Hello, you're listening to a special edition of the Global News Podcast.

I'm Nick Miles, and after the death of Pope Francis last month, all eyes are now on the Vatican,

where Cardinals will be electing the next Pope. It's a centuries-old and complicated process

called the Conclave. To answer listeners questions about it, I'm joined by our

religion editor, Alim Mabal, who's in Rome. So Alim, many thanks for joining us from Rome. I'm going

to start off with a very general question. What is the conclave?

Well, it is an incredibly exciting event to cover if you are a religion editor.

It is the selection of a new pope.

Of course, there have been popes now for nearly 2,000 years.

It was the Apostle of Jesus Peter,

who's considered by Catholics to be the first Pope,

after whom St Peter's Basilica, St Peter's Square, is named,

and there have subsequently been elections of Pope since then.

But it's over the last thousand years or so since 1059 that the next rung of clergy down from the Pope,

the Cardinals have done the deciding as to who the next Pope will be.

The reason it's called a conclave is because of an election that happened in the 1270s that was just going on and on.

And not all elections of popes have happened here at the Vatican, by the way, or even in Rome or even in Italy.

They've happened in France, even in the past as well. This particular one was going on in northern Italy, further north,

and what was happening was that the Cardinals there were taking too long to decide they'd taken many months the people of the area

got upset about this and how richly all the cardinals were eating during this time and so they decided

to lock them in the vertebra palace until they came up with a decision so conclave comes from the

latin conclave with the key, and that's why this

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