Here’s how the Catholic cardinals should choose the next pope

The death of Pope Francis in April has created a conspicuous space at the top of the Catholic Church’s org chart. As someone who’s studied negotiation and also served eight years in uniform in Catholic school, I have been thinking constantly lately about what happens next, and what it’s going to take to put the next man into the chair of St. Peter and get that white smoke emerging from the Sistine Chapel. And whether you’re negotiating a pay raise, navigating a breakup, or choosing a pope, the best process for getting there is virtually the same for all of them.

If your familiarity with the role of pontiff is limited to “person who dies right after meeting with JD Vance,” you may not be aware of the magnitude of this endeavor. There are 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, a number larger than all Protestant religions combined. And believe it or not, secular reader, that population is growing. 

Furthermore, every member of the flock is obliged by the tenets of the Church to adhere to the infallible guidance of the guy in the pointy hat and the cool cape on matters of faith and morals. That makes the pope conceivably more influential than Rupert Murdoch and Alexandra Cooper combined.

Now, 138 cardinals from every corner of the world are convening in Rome to elect Francis’ successor. And those cardinals — six of whom were just last month accused of covering up sexual abuse, by the way — have very conflicting ideas on what his imperatives should look like for the next era of the Catholic church, on issues like climate change, immigration and LGBTQ rights. 

That makes this papal election the perfect setting for what’s known as interest-based bargaining. It’s my favorite type of negotiation because all parties can start from a relatively amicable place of clear and even shared objectives. Drama may be fun on “Vanderpump Villa,” but in the real world, a high level of distrust and antagonism is not great for activities like filling a job or choosing someone who’s likely going to be made a saint someday. 

Interest-based negotiation challenges the parties involved first and foremost to identify the shared nature of their challenge, to consider their respective values and priorities, and then to collaborate creatively on solutions.

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This is a particularly crucial tactic when the endgame involves some form of a united front. That was surely the ill-fated idea, for example, when the royals negotiated Meghan and Harry’s 2020 “Megxit” at the Sandringham summit that hammered out the terms of their departure from the family business. It was also in evidence after the casts of “Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory” leveraged the success of their shows to bargain collectively for their salary increases. 

So while disputes can still arise in this type of negotiation — like a divorce where both sides are trying to uncouple as consciously as possible — an adversarial dynamic isn’t the foundation of the negotiation process. Instead, the focus is on what’s in the best interests of all parties to solve their problem, like how to split custody of the kids or who’s going to lead the largest Christian denomination in the world. 

While the identity of the next man in line is yet to be determined, I can tell you right now who won’t be handed the keys to the popemobile. Despite Donald Trump’s latest unhinged possible attempt at humor that “I’d like to be Pope. That would be my number one choice,” and his lickspittle Lindsey Graham’s exhortation to the papal conclave and the faithful “to keep an open mind,” the 47th president is even less qualified for that job than he is for his current one. 

Amazingly, though, he’s not throwing out an entirely far-fetched notion — the field is more open than you might have guessed. There hasn’t been a pope elected from outside the ranks of the cardinals since Urban VI back in the 14th century, and does this look like the Western Schism era? But technically, any baptized Catholic male is eligible for the role. Yes, this rule does mean that JD Vance and Mark Wahlberg have a theoretical shot of becoming the pope, unlike any woman anywhere, ever. It also cuts the field of candidates neatly in half for the College of Cardinals.

The next pope will be chosen when one man can secure a two-thirds majority of the conclave voters, a process that in the modern era has typically taken between one to three days, with the cardinals holding up to four votes a day until they arrive at their decision. Should they choose to follow an interest-based election process, the cardinals will want to adhere to a specific workflow, one that happens to be ideal for electing a pope. They would start with an agreed-upon issue, in this case, the need for a new pope. Then the cardinals would articulate their respective interests, their options for fulfilling them, and the standards for deciding on a solution. Eventually, they’d reach their acceptable resolution — new pope! 

While the private discourse and the election process itself will be conducted behind closed doors, it’s no secret that a very disparate group of men representing different populations and different Christian ideologies are going to be wrestling now over whether to continue on the path of the more progressive, Latin American liberation theology-inflected agenda of Pope Francis, or go back to the more hard-line, traditionalist views of predecessors like Pope Benedict. The fact that Francis chose roughly 80% of the current cardinals might be some indicator of how the smoke will blow, but nothing is a given.

Whatever the cardinals call their own process and however they formalize it, the election of the next pope will have to be guided by what the members have in common — the urgent imperative to find a head of the church, obviously, but also, one hopes, the inspiration of the teachings of Jesus Christ. The foundational ideals of Catholicism have often historically been sidelined in the politics of power (looking at you, Borgias), which made the humble, service-oriented Francis an unconventional and in many ways successful choice the last time around. And at an inflection point of extreme global divisiveness, the opportunity to elevate a Catholic leader who is a uniter will only be possible if the cardinals can prevail over their special interests, and negotiate wisely for a common good.