When the cardinals gather in the Pauline Chapel and process to the Sistine Chapel on May 7 to begin the process of choosing a new pope, they call upon the assistance of the Holy Spirit as they sing the Veni Creator Spiritus (“Come Holy Spirit, Creator Blest”).

Many people assume the Holy Spirit directly reveals the exact person who should be the pope. If that were the case, there would be quick elections. But several conclaves over the centuries have lasted for weeks, even months — or years — while others have produced popes of questionable character. 

On the other hand, there is the notion that a conclave is closer to the kind of backroom dealmaking associated with a bygone era of political machines.

Neither of these scenarios is correct.

‘Guidance’ Is the Watchword

Msgr. Roger Landry, national director of The Pontifical Mission Societies and a regular contributor to EWTN and the Register, explained, “The Holy Spirit is always at work trying to guide the Church and individual believers. The question is whether we — and cardinals in conclaves — are docile to his inspirations, which often are subtle, like a small gentle breeze, to use Jesus’ image in his conversation with Nicodemus. So we invoke the Holy Spirit to come down with his gifts upon the cardinals — especially the gifts of wisdom, prudence, courage and fear of the Lord — and also to give them the actual graces to seek and follow his inspirations.”

Msgr. Roger Landry turned to 1997, when then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was asked on Bavarian television whether or not the Holy Spirit chooses the pope, and he answered: “I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope. … I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”

“I must admit I was shocked when Pope Benedict XVI said that it wasn’t the Holy Spirit that selects the pope, but the cardinals,” said Ralph Martin, president of Renewal Ministries and the director of graduate theology programs in the New Evangelization at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in the Archdiocese of Detroit. 

“But as I reflected on his words, I came to understand that what he meant is that the Holy Spirit usually works through human instruments — although he can overrule them if he wishes — and that we human instruments, including cardinals, can ‘quench’ or ‘grieve’ the Holy Spirit, as the Scripture warns us not to do.”

He added, “It is clear that we human beings, including cardinals, can give in to jealousy, fear, envy, rivalry, peer pressure, cowardice, or just plain spiritual blindness and ignorance, and come to a place where docility to the Spirit is impaired.” 

With further reflection on Benedict’s “initially shocking statement,” Martin said he came to see, “It makes a great deal of sense since over the course of 2,000 years we have had mediocre or even bad popes — not just morally or spiritually, but in terms of wisdom, vision, leadership abilities, etc. — and that there must have certainly been times when the cardinals ‘on their own’ selected the next pope with little attention to the Holy Spirit.”

As Msgr. Landry explained, “It would be borderline blasphemous to think that every decision the cardinals make, just like every decision we make, is automatically what the Holy Spirit wanted. Otherwise, we would never have had some of the immoral popes who have led the Church over the last 2,000 years. While the Holy Spirit prevented them, through the charism of infallibility, from ever teaching something definitively contrary to the deposit of faith and morals, these immoral popes obviously chose to live according to the flesh rather than according to the Holy Spirit in their personal life and in various parts of their governance.”

For one example, in the 16th century, two popes from the Medici family fit this mold. That is why “cooperation with God’s grace is so important because it’s easy to fall into worldly ways of thinking, factionalism and ambition,” noted R. Jared Staudt, director of content at the Catholic men’s apostolate Exodus 90 and board member of Rosary College in Greenville, South Carolina.

On the other hand, he explained, “The greater the holiness of the cardinals and the more they cooperate with God’s grace, the more the Holy Spirit can guide their decisions. … We hope that the cardinals approach the great task of electing a pope with goodwill, actively seeking what is best for the whole Church and not simply for any particular faction.”

Still, since the Holy Spirit cannot make a mistake, how should we view the poor choices that have been made in the past?

“God’s providence works for the good of the Church through all things,” Staudt explained. “When the clergy and laity of the Church are holy, God’s providential plans unfold more readily, but, when the opposite is true, God allows difficulties to purify the Church and bring about renewal.”

The Role of Discernment

Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy, a former member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission who also taught at Oxford University in England for many years, told the Register that obviously the Holy Spirit does have a role to play in the picking of the new pope in the conclave via discernment.

“He wants to enlighten the hearts and the minds of the cardinals who are voting to who is the best candidate. But obviously, he’s inspiring human beings,” he said.

“In one sense, he’s not dictating to them, but helping them to discern who has the best qualifications at the time of the conclave, what would be needed in a pontiff at this time,” Father Weinandy added. “Does he have one particular candidate in mind? That I don’t know. One would presume that there would be a number of cardinals who would be excellent candidates. So it’s a combination of the Holy Spirit enlightening the cardinals, but also the cardinals using their own reason and judging the qualifications of the cardinals and the needs of the Church at the time that the pope is chosen.”

Yet the Holy Spirit does not interfere with free will, he emphasized.

“He might enlighten the cardinal’s conscience, so that the cardinal freely chooses who he thinks would be the best candidate for being pope. Hopefully what comes out in the end, after the votes are cast and the pope is chosen, is someone that the Holy Spirit was obviously involved in.”

Father Weinandy explained how, every time a ballot is cast, the cardinal holds his ballot up with his right hand and “swears before God that, in his mind, the person he’s voting for is [the best candidate] the one who should be pope.”

“It’s sort of to get out of any politics or prejudice or interfering with what the Holy Spirit might want to accomplish,” he added.

The cardinals have been focused on prayer in the days leading up to the conclave — and invited the rest of the Church to join them.

“Certainly we should pray,” advised Msgr. Pope, a pastor in the Archdiocese of Washington and regular Register contributor. “Our prayers make a big difference. God has always known whether or not we would pray. God will increase graces if we pray. But at the end of the day, he’s not going to guarantee the outcome in the sense that it robs the cardinals of their freedom.”

Martin added, “My prayer for the coming conclave is that the Holy Spirit work so powerfully that even the most spiritually inattentive cardinals or those with deeply disordered desires cannot fail to hear his voice or see who he is leading them to select. Come, Holy Spirit, come!”