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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Notes -
https://catholicvote.org/record-number-cardinal-electors-logistical-challenge-conclave/
With a conclave coming up(I plan to do weekly updates in the transnational thursdays until it starts), time to cover the first SNAFU- there are more cardinals participating than the number of rooms to house them. See, cardinals are housed in the Domus Sanctae Marthae(you might also see it referred to as the Casa Santa Marta, the Italian name, or more rarely as the St Martha house). There are 129 rooms and 134 or 135 cardinals participating, maybe 136 if the rumors are true about Becciu. But pope Francis had resided in the Casa Santa Marta rather than the apostolic palace, and that space- at least his personal chambers, but possibly more than that- will be sealed off, unavailable to the cardinals.
Likely this will be resolved by having some cardinals either share rooms or sleep in the cells built into St. Peter's basilica for the purpose when the cap on cardinal elector numbers was lower. Cardinals get assigned rooms by lottery, so there's no way to use this for political advantage, but it will make the previous administration look bad.
https://catholicvote.org/college-of-cardinals-holds-third-general-congregation/
The college of cardinals has completed its third(of nine) convocations before the start of a conclave. This is an unusually rapid timetable and the dean of the college of cardinals, Cardinal Re, has been criticized for this by Cardinal Zen, who is influential but not voting. This likely points to starting the conclave at the earliest possible date(May 6 unless all 135 electors arrive earlier- which is highly unlikely).
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/the-cardinals-becciu-test
Disgraced cardinal Becciu is now insisting that he will participate in the conclave, despite having resigned his voting rights in 2020 due to criminality. It is unclear what the cardinals will do about it- his cartoonish corruption was a scandal for Pope Francis in his pontificate, so it's not like he's popular, but who's going to actually deal with him is unclear.
This prompts an interesting question for me -- who's actually in charge? If some sort of major crisis happens, or some terrorist incident happens that disrupts the conclave, or something especially dire, who coordinates the response? Who is empowered to make sure things run properly?
There are a number of candidates. Cardinal Re, cardinal Parolin, and cardinal Farrel are likely to be making the major decisions which can’t be put off.
Which one actually does something about the Catholic version of blagojevich is probably more a matter of personalities than constitutions.
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