The Pope was originally chosen by those senior clergymen resident in and near Rome. In 1059 the electorate was restricted to the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and the individual votes of all Cardinal Electors were made equal in 1179. Pope Urban VI, elected 1378, was the last Pope who was not already a cardinal at the time of his election. Canon law requires that if a layman or non-bishop is elected, he receives episcopal consecration from the Dean of the College of Cardinals before assuming the Pontificate. Under present canon law, the Pope is elected by the cardinal electors, comprising those cardinals who are under the age of 80.

The Second Council of Lyons was convened on May 7, 1274, to regulate the election of the Pope. This Council decreed that the cardinal electors must meet within ten days of the Pope's death, and that they must remain in seclusion until a Pope has been elected; this was prompted by the three-year Sede Vacante following the death of Pope Clement IV in 1268. By the mid-sixteenth century, the electoral process had more or less evolved into its present form, allowing for alteration in the time between the death of the Pope and the meeting of the cardinal electors.

Traditionally, the vote was conducted by acclamation, by selection (by committee), or by plenary vote. Acclamation was the simplest procedure, consisting entirely of a voice vote, and was last used in 1621. Pope John Paul II abolished vote by acclamation and by selection by committee, and henceforth all Popes will be elected by full vote of the Sacred College of Cardinals by ballot.

The election of the Pope almost always takes place in the Sistine Chapel, in a meeting called a "conclave" (so called because the cardinal electors are theoretically locked in, cum clavi, until they elect a new Pope). Three cardinals are chosen by lot to collect the votes of absent cardinal electors (by reason of illness), three are chosen by lot to count the votes, and three are chosen by lot to review the count of the votes. The ballots are distributed and each cardinal elector writes the name of his choice on it and pledges aloud that he is voting for "one whom under God I think ought to be elected" before folding and depositing his vote on a plate atop a large chalice placed on the altar. The plate is then used to drop the ballot into the chalice, making it difficult for any elector to insert multiple ballots. Before being read, the number of ballots are counted while still folded; if the total number of ballots does not match the number of electors, the ballots are burned unopened and a new vote is held. Otherwise, each ballot is read aloud by the presiding Cardinal, who pierces the ballot with a needle and thread, stringing all the ballots together and tying the ends of the thread to ensure accuracy and honesty. Balloting continues until a Pope is elected by a two-thirds majority (since the promulgation of Universi Dominici Gregis, the rules allow for a simple majority after a deadlock of twelve days).


One of the most famous aspects of the papal election process is the means by which the results of a ballot are announced to the world. Once the ballots are counted and bound together, they are burned in a special oven erected in the Sistine Chapel, with the smoke escaping through a small chimney visible from St Peter's Square. The ballots from an unsuccessful vote are burned along with a chemical compound in order to produce black smoke, or fumata nera. (Traditionally, wet straw was used to help create the black smoke, but a number of "false alarms" in past conclaves have brought about this concession to modern chemistry.) When a vote is successful, the ballots are burned alone, sending white smoke (fumata bianca) through the chimney and announcing to the world the election of a new Pope. At the end of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, church bells were also rung to signal that a new Pope had been chosen.

The Dean of the College of Cardinals then asks the successfully elected Cardinal two solemn questions. First he asks, "Do you freely accept your election?" If he replies with the word "Accepto", his reign Pope begins at that instant, not at the coronation ceremony several days afterward. The Dean then asks, "By what name shall you be called?" The new Pope then announces the regnal name he has chosen for himself. (If the Dean himself is elected Pope, the Vice Dean performs this duty).

The new Pope is led through the "Door of Tears" to a dressing room in which three sets of white Papal vestments ("immantatio") await: small, medium, and large. Donning the appropriate vestments and reemerging into the Sistine Chapel, the new Pope is given the "Fisherman's Ring" by the Cardinal Camerlengo, whom he either reconfirms or reappoints. The Pope then assumes a place of honor as the rest of the Cardinals wait in turn to offer their first "obedience" ("adoratio") and to receive his blessing.

The senior Cardinal Deacon then announces from a balcony over St. Peter's Square the following proclamation: Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum! Habemus Papam! ("I announce to you a great joy! We have a Pope!"). He then announces the new Pope's Christian name along with the new name he has adopted as his regnal name.

Until 1978 the Pope's election was followed in a few days by a procession in great pomp and circumstance from the Sistine Chapel to St. Peter's Basilica, with the newly elected Pope borne in the sedia gestatoria. There the Pope was crowned with the triregnum and he gave his first blessing as Pope, the famous Urbi et Orbi ("to the City Rome and to the World"). Another famed part of the coronation was the lighting of a torch which would flare brightly and promptly extinguish, with the admonition Sic transit gloria mundi ("Thus fades worldly glory"). Beginning with Pope John Paul I's election, this has been discontinued.

Some traditionalist Catholics claim the existence of a Papal oath (the so-called "Oath against modernism") which they assert that Popes up from John Paul I refused to swear, but there is no reliable authority for this claim.

The Latin term sede vacante ("vacant seat") refers to a papal interregnum, the period between the death of the Pope and the election of his successor. From this term is derived the name Sedevacantist, which designates a category of dissident, schismatic Catholics who maintain that there is no canonically and legitimately elected Pope, and that there is therefore a Sede Vacante; one of the most common reasons for holding this belief is the idea that the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and especially the replacement of the Tridentine Mass with the Mass of Paul VI are heretical, and that, per the dogma of Papal infallibility (see above), it is impossible for a valid Pope to have done these things.

For many years, the Papacy was an institution dominated by Italians. Before the election of the non-Italian Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in 1978, the last non-Italian was the Dutch-German Pope Adrian VI of the Netherlands, elected in 1522. John Paul II was followed by the German-born Benedict XVI, leading some to believe the Italian domination of the Papacy to be over.

The Pope's position as Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church is dogmatic and therefore not open to debate or dispute within the Catholic Church; the First Vatican Council anathematized all who dispute the Pope's primacy of honor and of jurisdiction (it is lawful to discuss the precise nature of that primacy, provided that such discussion does not violate the terms of the Council's Dogmatic Constitution). However, the Pope's authority is not undisputed outside the Catholic Church; these objections differ from denomination to denomination, but can roughly be outlined as (1) objections to the extent of the primacy of the Pope; and (2) objections to the institution of the Papacy itself.


Some non-Roman-Catholic Christian communities, such as the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Old Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Independent Catholic Churches, and even some Lutherans, accept the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and therefore accept (to varying extents) the papal claims to a primacy of honour. However, these churches generally reject that the Pope is the successor to St. Peter in any unique sense not true of any other bishop, or raise questions about whether St. Peter was ever bishop of Rome at all. The primacy is therefore regarded primarily as a consequence of the Pope's position as bishop of the original capital city of the Roman Empire, a definition explicitly spelled out in the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon. In any event, these churches see no foundation at all to papal claims of universal immediate jurisdiction, nor to claims of Papal Infallibility. Because none of them recognize the First Vatican Council as truly ecumenical, they regard its definitions concerning jurisdiction and Infallibility (and anathematization of those who do not accept them) as invalid. Several of these communities refer to such claims as "Ultramontanism".

Other non-Catholic Christian denominations do not accept the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, or do not understand it in hierarchical terms, and therefore do not accept the claim that the Pope is heir either to Petrine primacy of honor or to Petrine primacy of jurisdiction, or they reject both claims of honor or jurisdiction, as well as claims of Papal Infallibility, as unscriptural. The Papacy's complex relationship with the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and other secular states, and the Papacy's territorial claims in Italy, are another focal point of these objections; as is the monarchical character of the office of Pope. In Western Christianity these objections — and the vehement rhetoric they have at times been cast in — both contributed to and are products of the Protestant Reformation. These denominations vary from simply not accepting the Pope's authority as legitimate and valid, to believing that the Pope is the Antichrist or the False Prophet spoken in the Book of Revelation . These denominations tend to be more heterogeneous amongst themselves than the aforementioned hierarchical churches, and their views regarding the Papacy and its institutional legitimacy (or lack thereof) vary considerably.

Some objectors to the Papacy use empirical arguments, pointing to the corrupt characters of some of the holders of that office. For instance, some argue that claimed successors to St. Peter, like Callixtus III and Alexander VI from the Borgia family, were so corrupt as to be unfit to wield power to bind and loose on Earth or in Heaven. An omniscient and omnibenevolent God, some argue, would not have given those people the powers claimed for them by the Catholic Church. Defenders of the papacy argue that the Bible shows God as willingly giving privileges even to corrupt men (citing examples like some of the kings of Israel, the apostle Judas Iscariot, and even St. Peter after he denied Jesus). They also argue that not even the worst of the corrupt Popes used the office to try to rip the doctrine of the Church from its apostolic roots, and that their failure to achieve that goal is evidence that the office is divinely protected.
Some objectors to the papacy habitually refer to the Catholic Church and its members by the pejorative term papist to point up what they believe to be an inappropriate focus of attention on the office and an improper attribution of certain divine favors ex officio.