Welcome back to Shemis Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire. And this morning, Easter Monday, Pope Francis

died at the age of 88. Whether you're a Catholic or not, whether you liked Pope Francis or not,

I ask you to please pray for the repose of his soul. We're reminded in this Easter season that death is

real, but it doesn't get to have the final word. Now, many of you may be wondering, with the Pope dying,

what does this mean for the church? What happens next? How do we determine who becomes the next Pope?

Now, before we get into all of the details of the conclave process, there's actually even more that

must be attended to. The Catholic Church has a careful step-by-step

process for what to do when a pope dies. And I thought it might be helpful to walk through

each of the major steps. After all, Benedict XVI resigned years before he died, meaning that the

last time the world witnessed the death of a pope was some 20 years ago when St. John Paul

II died in April 2005.

Now, it's a rich and beautiful process. If you know what's going on, parts of the process are actually quite ancient.

Other parts are ever changing and even as new as last year. So, while it's been centuries since there have been any major overhauls to the process, some

important aspects, things like the Pope's coffin, what happens to his body when he dies,

these changes were made by Pope Francis himself in 2024. So if you're old enough to remember 2005,

you're going to recognize some things. Some things are going to look pretty different.

So I wanted to walk through, again,

each of the major steps from the beginning. Step one, confirm the death of the Pope. Now, that first

step has already happened. But you might have noticed that while Pope Francis died at 7.35 in the

morning, Rome time that's 1235 in the morning for those of us

living in the middle of the U.S. His death was not announced right away, and that's because

there are certain steps taken to ensure that the Pope is actually dead. Now, that role was performed

...