‘I’d be my number one choice’ Trump jokes about succeeding Pope Francis
About 135 Catholic cardinals will next month be tasked with entering a secret conclave to choose the next pope, with no clear frontrunner in sight.
United States President Donald Trump has joked that he would love to be the next pontiff of the Catholic Church, following the death of Pope Francis, who was buried last week after dying aged 88.
Trump made the joke after reporters asked him whom he would prefer to succeed Pope Francis.
He stated that he would be his first choice for who takes over at the Vatican City, but added that he had no preference on who the next Pope should be.
“I’d like to be pope. That would be my No. 1 choice,” Trump told reporters.
“I must say, we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who’s very good, so we’ll see what happens,” he added.
Trump and first lady Melania, traveled to Rome last weekend to attend the funeral of the first pope who was from Latin America.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, is not on the short list of possible contenders for the top spot, but it does include another American, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark, New Jersey. There has never been a pope from the US.
The two men had exchanged criticisms over a decade, mostly related to the pope’s plea for compassion for migrants, a group Trump has repeatedly sought to deport.
About 135 Catholic cardinals will next month be tasked with entering a secret conclave to choose the next pope, with no clear frontrunner in sight.
The 135 Cardinals Electors of the College of Cardinals hail from 71 different countries across the five continents.
For the first time, 12 nations will be represented by their native Cardinal electors.
However, Europe still carries a significant weight in the College of Cardinals.
The old continent is represented by 53 Cardinal electors (some of whom head Dioceses and Archdioceses in non-European countries, or serve as Apostolic Nuncios abroad or in the Curia), with Italy still having the largest number (19), followed by France (6) and Spain (5).
37 Cardinal electors are from the Americas (16 from North America, 4 from Central America, and 17 from South America), 23 from Asia, 18 from Africa, and 4 from Oceania
Thus, while the European Cardinals still represent the majority of those who will gather in the Conclave, the “rest of the world” now clearly surpasses Europe, with the Americas as a whole significantly increasing its “weight”.
Although regional representation alone won’t determine the outcome of the election of the new Pope, which is also influenced by other critical factors, the geographical aspect cannot be overlooked, given the global impact of the Pope’s role.
