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Cardinals signalled they had elected a new pope to lead the world’s 1.4bn Catholics after white smoke billowed from a chimney over the Sistine Chapel on Thursday.
The identity of the new pope is expected to be revealed soon, when he will appear on the Vatican balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square.
Crowds in the square erupted into cheers as the white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel chimney, and the bells of St Peters rang out to herald that a consensus on the new pope had been reached.
An unprecedented 133 cardinals from 71 countries have been sequestered in the Vatican since Wednesday to elect a successor to the reformist Pope Francis, who died last month after 12 years leading the world’s largest Christian denomination.
While Francis won accolades from progressive Catholics for making the church more inclusive, conservatives felt he had watered down doctrine on fundamental issues such as sexual morality.
The new pope will take the helm at a time when the church is wrestling with a decline in attendance in its traditional European heartland and how to keep young people and women engaged in a faith whose leadership is entirely male.
“Every [Catholic] church in every continent has this problem in different ways,” said Massimo Faggioli, a theology professor at Villanova University.
But the Holy See faces more worldly challenges, too. Its finances are in a precarious state and it has been criticised for not doing enough to protect children from sexual abuse by priests.
This is a developing story
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