Novemdiales notebook: non-stop speculation on next pope as conclave date confirmed
William Cash• April 29, 2025
Novemdiales Notebook
With the Vatican announcing that the conclave will start on May 7th, Rome is now well into the nine day official period of mourning for a Pope – the “Novemdiales”. The public queue to see the tomb of Pope Francis in the papal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore – around three miles from Vatican City, not far from the Colloseum – opens at 7am each morning and the church stays open until 9pm. The line is monitored by uniformed Order of Malta medics and local carabinieri in full uniform.
By the time I got there at 11am on Monday morning the line was already in the thousands, with the gelaterias and pizza/kebab bars in the fairly shabby tourist area of town doing brisk business from papal mourners wanting water and snacks as they queued for hours in the hot April sunshine. Many were American, with several I queued with having flown over from the US for the papal funeral on Saturday and for the chance to see the tomb of the 266th Holy Pontiff.
The very simple grey stone monument was lit up by a warm yellow spotlight and simply has the word “Francesco” carved into stone, with a single white papal rose laid on it. Mourners have about ten seconds to look at his burial place before being shuffled along by Vatican security guards. It stands close to a dark mahogany confessional box and next to the ornate neo-classical Regina Pacis sculpture group, which is dedicated to the peace initiatives of Benedict XV (1914-22) who was pope during the First World War.
In contrast to such ornate decoration, Francis chose simple greyish slate from Liguria, which was a nod to his great-grandfather, Vincenzo Sivori, whose Italian family moved to Argentina. The burial spot involved knocking down a sidewall and a huge door with inlaid stones, something which Pope Francis’s critics in the saturnine conservative Catholic blog world seized upon as being indicative of his “destructive” church tendencies.
In fairness, the tomb is simple, austere and highly fitting to his papacy. Like many things about Pope Francis, it is in stark contrast to the very often over-the-top way other historic popes have chosen to be remembered with much more pomp, not to mention expense. In the Pauline Chapel stands the famous Marian icon, the Salus Populi Romani, which Francis used to pray to and bring flowers to before his papal journeys. The chapel, built by Sixtus V to house this most special of Roman papal treasures – with special significance to Jesuits – has several giant sepulchres of previous popes (Paul V and Clement VIII) commissioned to memorialise themselves in the grandest style.
Some popes – such as Saint Pius V – are buried fully dressed inside ornate glass caskets still wearing all their finery, including their papal slippers, which Francis famously disposed of in favour of the sort of thick rubber-soled squeaky black shoes favoured by mid-level civil servants. Whether the next pope goes back to wearing the red papal slippers will be an early litmus test of what sort of papacy we can expect from the 267th pope.
On Monday evening I attended a Vaticanista talk and dinner at the Kolbe Hotel – fittingly where the patron saint of journalism, Saint Maximillian Kolbe, used to study and write when he lived in Rome before the war – hosted by CNEWA (the Catholic Near East Welfare Association) to honour Catholic Herald special correspondent John Allen. The evening began with an “Any Questions” style debate, chaired by CNEWA Trustee Amanda Bowman, on the conclave, and a discussion on the likely runners and riders to be the next pope.
The CNEWA (the Catholic Near East Welfare Association) hosted an event in Rome to honour Catholic Herald special correspondent John L Allen Jnr (second left)
Despite being hailed by the American media as almost the only member of the Vatican press corps to “pick” Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires in 2013 as a likely possible pope, Allen himself would not be drawn specifically on his own prediction for the May conclave despite him now being a seasoned veteran of the conclave process. He also added that he wasn’t much of a fan of the “Conclave” film which bore almost no relation to reality and was truly a “work of fiction”.
Instead of yelling matches over dinner behind the closed walls of the Casa Santa Marta papal hostel, specially designed to house voting cardinals, Allen expects there to be a much more conciliatory approach. Allen also expects a shorter conclave as he thinks the cardinals will be nervous that a long and protracted one might send out a message to the world’s journalists that the Catholic church is bitterly divided and can’t agree on anything.
Allen thought it possible that the papacy might return to an Italian again, based on thinking that the many rookie new-boy Cardinals from obscure or peripheral countries – such as Timor or Mongolia – may be inclined to “follow the leader” when voting, having no previous experience of the dark voting arts of the conclave with its political and foreign language voting blocks.
The main contender, he said, was likely to be Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin, who is the ultimate Curia insider. From the Vatican gossip picked up at the dinner and drinks reception to honour Allen, it was clear that negotiations are now underway to form a wide group to push for a “moderate” compromise candidate, hence why Parolin is emerging as the clear front runner.
Indeed the Italian paper Il Messaggero has reported that Parolin has already secured around 50 votes in the geo-political chess game that the conclave is going to be. The paper also reports that the strongest conservative candidate is looking to be Péter Erdő of Hungary. Allen did give an outsider nod to Cardinal Jean-Marc Noël Aveline, the Archbishop of Marseille, who it is claimed was Pope Francis’s “favourite” cardinal to succeed him, rather than Parolin whom Francis supposedly did not want. Aveline is thought of as a heterodox-leaning prelate with broad appeal who is especially dedicated to interfaith dialogue and migration. So you read it here first if the Herald’s special correspondent is right again.
This week in Rome is called “American Week”, due to the number of wealthy American Catholic patrons who fly into Rome to attend such glitzy events as the annual Rector’s Dinner of the North American Pontifical College. Alas this year the event has been cancelled leaving even more time for idle Vatican gossip in restaurants about who the next pope might be. John and Elise Allen live in a beautiful Roman apartment with a huge roof terrace that doubles up as a playground for the Allens’ two black pugs.
John once kindly gave me a copy of his authoritative book, Conclave: The Politics, Personalities and Process of the Next Papal Election, published in 2002 to work as a “form guide” to who would be the pope to succeed John Paul II. It is well worth reading and does not suffer from the awkward problem facing the authors of the The Next Pope by Edwin Pentin and Diane Montagna, which is that of the 19 papabile they have researched and profiled over the last five years, several names now being considered are not in their book – such as the Italian Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, which I think is a fabulous name for a future pope. Alas, his young age of only 60 will count against him.
Incidentally, Allen writes his brilliant Catholic Herald dispatches from a tiny cell-like study that can only be described as a broom cupboard, decorated with a few photos of himself and Elise with the pope, no larger than Pope Francis’s burial wall niche.
(Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)