Could Jimmy Akin, Joe Heschmeyer, or Trent Horn actually become pope? It sounds far-fetched—but it’s not impossible. In this episode, Joe Heschmeyer joins Cy Kellett to explore who can actually be elected pope, including surprising moments in history when non-cardinals were chosen. They break down what canon law says, how the conclave works, and what the odds really are that a “regular Catholic” could become the next pontiff.
Transcript:
Caller: We totally want to do those things. Share spurious AI-generated images of various people as pope.
Cy: I have seen so many people as pope in recent days.
Joe: Yeah. I may have made a Jimmy Akin as pope one myself. I didn’t see it this very afternoon, so I sent it to our in-house group chat. Just because I suggested this would unify east and west with his magnificent beard.
Cy: If Jimmy became pope, which could happen, he is a baptized Catholic male. But then the aliens would come; they’d be like, “That’s one of ours. It’s time to come down to earth.”
Joe: Perfect.
Cy: I wonder if he would use the power of the papacy to get to the bottom of this Bigfoot thing and just settle it once and for all.
Joe: I’m not entirely sure that’s quite how the power of the papacy works, but…
Cy: Oh, it’s an awesome power. Awesome power. The power of the papacy. All kinds of things. So, you know, it’s funny too, to kind of look at those cardinals and go, “Gosh, one of those guys is about to be the Pope.” I don’t know which one it is, but one of those guys—I mean, they could pick someone outside the College of Cardinals.
Joe: But it’s… I don’t think it’s been done for..Many centuries since the last time that happened. Yeah, either the 13th or 14th century, I believe, was the last time there was a non-cardinal.
Cy: Okay, so say, let’s just as for…The purpose of discussion, Joe, 14th century, 1378. Let’s say they were like, let’s say there’s some abbot somewhere, right? And they all go, “You know, Abbot whatever. He should be the Pope.” Do they have to call him from like… do you know what I’m saying? Like, how do they do this? They got to call him and go, “Do you want to be Pope?” Or…
Joe: I actually know how this works.
Cy: Okay, good.
Joe: They will send a delegate who is forbidden to speak to anyone else, or anyone else he does. Like, if there’s someone else he has to speak with, they also have to be kind of sworn to secrecy.
Because he can’t reveal the mission that he’s on. But he might have to do things like, you know, book a flight, so that wouldn’t count for it. Right? And then he goes and he brings them and then reveals the reason. So I think along the way you just know you’re being brought into a papal conclave; you can probably guess what that would entail.
Cy: Really? They just go, “Oh, the cardinals would like to speak with you.”
Joe: Like, they don’t go, “They want you to be Pope.” They just say, “Could you come to the conclave with me?”
Cy: Right. It’s fascinating. I guess I would guess it. I’m very smart. I would guess it.
Joe: I mean, you probably already have guessed that they’re going to ask you. So I’m not sure if smart… it might just be a view of self, as much as I’ll fix it.
Cy: As much as they would want to. And I know they would. I mean, many of them would. I feel like a married man is very unlikely to get the call to be the…
Joe: I think so, too.
Cy: So here’s the cardinals, right? If they decide they want someone outside the conclave, they, like, open the front door and they go, “Send somebody in here.” And somebody comes in and goes, “Get on a plane and go to wherever this abbot is.” And then they go to the abbot and say, “Come with me. They’d like to see you in the conclave. I can’t tell you what it’s about at this point.” You know, you would wink. You couldn’t stop yourself. You’d be like, “Ah, I can’t tell you what it’s about.”
Joe: And then imagine your disappointment if it turned out that you were just like, “We can’t get the Wi-Fi working.”
Cy: Yeah, right. Like, do you have a password someone said Pope Francis gave it to…
Joe: Just to be clear, there’s no Wi-Fi in the conclave, but you get the idea.
Cy: Yeah, but… okay, but then the guy, okay, so he doesn’t want to be pope. He goes all the way to Rome and he goes, “No, I’m not your man. You’re going to have to ask somebody else.”
Joe: Yes.
Cy: Oh, my gosh.
Joe: I mean, that is… as strange as that is, that is about the most realistic way that you would trigger the provision in paragraph 87 of *Universi Dominici Gregis*. So it talks about how, like, the last step of getting a new pope is, “Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?” And the guy can say no, in which case you just go back to the drawing board and keep voting.
Cy: Right. Well, Pope Francis said he considered saying no. He actually… he said, “Give me a minute.” And he went off by himself and prayed, he said, which I think, actually, that’s kind of prudent. Like, that’s not something you want to just go, “Ah, of course. Sure. No problem. Yeah. Can I have weekends off?”
Joe: Actually, I already had plans next week.
Cy: Yeah, right. Oh, this is fascinating to me, Joe. That there is a provision for this. So that’s interesting. I can’t think of anybody who it could be like. There’s not some…
Joe: I think you probably got it right in the sense that sometimes there will be, like, a particularly holy, like, abbot or someone involved in a religious order. But when I say sometimes, I think Celestine V is the last time that happened.
And he…
Caller: He didn’t really, like, it lasted…
Joe: He lasted five months. So it turns out when you ask a hermit to lead the Church, they might be like, “This is a lot of people. This is not what I had originally set out to serve.”
Cy: Well, they had the right idea. They wanted a holy man, but he was holy in part because he had devoted himself to a life of solitary prayer. And then you get to Rome and there’s a lot of rich foods here. This is not… this is not matching.
Joe: And just the busyness of it. It’s just not the lifestyle one has kind of set their heart on in their entire life around in terms of the whole plan of life having silence and prayer and structure and all of that. A lot of the sheer number of visitors you’re entertaining and the number of people you’re interacting with and everything else, it had to have been just overwhelming.
And, you know, I mean, I don’t mean that you can’t be a very holy Pope. It’s just a very different call to holiness.
Cy: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Joe: You can be a holy… Francis de Sales talks about this in terms of just the difference between, like, someone called to a life of, you know, silent contemplation and a bishop and a parent and everything else. These are different calls, all ordered to sainthood, but different kinds of saints.
So, yeah, the… well, the other kind of the twist with Celestine V is he was elected Pope after the longest period of time in which there had been…
Cy: Like a papal interregnum.
Joe: Yeah. It was like two years long. And so then they’re like, “Okay, finally.” And then five months later, he’s like, “Actually, I resigned.” I have to imagine that was a little dispiriting.
Cy: They weren’t very nice to popes who resigned in those days either. It wasn’t like Pope Benedict resigning.
Joe: That’s… that’s true.
Cy: Where they treated him well.
Joe: Right. Because he was a potential kind of threat to the pope. So I think he was very… Boniface VIII, who succeeded him, was very worried about him.
Cy: Yeah.
All right, let’s just take a break then. I didn’t even know we were going to talk about that. But I’m fascinated by that thought.
Joe: Well, hopefully people are also. Otherwise, they’re going to be like, “Why did you talk about Celestine V for that long?”
Cy: But that is the most interesting conversation about the papacy that I’ve heard on any media. Everybody’s talking about the same things. Who’s it going to be?
We talk about… what if it’s a… what if it’s a… a monk?
Joe: Yeah. What if it’s a random abbot?
Cy: What would happen then? That’s why you got to keep listening. We’ll be right back with more of *Catholic Answers Live*!