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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1042 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 20, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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The pope is unlikely to be appointing new cardinals before he dies. So the current college of electors minus whoever turns 80 in the meantime is who'll be voting. With so many papabile on the younger end the compromise candidate will likely be one of the oldest popes elected recently(so that papabile will have another shot at being pope in the next conclave). Francis isn't popular enough to generate the incumbency advantage that elected Benedict so it's probably irrelevant how long he spends in the hospital before he dies.

News and events could certainly effect things- the sex abuse crisis in the news would probably point many cardinals towards Bagnasco as a compromise candidate over Oullet or Piacenza, for example, and renewed horrors towards middle eastern Christians would likely make Pizzaballa more of a kingmaker.

What would be the purpose of a compromise candidate that you know wont be around for long? Wouldnt you have the same reasons that drove you to compromise again in a few years?

The cardinals normally know each other much much better than they currently do now; possibly this was a deliberate strategy by Francis to limit cliques which could counterbalance his own power(if so it didn't work) exacerbated by a slew of previously unheard of cardinalatial appointments. It's reasonable on the part of Pizzaballa, Zuppi, Erdo, etc that an establishment figure would have a more 'typical' college of cardinals which allows them to build consensus behind their own candidacy in a few years.

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