Home Featured News The search for a new Pontiff: Who becomes the next Pope?

The search for a new Pontiff: Who becomes the next Pope?

April 23, 2025

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The Catholic church is at a crossroad as in coming days, a new Pontiff would be elected to lead the 1.4 billion catholic faithful worldwide.

This decision could have a profound impact on the Catholic Church and the world’s 1.4 billion baptised Roman Catholics. But the big question is, Who will be the next pope?

The College of Cardinals will meet in conclave in the Sistine Chapel to debate and then vote for their preferred candidates until a single name prevails.

With 80% of the cardinals appointed by Pope Francis himself, they are not only electing a pope for the first time, but will offer a broad global perspective.

For the first time in history, fewer than half of those given a vote will be European.

And although the college may be dominated by his appointments, they were not exclusively “progressive” or “traditionalist”.

For those reasons, it is harder than ever to predict who will be elected the next pope.

Could the cardinals elect an African or an Asian pope, or might they favour one of the old hands of the Vatican administration?

Here are some of the names being mentioned as Francis’s potential successor.

Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle

Nationality: Filipino

Age: 67

Cardinal Tagle is an active Church leader among the people as opposed to a diplomat for the Vatican or cloistered expert on Church law. He brings decades of pastoral experience to bear.

The Church is massively influential in the Philippines, where about 80% of the population is Catholic. The country currently has a record five members of the College of Cardinals – which could make for a significant lobbying faction if they all back Cardinal Tagle.

He is considered a moderate within the Catholic definition, and has been dubbed the “Asian Francis” because of a dedication to social issues and sympathy for migrants that he shared with the late pope.

He has opposed abortion rights, calling them “a form of murder” – a position in line with the Church’s broader stance that life begins at conception. He has also spoken against euthanasia.

But in 2015 when he was Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Tagle called for the Church to reassess its “severe” stance towards gay people, divorcees and single mothers, saying past harshness had done lasting harm and left people feeling “branded”, and that each individual deserved compassion and respect.

The cardinal was considered a candidate to be pope as far back as the 2013 conclave in which Francis was elected.

Asked a decade ago how he viewed suggestions he could be next, he replied: “I treat it like a joke! It’s funny.”

Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson

Nationality: Ghanaian

Age: 76

If chosen by his peers, the influential Cardinal Turkson would likewise have the distinction of being the first African pope for 1,500 years.

In an interview with BBC, he has claimed not to want the job. “I’m not sure whether anyone does aspire to become a pope,” he told the BBC in 2013.

Asked if Africa had a good case to provide the next pope based on the Church’s growth on the continent, he said he felt the pope shouldn’t be chosen based on statistics, because “those types of considerations tend to muddy the waters”.

He was the first Ghanaian to be made a cardinal, back in 2003 under Pope John Paul II.

Like Cardinal Tagle, Cardinal Turkson was considered a potential pope a decade later, when Francis was chosen. In fact, bookmakers made him the favourite ahead of voting.

A guitarist who once played in a funk band, Cardinal Turkson is known for his energetic presence.

Like many cardinals from Africa, he leans conservative. However, he has opposed the criminalisation of gay relationships in African countries including his native Ghana.

In a BBC interview in 2023, while Ghana’s parliament was discussing a bill imposing harsh penalties on LGBTQ+ people, Turkson said he felt homosexuality should not be treated as an offence.

Robert Sarah

Nationality: Guinean

Age: 79

Well-liked by conservatives in the Church, Cardinal Sarah is known for his adherence to doctrine and traditional liturgy and was often considered opposed to Pope Francis’s reformist leanings.

The son of a fruit-picker, Sarah became the youngest archbishop aged 34 when Pope John Paul II appointed him prelate in Conakry in Guinea.

He has had a long and impressive career, retiring in 2021 as head of the Vatican’s office that oversees the Catholic Church’s liturgical rites.

While not considered a favourite for the papacy, he could attract strong support from conservative cardinals.

It’s very possible the next pope could be from Africa, where the Catholic Church continues to add millions of members. Cardinal Ambongo is a leading candidate, hailing from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

He has been Archbishop of Kinshasa for seven years, and was appointed cardinal by Pope Francis.

He is a cultural conservative, opposing blessings for same-sex marriage, stating that “unions of persons of the same sex are considered contradictory to cultural norms and intrinsically evil”.

Though Christianity is the majority religion in the DRC, Christians there have faced death and persecution at the hands of jihadist group Islamic State and associated rebels. Against that backdrop, Cardinal Ambongo is viewed as a fierce advocate for the Church.

But in a 2020 interview, he spoke in favour of religious plurality, saying: “Let Protestants be Protestants and Muslims be Muslims. We are going to work with them. But everyone has to keep their own identity.”

Such comments could lead some cardinals to wonder if he fully embraces their sense of mission – in which Catholics hope to spread the Church’s word throughout the world.

Pietro Parolin

Nationality: Italian

Age: 70

Softly spoken Italian Cardinal Parolin was the Vatican’s secretary of state under Pope Francis – making him the pope’s chief adviser. The secretary of state also heads the Roman Curia, the Church’s central administration.

Having acted effectively as deputy pope, he could be considered a frontrunner.

He is viewed by some as more likely to prioritise diplomacy and a global outlook than the purity of Catholic dogma. His critics consider that a problem, while his supporters see a strength.

But he has been critical of the legalisation of same-sex marriage around the world, calling a landmark 2015 vote in favourin the Republic of Ireland “a defeat for humanity”.

The bookmakers may back him but Cardinal Parolin will be well aware of an old Italian saying that stresses the uncertainty of the pope-picking process: “He who enters a conclave as a pope, leaves it as a cardinal.”

Some 213 of the previous 266 popes have been Italian and even though there has not been an Italian pope in 40 years, the pivot of the upper echelons of the Church away from Italy and Europe may mean there may not be another for now.

Angelo Scola

Nationality: Italian

Age: 83

Only cardinals under 80 can vote in the conclave, but Angelo Scola could still be elected.

The former Archbishop of Milan was a frontrunner in 2013 when Francis was chosen, but he is thought to have fallen victim to the adage of entering the conclave as Pope and leaving as cardinal.

His name has resurfaced ahead of the conclave, because of a book he is publishing this week on old age. The book features a preface written by Pope Francis shortly before he was admitted to hospital in which he said “death is not the end of everything, but the beginning of something”.

Francis’s words show genuine affection for Scola, but the college of cardinals might not see his focus on old age as ideal for a new pope.

Reinhard Marx

Nationality: German

Age: 71

The Archbishop of Munich and Freising was chosen as an adviser when Francis became pope in 2013. For 10 years he advised the Pope on Church reform and still oversees financial reform of the Vatican.

He has advocated a more accommodating approach towards homosexuals or transgender people in Catholic teaching.

But in 2021 he offered to resign over serious mistakes in tackling child sexual abuse in Germany’s Catholic Church. That resignation was rejected by Francis.

Two years ago he left the Council of Cardinals, the Pope’s most important advisory body, in what was seen in Germany as a setback for his career in the Church.