The conclave to choose the Catholic Church’s successor to Pope Francis begins May 7.
Nobody really knows what will happen; con clave means “with key” in Latin, a reference to the 133 cardinal electors who will be locked in the Sistine Chapel to select the next pope.
But based upon years of covering the politics, passions and preoccupations of the Catholic Church, here are some of the individuals who may have what it takes to lead the Church:
Cardinal Michael Czerny
The Czech-born cardinal is the only one of Canada’s five cardinals who has the remotest chance of of being selected. Czerny was admired as Pope Francis’ loyal lieutenant, working on many of the Pope’s highest priorities.
Czerny has been the Vatican’s point man on migration, and was also one of the cardinals Francis sent into conflict zones to convey the church’s concern for civilians caught up in the savagery of war.
Czerny accompanied Francis on his “pilgrimage of penance” across Canada in 2022, and has spoken cogently about how reconciliation is central to Christian theology and experience.
Czerny also has the sort of backstory that makes him an attractive choice. His mother was a Catholic with Jewish ancestry who survived a Nazi concentration camp. His father endured forced labour under German occupation during the war.
Czerny was just two years old when his parents moved to Montreal, where he grew up a whip-smart immigrant kid who went to Loyola College, the Jesuit school in Anglo Montreal. In 1963, at 18, he entered the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order of priests and brothers committed to education, social justice and evangelization. On the Jesuit fast track, he was ordained a priest in 1973.
After founding the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto, he lived in Rome from 1992 to 2002, where he co-ordinated global Jesuit efforts in social justice and ecology. After that, he founded the Jesuit African AIDS Network in Nairobi, at a time when there were almost no treatments for HIV.
In 2019, Francis made Czerny a cardinal, the second highest rank in the Catholic Church. In 2022, Czerny became prefect of the Vatican department dealing with global humanitarian aid. In 2025, he was quick to criticize the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID, the U.S. agency responsible for foreign aid. He called the cuts “reckless” and predicted they would result in millions of deaths.
Czerny speaks English, French, Czech, Italian and Spanish and has a doctorate in interdisciplinary studies. His commitment to a more just society also leads him to oppose legalized abortion and medical assistance in dying, both legal regimes he says distort human life to accommodate a merciless, competitive economic system. He is 78 years old.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle
The Filipino cardinal known as the “Asian Francis” is the safe bet to succeed Francis.
Of mixed Filipino-Chinese ancestry, Tagle grew up in an upper middle-class family and originally hoped to be a doctor. He was educated by Jesuits at the San José Seminary and then at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1977 and then went onto a master of arts. He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Manila in 1982. His first job after ordination was professor and spiritual director at Manila’s diocesan seminary.
By 1987, the promising young priest was chosen by his bishop to study in the United States. He earned a licentiate and a PhD from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He specialized in the idea of collegiality — collective governance of the church by all the world’s bishops in conversation with one another.
In 2001, Pope John Paul II elected Tagle bishop of Imus, near Manila. Ten years later, under Pope Benedict XVI, he was named Archbishop of Manila, the Philippines’ capital city.
In 2012, at the age of 55, Pope Benedict put him in the College of Cardinals — a body of 252 cardinals that advise the pope. As a Cardinal-Archbishop from one of the most Catholic countries in the world, Tagle became a hero to millions of Filipino migrant workers around the world.
In 2015, Pope Francis appointed him president of Caritas Internationalis, the global Catholic humanitarian network that is second only to the Red Cross in its scale of relief and development work. In a sweeping reform of Caritas, Tagle was removed from that post in 2022.
Tagle’s career in Rome began in 2019 when Francis made him prefect of the Dicastry for the Evangelization of Peoples. This Vatican department was so crucial to Francis’ priorities that the Pope appointed himself president of the dicastery.
Tagle speaks English, Tagalog and Italian. He is 67 years old.
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu
The cardinal is a Capuchin Franciscan Friar, part of a Catholic religious order focused on a simple, austere and community-centered life. Ambongo is the most prominent and effective opposition to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s president. He is always on the side of ordinary Congolese civilians, who have suffered and died through three decades of chaotic war fought over Congo’s vast mineral wealth. He has described bishops in Congo as sentinels in the midst of war and poverty.
Ambongo went from seminary professor to bishop in 2004, then became an archbishop in 2016. In 2018, he became Archbishop of Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC.
Francis made him a cardinal in 2019 and soon after appointed him to the Council of Cardinals.
Ambongo has also been president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), an important body speaking for the Catholic Church throughout Africa. In this role, Ambongo pushed back against Francis’ decision to extend blessings in non-liturgical settings to same-sex couples. He said this decision was inconsistent with African family values and therefore confusing for most African Catholics. But his primary objection was that Francis had violated his own principle of synodality, by moving before Africans were included in any consensus on the issue.
Ambongo is fluent in Lingala, French, Italian, English, and church Latin. He is 65 years old.
Other names under consideration include:
Cardinal Pietro Parolin
Parolin, of Italy, has often been referred to as the Vatican’s number two under Pope Francis. He is the Vatican Secretary of State, the person primarily responsible for the diplomatic and political activity of the Holy See, the governing bureaucracy of the Church.
The oddsmakers are calling Parolin a favourite to win because he ran the most important office under Francis. He cuts a cautious and conservative figure. He is a boring preacher and never says anything to the media that has not been written out for him in advance. The 133 cardinal electors in the conclave are more likely to know of Parolin than to know him personally.
Cardinal Peter Erdo
Erdo, of Hungary, is often touted as the great hope of Catholic conservatives. He is one of the very few of the 133 cardinal electors who was appointed cardinal by Pope John Paul II. (Francis appointed 108). He has said the church must “guard the flame” of traditional Christianity.
Cardinal Leonardo Ulrich Steiner
Steiner is Archbishop of Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. Steiner is the hope of those who want to cement environmentalism permanently into the bedrock of Catholic teaching and culture. When Francis prioritized pastoral care for people over doctrinal certainties, the Brazilian was right there with him.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa
Pizzaballa is Franciscan Friar, and the Latin Rite Patriarch of Jerusalem. Originally from Italy, he has spent most of his career in the Middle East. Not only does he know the key players, the culture and the history behind the war in Gaza, he knows it from the perspective of families who have lost their children, their homes and their dignity to the conflict. If the cardinals believed Francis when he called the church a “field hospital,” Pizzaballa is their man.
