Is an African pope a priority for the upcoming conclave?

Cardinals electing a new pope have some fundamental questions to weigh, beyond whether to give the Catholic Church its first Asian or African pontiff, or a conservative or progressive.

Although they come from 70 different countries, the 133 cardinals seem fundamentally united in finding a pope who will be able to make the 2,000-year-old church credible and relevant today, especially to young people.

It’s a tall task, given the sexual abuse and financials scandals that have harmed the church’s reputation and the secularizing trends in many parts of the world that are turning people away from organized religion.

Add to that the Holy See’s dire financial state and often dysfunctional bureaucracy, and the job of being pope in the 21st century seems almost impossible.

“We need a superman!” said Cardinal William Seng Chye Goh, the 67-year-old archbishop of Singapore.

The cardinals will begin trying to find him Wednesday afternoon, when those “princes of the church” walk solemnly into the Sistine Chapel to the meditative chant of the “Litany of the Saints.” They’ll take their oaths of secrecy under the daunting vision of heaven and hell in Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement,” hear a meditation from a senior cardinal, and then cast their first ballot.

Assuming no candidate secures the necessary two-thirds majority, or 89 votes, the cardinals will retire for the day and return on Thursday. They will have two ballots in the morning and then two in the afternoon, until a winner is found.

The church in Africa

According to Vatican statistics, Catholics represent 3.3% of the population in Asia, but their numbers are growing, especially in terms of seminarians, as they are in Africa, where Catholics represent about 20% of the population. Catholics are 64% of the population in the Americas, 40% of Europe’s population and 26% of Oceania’s population, according to Vatican statistics from 2023, the last available year.

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, the archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo, said he is in Rome to elect a pope for the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.

“I am not here for the Congo, I am not here for Africa, I am here for the universal church. That is our concern, the universal church,” he told reporters. “When we are done, I will return to Kinshasa and I will put back on my archbishop of Kinshasa hat and the struggle continues.”

Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, the chatty French-born archbishop of Algiers, Algeria, lamented last week that there hadn't been enough time for the cardinals to get to know one another, since many of them had never met before and hail from 70 countries in the most geographically diverse conclave in history.

By this week, however, he said that any number of candidates were possible.

Voting blocs

Italy (17) has the most electors followed by the United States (10). Brazil (7), France and Spain (5 each) follow in third and fourth place respectively.

Argentina, Canada, India, Poland and Portugal have 4 electors each.

Here is a regional breakdown of the full 135 cardinal electors, according to Vatican statistics and following the Vatican’s geographic grouping.

Europe: 53. (An elector who says he's skipping the conclave is from Spain, so the actual number of Europeans is expected to be 52.)

Asia (including the Middle East): 23

Africa: 18. (Another elector who says he's skipping the conclave is from Kenya, so the number of Africans is expected to be 17.)

South America: 17

North America: 16 (of whom 10 are American, 4 are Canadian and 2 are Mexican)

Central America: 4

Oceania: 4 (1 each from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Tonga)