Who are the contenders to be pope? They include a street priest, a missionary and a Lutheran convert

Wanted: A holy man.

Job description: Leading the 1.4 billion-strong Catholic Church.

Location: Vatican City.

There are no official candidates for the papacy, but some cardinals are considered ''papabile,'' or possessing the characteristics necessary to become pope. After St. John Paul II broke the centurieslong Italian hold on the papacy in 1978, the field of contenders has broadened considerably.

When the cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel on May 7 to choose a successor to Pope Francis, the first pontiff from Latin America, they will be looking above all for a holy man who can guide the Catholic Church. Beyond that, they will weigh his administrative and pastoral experience and consider what the church needs today.

Here is a selection of possible contenders, in no particular order. The list will be updated as cardinals continue their closed-door, preconclave discussions.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin

Nationality: Italian

Position: Vatican secretary of state under Francis

Experience: Veteran Vatican diplomat

Made a cardinal by: Francis

The 70-year-old veteran diplomat was Francis' secretary of state, essentially the Holy See's prime minister.

Parolin oversaw the Holy See's controversial deal with China over bishop nominations and was involved -- but not charged -- in the Vatican's botched investment in a London real estate venture that led to a 2021 trial of another cardinal and nine others. A former ambassador to Venezuela, Parolin knows the Latin American church well and played a key role in the 2014 U.S.-Cuba detente, which the Vatican helped facilitate.

If he were elected, he would return an Italian to the papacy after three successive outsiders: St. John Paul II (Poland), Pope Benedict XVI (Germany) and Francis (Argentina).

But Parolin has very little pastoral experience: He entered the seminary at age 14, four years after his father was killed in a car accident. After his 1980 ordination, he spent two years as a parish priest near his hometown in northern Italy, but then went to Rome to study and entered the Vatican diplomatic service, where he has remained ever since. He has served at Vatican embassies in Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela.

He is widely respected for his diplomatic finesse on some of the thorniest dossiers facing the Catholic Church. He has long been involved in the China file, and he played a hands-on role in the Holy See's diplomatic rapprochement with Vietnam that resulted in an agreement to establish a resident Vatican representative in the country.

Parolin was also the Vatican's point-person in its frustrated efforts to end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. He has tried to make the church's voice heard as the Trump administration began working to end Russia's war in Ukraine.

Parolin might find the geopolitical reality ushered in by the Trump administration somewhat unreceptive to the Holy See's soft power.

— By Nicole Winfield in Vatican City

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle

Date of Birth: June 21, 1957

Nationality: Filipino

Experience: Former archbishop of Manila, Philippines

Made a cardinal by: Benedict

Tagle, 67, is on many bookmakers' lists to be the first Asian pope, a choice that would acknowledge a part of the world where the church is growing.

Francis brought the popular archbishop of Manila to Rome to head the Vatican's missionary evangelization office, which serves the needs of the Catholic Church in much of Asia and Africa. His role took on greater weight when Francis reformed the Vatican bureaucracy. Tagle often cites his Chinese heritage — his maternal grandmother was part of a Chinese family that moved to the Philippines.

Though he has pastoral, Vatican and management experience — he headed the Vatican's Caritas Internationalis federation of charity groups before coming to Rome permanently — Tagle would be on the young side to be elected pope, with cardinals perhaps preferring an older candidate whose papacy would be more limited.

''The pope will have to do a lot of teaching, we'll have to face the cameras all the time so if there will be a communicator pope, that's very desirable,'' said Leo Ocampo, a theology professor at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila.

That said, Tagle's tenure at Caritas was not without controversy and some have questioned his management skills.

In 2022 , Francis ousted the Caritas management, including demoting Tagle. The Holy See said an outside investigation had found ''real deficiencies'' in management that had affected staff morale at the Caritas secretariat in Rome.

— By Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, and Nicole Winfield in Vatican City

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu

Nationality: Congolese

Position: Archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo

Experience: President of the bishops conferences of Africa and Madagascar

Made a cardinal by: Francis

The 65-year-old Ambongo is one of Africa's most outspoken Catholic leaders, heading the archdiocese that has the largest number of Catholics on the continent that seen as the future of the church.

In Congo and across Africa, Ambongo has been deeply committed to the Catholic orthodoxy and is seen as conservative.

In 2024, he signed a statement on behalf of the bishops conferences of Africa and Madagascar refusing to follow Francis' declaration allowing priests to offer blessings to same-sex couples in what amounted to continent-wide dissent from a papal teaching. The rebuke crystalized both the African church's line on LGBTQ+ outreach and Ambongo's stature within the African hierarchy.

He has received praise from some in Congo for promoting interfaith tolerance, especially on a continent where religious divisions between Christians and Muslims are common.

''He is for the openness of the church to different cultures,'' said Monsignor Donatien Nshole, secretary-general of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo, who has long worked with Ambongo.

An outspoken government critic, the cardinal is also known for his unwavering advocacy for social justice.

''Congo is the plate from which everyone eats, except for our people,'' he said last year during a speech at the Pontifical Antonianum University.

Ambongo's criticism of authorities has drawn both public admiration and legal scrutiny. Last year, prosecutors ordered a judicial investigation of him after accusing him of ''seditious behavior'' over his criticism of the government's handling of the conflict in eastern Congo.

— By Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi

Date of Birth: Oct. 11, 1955

Current position: Archbishop of Bologna, Italy, president of the Italian bishops conference

Previous position: Auxiliary bishop of Rome

Made a cardinal by: Francis

Zuppi, 69, came up as a street priest in the image of Francis, who promoted him quickly: first to archbishop of the wealthy archdiocese of Bologna in northern Italy in 2015, before bestowing the title of cardinal in 2019.

He is closely closely affiliated with the Sant'Egidio Community, a Rome-based Catholic charity that was influential under Francis, particularly in interfaith dialogue. Zuppi was part of Sant'Egidio's team that helped negotiate the end of Mozambique's civil war in the 1990s and was named Francis' peace envoy for Russia's war in Ukraine.

After making him a cardinal, Francis made clear he wanted him in charge of Italy's bishops, a sign of his admiration for the prelate who, like Francis, is known as a ''street priest'' — someone who prioritizes ministering to poor and homeless people and refugees.

Zuppi would be a candidate in Francis' tradition of ministering to those on the margins, although his relative youth would count against him for cardinals seeking a short papacy.

In a sign of his progressive leanings, Zuppi wrote the introduction to the Italian edition of ''Building a Bridge,'' by the Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit, about the church's need to improve its outreach to the LGBTQ+ community.

Zuppi wrote that building bridges with the community was a ''difficult process, still unfolding.'' He recognized that ''doing nothing, on the other hand, risks causing a great deal of suffering, makes people feel lonely, and often leads to the adoption of positions that are both contrasting and extreme.''

Zuppi's family also has strong institutional ties: His father worked for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, and his mother was the niece of Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri, dean of the College of Cardinals in the 1960s and 1970s.

Cardinal Péter Erdő

Date of Birth: June 25, 1952

Nationality: Hungarian

Position: Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary

Past experience: Twice elected head of the umbrella group of European bishops conferences

Known by his peers as a serious theologian, scholar and educator, Erdő, 72, is a leading contender among conservatives. He has served as the archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest since 2002 and was made a cardinal by John Paul the following year. He has participated in two conclaves, in 2005 and 2013, for the selection of Benedict and Francis.

Holding doctorates in theology and canon law, Erdő, speaks six languages, is a proponent of doctrinal orthodoxy, and champions the church's positions on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Erdő opposes same-sex unions, and has also resisted suggestions that Catholics who remarry after divorce be able to receive communion. He stated in 2015 that divorced Catholics should only be permitted communion if they remain sexually abstinent in their new marriage.

An advocate for traditional family structures, he helped organize Francis' 2014 and 2015 Vatican meetings on the family.

From 2006 to 2016, Erdő served as president of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences, helping to foster collaboration among Catholic bishops across Europe and to address contemporary issues facing the church on the continent.

He has been reluctant to take positions on several of the government's policies that divided society in Hungary such as public campaigns that villainized migrants and refugees and laws that eroded the rights of LGBTQ+ communities.

When hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers entered Europe in 2015 fleeing war and deprivation in the Middle East and Africa, Erdő emphasized that the church had a Christian duty to provide humanitarian assistance to those in need, but stopped short of the full-throated advocacy for migrants that was one of Francis' top priorities.

— By Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary

Cardinal Robert Prevost

Date of Birth: Sept. 14, 1955

Position: Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops; president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America under Francis

Experience: Archbishop of Chiclayo, Peru; head of the Augustinian religious order

Made a cardinal by: Francis

Francis brought Prevost, 69, to the Vatican in 2023 to serve as the powerful head of the office that vets bishop nominations from around the world, one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church. As a result, Prevost has a prominence going into the conclave that few other cardinals have.

One strike against him, however, is that he's American, and there has long been a taboo against a U.S. pope, given the geopolitical power already wielded by the United States in the secular sphere. But Prevost, a Chicago native, could be a first because he's also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.

He remained in that position, acquiring Peruvian citizenship in 2015, until Francis brought him to Rome in 2023 to assume the presidency of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. In that job he would have kept in regular contact with the Catholic hierarchy in the part of the world that counts still counts the most Catholics.

Ever since he arrived in Rome, Prevost has kept a low public profile, but he is well known to the men who count.

Significantly, he presided over one of the most revolutionary reforms Francis made, when he added three women to the voting bloc that decides which bishop nominations to forward to the pope. In early 2025, Francis again showed his esteem by appointing Prevost to the most senior rank of cardinals, suggesting he would at least be Francis' choice in an any future conclave.

Prevost's comparative youth could count against him if his brother cardinals don't want to commit to a pope who might reign for another two decades.

The Rev. Fidel Purisaca Vigil, the communications director for Prevost's old diocese in Chiclayo, remembers the cardinal rising each day and having breakfast with his fellow priests after saying his prayers.

— By Franklin Briceño in Lima, Peru, and Nicole Winfield in Vatican City

Cardinal Anders Arborelius

Date of Birth: Sept. 24, 1949

Nationality: Swedish

Position: Bishop of Stockholm

Made a cardinal by: Francis

Even though he heads a tiny Catholic diocese, Arborelius, 75, is on a few insider lists as a possible papal contender for the conservative camp.

He has been the bishop of Stockholm — a diocese that covers the whole of predominantly Lutheran though largely secular Sweden — since 1998 and was made a cardinal by Francis in 2017. It was the first time Sweden had ever had a cardinal.

Arborelius was born in Switzerland, grew up in Sweden as a Lutheran and converted to Catholicism when he was 20. He was ordained a priest a decade later. As bishop of Stockholm, he became the first ethnically Swedish bishop of the country since the Reformation centuries earlier.

He is multilingual, with a master's degree in modern languages — English, Spanish and German. He also studied theology and philosophy in Bruges, Belgium, and in Rome.

In 2021, Arborelius was one of two envoys sent by Francis to the German archdiocese of Cologne to investigate possible mistakes by senior church officials in handling past sexual abuse cases.

Francis was clearly fond of him. In a 2022 meeting with the editors of European Jesuit journals, Francis praised Arborelius as a fearless proponent of dialogue and a model for others to follow.

''He isn't afraid of anything. He talks to everybody and isn't against anybody,'' Francis said, according to La Civilta Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal, which reported the conversation. ''I believe that a person like him can indicate the right path to follow.''

But Arborelius told Swedish broadcaster SVT that he had asked the late pontiff to be relieved of the duties of cardinal and wanted to return to his monastery in southern Sweden. He said it was ''highly unlikely'' that a Swede like him would be elected pope.

— By Geir Moulson in Berlin

Date of Birth: April 21, 1965

Nationality: Italian

Position: Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

Experience: Member of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor

Made a cardinal by: Francis

He has served in Jerusalem for more than three decades, moving to the city from his native Italy just a month after his ordination. Pizzaballa served as custodian of the Holy Land for 12 years, responsible for all of the Catholic properties in the region.

In 2016, Francis appointed Pizzaballa to fill the vacant seat of the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem — the representative of Catholics in Israel, Cyprus, Jordan and the Palestinian territories — and made it official in 2020. Pizzaballa was elevated to cardinal in 2023.

A fluent Hebrew speaker, Pizzaballa has translated various liturgical texts into the language for the Catholic communities in Israel. He gained favor in Israel after offering to take the place of children being held hostage in Gaza a week after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Some 251 people, including dozens of children, were abducted.

Earlier that year, ahead of Easter, Pizzaballa warned in an interview with The Associated Press that the region's 2,000-year-old Christian community has come under increasing attack, with Israel's government emboldening extremists who have harassed clergy and vandalized religious property at a quickening pace.

Pizzaballa has traveled extensively around the region, including to help celebrate a special pre-Christmas Mass in Gaza last year. ''I want to say, to tell you, that all the world, not only the Christian world, all the world is with you, so the war will finish and we will rebuild,'' the cardinal said, urging Gazans to never be afraid.

Cardinal Juan José Omella

Date of Birth: April 21, 1946

Nationality: Spanish

Position: Archbishop of Barcelona, Spain

Experience: Missionary in Zaire, now called Congo; president of the Spanish bishops conference

The 79-year-old archbishop of Barcelona, Spain, has crusaded against hunger worldwide and would likely continue Francis' commitment to putting the church in the service of the neediest.

The Spanish church's tumultuous attempts to come to terms with sexual abuse in its ranks could work against Omella, who would also be on the older side for a pope, meaning his pontificate would likely be short and transitional.

Born in a village in Spain's Aragon region, Omella was ordained in 1970 and became archbishop of Barcelona in 2015. Francis made Omella a cardinal two years later and named him to his small group of advisers in 2023.

Known for his own affable personality, Omella has praised Francis for emphasizing the joyful message of the Gospels.

Omella shares Francis' social vision of the church. He did missionary work in Zaire, now called Congo, and has been active in the Spanish Catholic NGO Manos Unidas. In a 2022 letter entitled ''Combating Indifference,'' Omella wrote that hunger in the poorest countries was the result of unchecked capitalism. ''Our goal is to transform the established (economic) structures to correct the deep and growing gap between the rich and poor,'' he wrote.

Omella's term as president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference from 2000 to 2024 coincided with a confrontation with Spain's government over the issue. Under Omella, the Spanish church conducted its own audit of sexual abuse, apologized to the victims and has since offered economic compensation to them. But Omella dismissed the results of government polling data that pointed to a much higher total of victims.

When asked by Spain's National Radio how he felt about being considered a candidate to succeed Francis, Omella stayed true to his reputation of modesty and laughed off the possibility.

''There are excellent cardinals who will know how to take the helm of the church, and I am not one of them,'' he said. ''Others will know how to take up the legacy of the pope and carry it forward.''

— By Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Spain

Cardinal Reinhard Marx

Nationality: German

Position: Archbishop of Munich-Freising

Experience: Coordinator of the Vatican's Council of the Economy; president of German bishops conference; president of the commission of European bishops conferences

Made a cardinal by: Benedict

If the cardinals want to elect someone who would continue Francis' unfinished business making the Catholic Church more attuned to the needs of ordinary lay Catholics, the 71-year-old Marx could fit the bill.

A former head of the German Bishops' Conference, he is a strong proponent of the controversial ''synodal path'' process of dialogue in the German church that began in 2020 as a response to the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which has contributed to large numbers of people leaving the church. The reform process has drawn opposition from conservatives and suspicion from the Vatican.

In an extraordinary gesture in 2021, Marx offered to resign over the church's ''catastrophic'' mishandling of clergy abuse cases, declaring that the scandals had brought the church to ''a dead end.'' But Francis swiftly rejected the offer.

In 2022, a report that Marx's archdiocese commissioned into abuse over recent decades faulted the cardinal over his own handling of two cases. Marx said he would look over those cases ''to learn from them'' but didn't renew his resignation offer.

Marx said the church still needed to do more to reach out to abuse victims, and acknowledged that he himself had ''overlooked the people affected.'' He added that ''is inexcusable.'' He stressed the importance of pushing forward reforms, saying that the church wouldn't be able to work through the abuse crisis successfully ''without really deep renewal.''

In a 2022 newspaper interview, Marx advocated loosening celibacy rules. He insisted that celibacy wouldn't be scrapped altogether but said he sees a ''question mark'' over ''whether it should be taken as a basic precondition for every priest.'' Also that year, Marx apologized for discrimination against gay people by the church.

Cardinal Robert Sarah

Date of Birth: June 15, 1945

Nationality: Guinean

Position: Retired

Experience: Prefect of Vatican's liturgy office; head of the Vatican's charity office Cor Unum; secretary of Vatican's missionary office; archbishop of Conakry, Guinea

Sarah, 79, has become something of a figurehead for the conservative wing among cardinals, even if his chances of securing the necessary votes to become pope are now slim. He was long considered the best hope for an African pope but had a fairly spectacular falling out with Francis that may have spoiled any chance of winning over moderates.

When he was first made a bishop in 1979 by John Paul, at 34, he was the youngest bishop ever. He headed the Vatican's charity office Cor Unum and then, under Francis, led its liturgy office.

But he clashed on several occasions with Francis, none more seriously than in 2020, when he and Benedict co-authored a book in advocating the ''necessity'' of continued celibacy for Roman Catholic priests.

The book came out as Francis was weighing whether to allow married priests in the Amazon to address a shortage there. Some alleged that Sarah manipulated Benedict into lending the retired pope's name and moral authority to a book that had all the appearances of being a counterweight to the current pope's own teaching.

The prospect of a retired pope trying to influence the current pope was the nightmare scenario canon lawyers and theologians warned about in 2013 when Benedict retired and chose to retain the white cassock of the papacy and call himself ''emeritus Pope Benedict XVI.'' In the end, Benedict removed his name from future editions of the book, but the episode exacerbated the tensions between conservatives and Francis.

— By Nicole Winfield in Vatican City

Cardinal Marc Ouellet

Date of Birth: June 8, 1944

Nationality: Canadian

Position: Retired

Made a cardinal by: John Paul

Ouellet, 80, has long been on many a list of ''papabile,'' or cardinals possessing the characteristics of a possible pope, given his work in the Vatican, pastoral experience and familiarity with Latin America, which counts more Catholics than any other region.

But his chances may have dimmed after he was accused of misconduct by a woman as part of a class-action lawsuit in his former archdiocese of Quebec, Canada. Ouellet strenuously denied the allegations, sued the woman for defamation, and Francis shelved the church investigation into him after a church investigator determined there weren't enough elements to bring forward a canonical trial.

Ouellet led the Vatican's influential bishops office for over a decade, overseeing the key clearinghouse for potential candidates to head dioceses around the world. Francis kept Ouellet in the job until 2023, even though Ouellet had originally been appointed by the more conservative Benedict.

Though Ouellet himself is considered more of a conservative than Francis, he still selected pastorally minded bishops to reflect Francis' belief that bishops should ''smell like the sheep'' of their flock. Ouellet defended priestly celibacy for the Roman Catholic Church and upheld the ban on women's ordination but called for women to have a greater role in church governance.

— By Nicole Winfield in Vatican City

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn

Date of Birth: Jan. 22, 1945

Nationality: Austrian

Position: Archbishop of Vienna

Made a cardinal by: John Paul

Schoenborn, 80, was a student of Benedict's, and thus on paper seems to have the chops to appeal to conservatives.

However, he became associated with one of Francis' most controversial moves by defending his outreach to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics as an ''organic development of doctrine,'' not the rupture that some conservatives contended. Schoenborn's parents divorced when he was a teen, so the issue is personal.

He also took heat from the Vatican when he criticized its past refusal to sanction high-ranking sexual abusers, including his predecessor as archbishop of Vienna.

Schoenborn has expressed support for civil unions and women as deacons, and was instrumental in editing the 1992 update of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the handbook of the church's teaching that Benedict had spearheaded when he headed the Vatican's doctrine office.

Asked in Italian what sort of pope might be chosen, Schoenborn recalled that Francis' big meetings about the future of the church, known as synods, suggested continuity with Francis' focus on the church in the developing world.

''It was evident during the synod the weight and importance shifted towards the ‘South' — Africa, Asia, Latin America,'' he said.

— By Nicole Winfield in Vatican City

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