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    Decoding the Vatican: Key Terms in the Papal Transition

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    From “camerlengo” to white smoke, here’s what to know about the words and phrases that guide the process after a pope dies.The transition from one pope to the next can be a mystifying time for those who aren’t familiar with the workings of the Roman Catholic Church — and even to some who are.The process is governed by centuries-old rules and traditions that come with their own vocabulary, much of it in Latin. The election of a new pope is likely to play out over weeks or months as a small group of Catholic prelates decides on the next leader of a global flock of more than a billion faithful.With the first papal transition in more than a decade underway following the death of Pope Francis, who was laid to rest on Saturday, here are some terms to know:ConclaveThis is the meeting of cardinals, set to begin next month, that will elect the next pope. The word comes from the Latin “with key,” and refers to the isolation imposed on the men (and they have always been men) as they make their decision inside the Vatican. They cannot leave the conclave except in rare cases, and phones, the internet and newspapers are not allowed. The cardinals vote by secret ballot until a two-thirds majority is reached, and a new pope is elected. The process was recently dramatized in the movie “Conclave,” which papal experts said presented a fairly accurate depiction. (The New York Times has written about some of the possible contenders.)College of CardinalsCardinals, known as the “princes of the church,” are the second highest ranking Catholic prelates, and together they are known as the College of Cardinals. There are 252 cardinals, appointed by the pope to assist and advise him on Church affairs, and when a pope dies, it falls to the college to choose a successor.The word cardinal comes from the Latin “cardinalis,” which means “serving as a hinge.” The group is led by a dean, a position currently held by Giovanni Battista Re, a 91-year-old Italian who has spent most of his career serving in the Roman curia. He will preside over the meetings that lead up to the conclave but will not attend the gathering, as only cardinals under the age of 80 are eligible to vote for pope.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pope Francis’ Legacy in the U.S.: A More Open, and Then Divided, Church

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      Months into his papacy in 2013, Pope Francis was asked about gay priests, and he responded, “Who am I to judge?” Across the United States, Catholics and non-Catholics alike took a collective gasp.For years the Roman Catholic Church in the United States had deeply aligned with the religious right in fierce conflicts over issues like abortion, gay marriage and contraception. But Pope Francis wanted a church “with doors always wide open,” as he said in his first apostolic exhortation.Words like these made the new pope a revolutionary figure in the United States, in both the Catholic Church and the nation’s politics. He challenged each to shift its moral focus toward issues like poverty, immigration and war, and to confront the realities of income inequality and climate change. Pope Francis offered a progressive, public Catholicism in force, coinciding with the Obama era, and at the beginning of his pontificate, he moved the U.S. church forward from the sex-abuse scandals that roiled his predecessor’s pontificate.He pushed church leaders to be pastors, not doctrinaires, and elevated bishops in his own mold, hoping to create lasting tonal change in the church through its leadership. He gave voice to the growing share of Hispanic Catholics, as the American church grew less white, and appointed the first African-American cardinal. He allowed priests to bless same-sex couples and made it easier for divorced and remarried Catholics to participate in church life.In doing so, he captured the imaginations of millions both inside and outside the American church who had long felt rejected. At a time of increasing secularization, the world’s most visible Christian leader gave hope to many U.S. non-Catholics who saw in him a moral visionary while much of public Christianity in America took a rightward turn.“He made the church a more welcoming place,” said Joe Donnelly, former Democratic senator from Indiana, who was the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See under President Biden. “For Americans of all different economic strata, for divorced Americans, for basically everyone in our country, his arms were always open.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pope Francis and the End of the Imperial Papacy

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      Pope Francis, who passed to his reward on the morning after Easter at age 88, was a version of the liberal pope that many Catholics had earnestly desired all through the long reign of John Paul II and the shorter one of Benedict XVI — a man whose worldview was shaped and defined by the Second Vatican Council and whose pontificate sought a renewal of its revolution, a further great modernization of the Catholic Church.In one way, at least, he succeeded. For generations, modernizers lamented the outsize power of the papacy, the anachronism of a monarchical authority in a democratic age, the way the concept of papal infallibility froze Catholic debates even as the world rushed forward. In theory Francis shared those concerns, promising a more collegial and horizontally oriented church, more synodal, in the jargon of the Catholic bureaucracy. In practice he often used his power in the same way as his predecessors, to police and suppress deviations from his authority — except that this time the targets were dissenting conservatives and traditionalists instead of progressives and modernizers.But just by creating that novel form of conflict, in which Catholics who had been accustomed to being on the same side as the Vatican found themselves suddenly crosswise from papal authority, Francis helped to demystify his office’s authority and undermine its most imposing claims.That’s because the conservatives whose convictions he unsettled were the last believers in the imperial papacy, the custodians of infallibility’s mystique. And by stirring more of them to doubt and disobedience, he kicked away the last major prop supporting a strong papacy and left the office of St. Peter in the same position as most other 21st-century institutions: graced with power but lacking credibility, floated on charisma without underlying legitimacy, with its actions understood in terms of rewards for friends and punishments for enemies.Two rebellions, in particular, illustrate this shift. The first is the continuing resistance to the pope’s attempt to suppress, in the name of Catholic unity and the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, the faith’s traditional Latin Mass. After Vatican II in the late 1960s, when Pope Paul VI remade the church’s liturgy, he commanded enough deference that he was able to swiftly consign the Mass that every Catholic in the world had grown up with to the modern equivalent of catacombs — to church basements, hotel rooms and schismatic chapels.Whereas when Francis attempted a similar suppression, reversing the permissions granted by Benedict, only his most loyal bishops really went along, and the main effect was to stir resistance and complaint, garner new media attention for the old Latin Mass and increase traditionalism’s cachet among younger Catholics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Retired Louisiana Priest Pleads Guilty to Rape and Kidnapping Charges

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      Lawrence Hecker, who was indicted last year on charges related to a sexual assault in the 1970s, pleaded guilty on Tuesday just before jury selection for his trial was set to begin.A retired Roman Catholic priest who was indicted last year in Louisiana on charges related to the sexual assault of a teenage boy in the 1970s pleaded guilty to the crimes on Tuesday, his lawyer said, just before jury selection for the trial was set to begin.The retired priest, Lawrence Hecker, 93, pleaded guilty to state charges of first-degree rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature, and theft over $500, said his lawyer, Bobby Hjortsberg. The charges came after allegations surfaced last year that the Archdiocese of New Orleans had known about accusations against Mr. Hecker for decades.“Him ultimately taking responsibility for it was the right thing to do, and the necessary thing to do at this point,” Mr. Hjortsberg said. “I hope everybody involved can move forward in whatever way is best for them.”The guilty plea did not include a plea deal, Mr. Hjortsberg said. Mr. Hecker is set to be sentenced on Dec. 18, and he faces life in prison.Mr. Hecker’s trial had been delayed multiple times over concerns about his mental competency, and because the judge recused himself over a conflict with prosecutors. The new judge, Nandi Campbell of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, ordered Mr. Hecker to undergo physical and psychological evaluations before trial. Mr. Hjortsberg confirmed that the retired priest had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia.The charges against Mr. Hecker came months after The Guardian reported that he confessed to his superiors in 1999 that he had sexually molested or committed other forms of sexual misconduct against multiple teenagers in the 1960s and ’70s. Mr. Hecker later confirmed to The Guardian and the New Orleans news outlet WWL-TV that he had committed “overtly sexual acts” with at least three underage boys.Mr. Hecker continued to serve with the New Orleans archdiocese until his retirement in 2002. But the archdiocese did not publicly identify him as an accused sexual predator until 2018, when it released a list of “credibly accused” priests.Thousands of Catholic priests have been accused of misconduct since the sexual abuse crisis in the American Catholic Church exploded into public view in the early 2000s. But relatively few have faced criminal prosecution. In September, a Catholic priest in Texas was indicted on felony sexual assault charges after several victims accused him of sexual and financial abuse.The New Orleans archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2020 amid a flood of abuse claims, and it is among about a dozen dioceses and archdioceses that are currently in bankruptcy proceedings.In a statement on Tuesday after Mr. Hecker’s guilty plea, a spokesman for the archdiocese said that it was the church’s “hope and prayer that today’s court proceedings bring healing and peace to the survivor and all survivors of sexual abuse.” More

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      Who Might Be the Next Archbishop of Canterbury?

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      The leader of the Anglican Church, Justin Welby, announced he would resign on Tuesday. Here’s what happens next.On Tuesday, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, announced he would resign over his handling of an abuse scandal.A damning report concluded last week that after becoming archbishop in 2013, Mr. Welby failed to pursue a proper investigation into claims of widespread abuse of boys and young men by John Smyth, a prominent lawyer and evangelical leader, decades ago at Christian summer camps.Mr. Welby’s abrupt resignation means the question of who becomes the next archbishop — the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide — is now urgent.Here’s what you need to know:How will the next archbishop be selected?Who are the leading candidates for the next archbishop?How long will Mr. Welby remain in the post?How will the next archbishop be selected?As Mr. Welby was scheduled to retire in 2026, it’s likely that the Church of England was already beginning to plan for the process of replacing him. The job of managing it falls to a committee known as the Crown Nominations Commission, which was created in 1974. It has 16 voting members, including bishops, representatives from the Canterbury diocese, the global Anglican Communion and the General Synod, which is the church’s national assembly. But do not expect them to operate a transparent selection process.The group is likely to canvass quietly within the church although there may already be prepared dossiers on potential successors. The commission will eventually agree on its preferred candidate — and possibly a reserve — to be sent to Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, who then advises the monarch on the appointment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Archbishop of Canterbury Resigns Over U.K. Church Abuse Scandal

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      Justin Welby, the leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, announced his resignation days after a report found he had taken insufficient action over claims of abuse.The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, on Tuesday announced his resignation, days after a report concluded that he had failed to ensure a proper investigation into claims that more than 100 boys and young men were abused decades ago at Christian summer camps.Pressure had mounted on Mr. Welby, the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, after the report was published and after one senior figure in the church, the bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, called on him publicly to step aside.In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Welby said, “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024.”He said that he had sought permission to resign from King Charles III, and added: “I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church. As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse.”Mr. Welby, 68, has held his position since 2013 and was scheduled to retire in 2026. His departure brings to a premature end the tenure of the country’s best known cleric, who took over the leadership of the Church of England at a time of tension between liberals and traditionalists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pope Francis Is Accused of Using a Homophobic Slur Again

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      Two prominent Italian news agencies said the pontiff used the term on Tuesday during a meeting with priests, after he was accused of uttering the same word last month while speaking with Italian bishops.Pope Francis repeated an anti-gay slur during a meeting with priests in Rome on Tuesday, Italian news outlets reported, the same offensive term he was accused of using two weeks ago. The Vatican, in summarizing the gathering, said only that the pontiff had cautioned about admitting gay men into Roman Catholic seminaries.The Vatican did not address the reports by two of the most prominent news agencies in Italy, ANSA and Adnkronos, that he had again used the word “frociaggine,” an offensive Italian slang term referring to gay men. The reports cited anonymous sources they said had been present at the meeting.The New York Times could not independently verify the pope’s use of the term. A spokesperson for the Vatican declined to comment late on Tuesday night.The pope was accused of using the same term last month at a private meeting with Italian bishops, according to several people present at the meeting who spoke anonymously to the Italian news media.Those reports ignited widespread backlash and drew an apology from the pope, issued through the director of the Holy See’s press office, who said: “The pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he extends his apologies to those who were offended by the use of a term, reported by others.”According to Vatican News, the Holy See’s online news site, Tuesday’s meeting took place at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome. There, it said in its summary, the pope “spoke about the danger of ideologies in the church” and reiterated that while the church should welcome people “with homosexual tendencies,” it should exercise “prudence” in admitting them into seminaries.The Vatican said the closed-door meeting also addressed “pastoral” and “current” themes, like substance abuse, low voter turnout in elections and the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere.Francis has been widely credited with making moves to welcome the L.G.B.T.Q. community in the Roman Catholic Church, delivering a mostly inclusive message and deciding to allow priests to bless same-sex couples.But the previous reports about the pope’s use of the homophobic slur upset and alienated some members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, within and outside the church.After the reports in May, a gay priest wrote in America magazine, a Jesuit publication, that he was “shocked and saddened” by the remarks and that “we need more than an apology for Pope Francis’ homophobic slur.”The Italian politician Alessandro Zan, who is gay and a prominent champion for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, wrote on social media then: “There is not too much ‘frociaggine’. There are too many homophobes.” More

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      Former Deacon Excommunicated After Confronting Priest’s Sexual Abuse

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      A Louisiana priest was convicted in the sexual abuse of the ex-deacon’s son. What followed was a lawsuit and now the Catholic Church’s highest censure.A Catholic priest who sexually assaulted an altar boy in Louisiana is in prison, and a diocese has paid a settlement to the victim’s family. Now the diocese’s bishop has punished the victim’s father, a former deacon, with the Church’s highest censure: excommunication.It was the latest turn in a yearslong battle pitting the former deacon, Scott Peyton, and his family against the Diocese of Lafayette.The Peytons and the diocese have found themselves on opposing sides of a state law that gave childhood sexual abuse victims more time to file lawsuits.The law, which was passed in the State Legislature in 2021 but struck down on Friday by the state’s highest court, did not apply exclusively to victims of clergy abuse. However, the law prompted new civil suits against Louisiana churches and clergy members who worked for them.The battle has its roots in 2018, when Mr. Peyton’s son Oliver accused the parish priest at St. Peter Catholic Church in Morrow of sexually assaulting him three years earlier, when he was 16. Scott Peyton served the same priest, Father Michael Guidry, as a deacon.While the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office investigated the allegations, Father Guidry was suspended from his church duties and later confessed to the assault, according to court records.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a Funeral Was Held for Cecilia Gentili, a Transgender Activist

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      St. Patrick’s Cathedral was the site of protests over the church’s position on homosexuality and AIDS. On Thursday, it hosted a jubilant funeral for Cecilia Gentili, a former sex worker and actress.The pews of St. Patrick’s Cathedral were packed on Thursday for an event with no likely precedent in Catholic history: the funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a transgender activist and actress, former sex worker and self-professed atheist whose memorial functioned as both a celebration of her life and an exuberant piece of political theater.Over 1,000 mourners, several hundred of whom were transgender, arrived in daring outfits — glittery miniskirts and halter tops, fishnet stockings, sumptuous fur stoles and at least one boa sewed from $100 bills. Mass cards and a picture near the altar showed a haloed Ms. Gentili surrounded by the Spanish words for “transvestite,” “whore,” “blessed” and “mother” above the text of Psalm 25.That St. Patrick’s Cathedral would host the funeral for a high-profile transgender activist, who was well known for her advocacy on behalf of sex workers, transgender people and people living with H.I.V., might come as a surprise to some.Not much more than a generation ago, at the heights of the AIDS crisis, the cathedral was a flashpoint in conflicts between gay activists and the Catholic Church, whose opposition to homosexuality and condom use enraged the community. The towering neo-Gothic building became the site of headline-grabbing protests in which activists chained themselves to the pews and lay down in the aisles.On Thursday, St. Patrick’s Cathedral was filled those mourning Ms. Gentili. Decades ago, L.G.B.T.Q. activists chained themselves to the pews to protest the church.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesThe church has softened its tone on those issues in recent years, and New York’s current cardinal, Timothy Dolan, has said the church should be more welcoming of gay people. Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, did not respond to questions about whether the church had been aware of Ms. Gentili’s background when it agreed to host her funeral.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More