It was the mounting rage of citizens in Viterbo, a small town north of Rome, that ended the longest papal election in the ...

The history of this ancient process is frequently the subject of attention as the world gets ready for the next papal ...

How long will the conclave last? Who is eligible to become pope? And why is everything so secretive? We answer your burning ...

Though Francis didn’t make major changes to the conclave, his outreach to what he called “peripheries’’ leaves an imprint that will be felt this week.

A cardinal (from the Latin "cardinalis" or principal) is a high dignitary of the Catholic Church chosen by the pope to assist ...

First of all, the conclave has a rule that if the voting takes too long, then a pope can be elected with a 50+1 percent of ...

How is a new Pope chosen? How long could the conclave last? In a special edition of the Global News Podcast, the BBC’s Religion Editor Aleem Maqbool answers listener questions on the conclave at the ...

For the first time, the majority of cardinals to choose a pope are not from Europe, as Catholic demographics shift. But ...

As different as a papal election is from every other kind of election in the modern world, each conclave nonetheless has an ...

A conclave is the centuries-old election of a pope that derives its name from the Italian “con clave” (with a key) to ...

Choosing a replacement for Pope Francis is a secretive and time-tested process for the cardinal-electors in the Sistine ...

The voting is highly choreographed and time-consuming to avoid any possibility of fraud or doubt about the results.