Not all Cardinals are eligible to vote to select a new Pope  - Most Reverend Osei Bonsu

The President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Ghana, Most Reverend Osei Bonsu says not all the Catholic Cardinals in the world today have the voting right to take part in the selection processes of the next head of the Catholic Church which begins in the Holy City in Rome tomorrow. 

According to him, even though the church currently has more than 200 Cardinals across the globe, only 115 of them are part of Electoral College, including Ghana’s Cardinal Appiah Turkson. 
Speaking to Radio Ghana in Kumasi, Most Rev. Osei-Bonsu, who is also the Bishop of the Konongo-Mampong Catholic Diocese, said only the Cardinals whose age are below 80 years are going to decide on who succeeds the immediate past Pope, who resigned at the end of last month. 


The cardinals will then take an oath of secrecy and get orientation on the processes before the actual voting starts adding that only the colour of the smoke will be used to communicate outcomes of the election to the public. 

According to him, all the members of the Electoral College at the Vatican City have equal chances of becoming the next Pope saying that during the first round of the election processes, each of the 115 Cardinals will be given a ballot to indicate their preferred candidates. 

Those who obtain the most ballots will then become the main focus of the subsequent rounds of the processes which will include a special Mass for divine direction for the Cardinals. 
Most Rev. Osei-Bonsu said there is no law about when a Pope should be elected saying that in the 1930s, it took the Vatican about three years to finally choose a Pope and that this year’s processes could last for a week for the next Pope to emerge. 
He insisted that even though Ghanaians would be happy to have one of their own to occupy the Papacy, it is equally not wrong for anyone to speculate about the chances of any of the candidates.