Odds-makers likely had an easier time 20 years ago, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stepped onto the balcony overlooking St.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — A quiet alliance between North and South American cardinals helped elect the first US-born pope.

The papal conclave, the secretive election process to elect the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church, commenced on ...

Papal conclaves have featured calls of election fraud and bribery so gauche that riches were wheeled in on donkey carts.

More than 130 cardinals will be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel to elect the Catholic Church's 267th pontiff after Pope ...

The Catholic Church's cardinal electors entered the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican to choose a successor to Pope Francis, as ...

Throughout the 20th century, only two conclaves lasted up to five days − Pope Pius X's election in 1903 and Pope Pius XI's ...

Eighteen days after Pope Francis last appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, his successor -- the 267th pope -- ...

A new pope will be selected when a candidate gets a two-thirds-plus-one majority vote by the cardinal electors. White smoke ...

One hundred and thirty-three cardinals are sequestering themselves behind the Vatican’s medieval walls for the start of a ...

The papal conclave begins May 7. Here's how cardinals choose the next pope, what to expect and how secretive the process is.

There isn't a set schedule for when the new pope will be introduced, following the eagerly-anticipated white smoke. However, ...