As the Vatican announced the date of the conclave, a cardinal from Asia called upon Catholics to pray for papal electors.
“The conclave begins on May 7. Pray for us,” said Divine Word Cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, the Archbishop of Tokyo, Japan.
“Please pray that we may be led by the Holy Spirit to elect worthy shepherds,” he said in a social media post on April 28.
The date of the papal election, or conclave, was decided at the April 28 General Meeting of Cardinal Ministers.
The conclave will take place in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, which remains closed to visitors during those days.
Cardinals under 80 are eligible to vote for the next pope. Currently, 135 of them are eligible. However, two cardinals have declined to take part in the conclave due to health issues.
It is necessary to have at least two-thirds of the total votes to elect the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
“The last two conclaves — held in 2005 to elect Pope Benedict XVI and in 2013 to elect Pope Francis — lasted two days,” reports CNN.
Pope Francis (88) died following a stroke and heart failure on April 21, on Easter Monday.
The past ten conclaves had lasted about three days in length.
After the funeral Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis, the first pope from Latin America, was buried at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore as per his wish as his final resting place.
The funeral Mass was attended by several heads of state, royalty, and hundreds of thousands of mourners.
Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.” Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.
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