“I wish I did not have to vote because I wish that Francis were still alive. But it is a fact that he has left us,” Cardinal Stephen Chow told Gerard O’Connell in an exclusive interview.
Preparations for the conclave to find a new pope accelerated Friday with the installation of the chimney out of the Sistine Chapel that will signal the election of a successor to Pope Francis.
The conclave that begins next Wednesday to elect a successor for Pope Francis is the first in 46 ½ years for which the Vatican hasn’t ordered a set of cassocks from the two best-known papal tailors.
In a pre-conclave meeting, an Italian cardinal, and backer of Cardinal Parolin as next pope, attacked Pope Francis for opening positions of responsibility in the church to men and women not in holy orders.