A Conclave Like No Other

There are so many unfamiliar faces, cardinals are wearing name tags. The Vatican guesthouse for out-of-towners coming to choose the next pope is overbooked. Daily Vatican meetings have taken on the feel of theological speed-dating sessions.

“The cardinals don’t know each other so well,” said Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Sweden, who has spent recent days in a crowded Vatican lecture hall listening to the concerns and learning the names of the record number of cardinals Pope Francis appointed who will choose his successor.

Cardinal Arborelius sat in a section reserved for a small group of newcomers from countries that never had cardinals before. They included one from Mali, who, he said, had “disappeared” after the first day, and from Laos, who, many days into the meetings, “hasn’t turned up.” He himself, he said, felt “lost all the time.”

Nevertheless, he and scores of other cardinals will file into the Sistine Chapel starting Wednesday afternoon to cast ballots for the next pope under seclusion and Michelangelo’s frescoes, in one of the world’s oldest dramas.

All papal elections are unpredictable. But this conclave has so many unfamiliar faces with unfamiliar politics, priorities and concerns that it could be more fractious than usual.

It also comes at a particularly perilous moment for a church that Francis left deeply divided, with progressive factions pushing for more inclusion and change, and conservatives seeking to roll things back, often under the guise of unity.