The Vatican announced Friday that the Catholic church’s College of Cardinals will begin the start closed-door papal conclave meetings to elect the new pope on Tuesday, March 12.
All cardinals under 80 years old are eligible to vote for the successor to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who retired on February 28. That leaves 115 cardinals who will vote at the Sistine Chapel up to four times a day until a supermajority (two-thirds plus one additional vote) agree on who the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church should be.
The conclave to elect Benedict in 2005 lasted only two days, which signaled that cardinals generally agreed on the election, but conclaves can potentially last much longer if there’s no consensus.