Vatican City, 02 May, 2025 / 11:59 pm (ACI Africa).
The upcoming conclave to elect the successor to Pope Francis will be the largest in the history of the Catholic Church, with 133 cardinal electors expected to gather in the Sistine Chapel on May 7, Vatican officials confirmed this week.
The unprecedented number surpasses all previous papal conclaves, breaking the previous record of 115 electors in the 2005 and 2013 elections. It also marks the first time a conclave will be held with more than 120 voting cardinals — the limit set by St. John Paul II in his 1996 apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis.
While paragraph 33 of that document capped the number of electors at 120, paragraph 36 of the constitution affirms that any “cardinal of Holy Roman Church who has been created and published before the College of Cardinals thereby has the right to elect the pope.”
The College of Cardinals said earlier this week that Pope Francis lawfully dispensed with the numerical limit by exercising his supreme authority as pontiff.
The Vatican confirmed Tuesday that two of the 135 cardinals under age 80 — Spanish Cardinal Antonio Cañizares and Kenyan Cardinal John Njue — will not attend the conclave due to health concerns, bringing the number of expected electors to 133.
