Vatican City (AP) – How long does it take to choose a Pope? In this case, it only took two days for the Catholic Cardinals to elect a successor to the Pope of France. That’s one of the shortest conclusions in decades, but not the shortest ever.
The Vatican does not publish official data on past order vote counts and tallys, and sources for compiling their own data are not fully agreed, making it difficult to be accurate.
However, historical figures provide some clues.
Before 1274, the Pope was elected on the same day as the death of his predecessor. However, the church then decided to wait at least 10 days before the first vote. It was then extended to 15 days, giving all the cardinals time to go to Rome.
According to Vatican historian Ambrogio Piazoni, the fastest conclave to observe the ten-day waiting rule appears to be the 1503 election of Pope Julius II, who was elected in just a few hours. Most recently, Pope Francis was voted for the fifth time in 2013, Benedict XVI won the fourth time in 2005, and Pope Pius XIII won the third place in 1939.
The longest Conclave since the 20th century, voted 14 rounds in five days, and ended in 1922 with the election of Pius XIII. The shortest was the Conclave, who elected Pius XIII in 1939, and voted three times over two days.
The Cardinals must reach two-thirds of the majority to elect the Pope. It was a bit easy to get caught up in the past. In 1922 there were 53 voters, and until 1978 there were less than 100 votes each time. This year there were 133 people, so we needed 89 votes.
Let’s take a look at the period of recent history permutations, according to multiple sources, including Catholic and other Italian publications.
-1914: Benedict XV: 10 votes, 3 days
-1922: Pius XI: 14 votes, 5 days
-1939: Pius XII: 3 votes, 2 days
-1958: John XXIII: 11 votes, 4 days
-1963: Paul VI: 5 or 6 votes, 3 days
-1978: John Paul I: Four Votes, 2 days
-1978: John Paul II: 8 votes, 3 days
-2005: Benedict XVI: 4 votes, 2 days
-2013: Francis: 5 votes, 2 days
