the time, so if there is a communication pope, it is very desirable,” said Leo Ocampo, a theology professor at St. Thomas University in Manila.
That said, Tagle's tenure at Caritas is not without controversy, with some questioning his management skills.
In 2022, Francis expelled Caritas's management, including relegation to Tagle. The Holy See said an external investigation found that a “real flaw” in management affected the morale of the staff at the Roman Calita Secretariat.
- Jim Gomez of the Philippines and Nicole Winfield of Vatican City in Manila
Date of birth: January 24, 1960
Nationality: Congo
Location: Archbishop of Kinshasa Congo
Experience: President of the Bishops' Conference of Africa and Madagascar
Become a Cardinal: Francis
Ambongo, 65, is one of Africa's most outspoken Catholic leaders, leading the Archdiocese, which has the largest number of Catholics on the mainland, and Catholics are seen as the future of the church.
He has been the Archbishop of the Congo capital since 2018 and has been a cardinal since 2019. Francis also appointed him as a team of advisers who are helping to reorganize the Vatican bureaucracy.
In Congo and throughout Africa, Anbongo has been committed to Catholic orthodoxy and is considered conservative.
In 2024, he signed a statement on behalf of the African Bishops' Conference and the Bishops' Conference in Madagascar, refusing to follow Francis' declaration, allowing the pastor to offer blessings to same-sex couples, a disagreement with the royal doctrine. This condemnation crystallizes the boundaries of the African church in LGBTQ+ propaganda and the Ambongo body in the African hierarchy.
He was praised by some in the Congo for promoting interfaith tolerance, especially on the continent where religious divisions between Christians and Muslims are widespread.
“He is trying to open the church to different cultures,” Donatien Nshole, secretary general of the National Bishops’ Conference, has long worked with Ambongo.
The Cardinal is an outspoken government critic, known for his unwavering social justice advocacy.
In a country with high levels of poverty and hunger, despite the mineral abundance, the battles of rebel groups killed thousands and millions of people in one of the world's largest humanitarian crises, he often criticized the government's corruption and inaction, as well as the exploitation of the country's natural resources by foreign powers.
"Congo is a plate that everyone can eat," he said in a speech at Pope Anthony Orn University last year.
Brother An’s criticism of the authorities has aroused public admiration and legal scrutiny. Last year, prosecutors ordered a judicial investigation into him after criticizing the government for "inciting behavior" for criticizing the government's conflict in eastern Congo.
- Mark Banchereau of Dakar, Senegal
Date of birth: October 11, 1955
Nationality: Italian
Current position: Archbishop of Bologna, Italy, President of the Italian Bishops' Council
Previous post: Rome auxiliary bishop
Become a Cardinal: Francis
Zuppi, 69, appeared as a street priest in Francis’ image, quickly promoted him: first as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Bologna, northern Italy in 2015, and then awarded the cardinal title in 2019.
He is closely associated with the Sant'Egidio Community, a Catholic charity based in Rome, under the leadership of Francis, especially in the interfaith dialogue. Zuppi was part of the Sant'egidio team, which helped negotiate the end of the civil war in Mozambique in the 1990s and was appointed as the envoy of Peace of Francis to Russia to fight against Ukraine.
After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for help from the Roman church, he traveled to Kiev and Moscow to win 19,000 Ukrainian children from their families and brought to Russia during the war. The mission also brought him to China and the United States.
After Francis became a cardinal, he made it clear that he had to take charge of the bishop of Italy, which showed his respect for his admiration, who, like Francis, was called a "street priest" who prioritized serving poor and homeless people and refugees.
Zuppi will be a candidate in Francis' tradition of serving the marginalized, although his youth will depend on him as the Cardinal seeks a brief pope.
Zuppi is a sign that Zuppi wrote an introduction to “Building a Bridge” by Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit, about the church’s need to improve its publicity for the LGBTQ+ community.
Building bridges with communities is a “hard process and still developing,” Zuppi wrote. He recognized that “on the other hand, doing nothing can cause great suffering, making people feel lonely and often lead to adopting positions that are both contrasting and extreme.”
Zuppi's family also had strong institutional connections: his father worked for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, and his mother was the niece of Carlo Carlo Confalonieri, the dean of Cardinal College in 1960 and 1970s.
- Colleen Barry of Vatican City
Date of birth: June 25, 1952
Nationality: Hungarian
Location: Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary
Past experience: twice elected as head of the Umbrella Group of the European Bishops Conference
Become a Cardinal: John Paul
His peers called serious theologians, scholars and educators, now 72 years old, are the main contenders among conservatives. He has served as the Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest since 2002 and was appointed by John Paul the following year. He participated in two conclusions in 2005 and 2013 to choose Benedict and Francis.
Erdő holds a PhD in theology and Canon jurisprudence, speaks six languages, is a proponent of doctrinal orthodoxy, and advocates the church’s position on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
Erdő opposed same-sex unions and also rejected suggestions that Catholics who remarry after divorce can accept communication. He said in 2015 that divorced Catholics should only allow the communion if they maintain sexual desire in their new marriage.
He is an advocate of traditional family structures, helping organize Francis' 2014 and 2015 Vatican Conferences.
From 2006 to 2016, Erdő served as chairman of the European Bishops' Council, helping to promote cooperation among European Catholic bishops and address contemporary issues facing the continent's church.
Erdő cautiously avoided participating in Hungary's often turbulent political life, but maintained close ties with the country's right-wing populist government, which provided generous subsidies to the Christian church.
He has been reluctant to serve in several government policies that divide Hungary society, such as open campaigns, which have eroded LGBTQ+ community rights by immigrants and refugees and laws.
When thousands of asylum seekers entered Europe in 2015 to flee the war and deprivation of the Middle East and Africa, Elder stressed that the Church had a Christian obligation to provide humanitarian assistance to those in need, but lacked a comprehensive advocacy for the highest priority of Francis.
- Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary
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