A friend asked me the other day about the chances the next pope will be Italian. It’s an interesting question, one that can – should – be parsed out carefully and in several different ways. Before getting to that, however, there’s a good bit of throat clearing to do.

Handicapping conclaves is the inveterate pastime of Vatican watchers both professional and amateur, for reasons too many to list and too obvious to explain.

Every time the pope catches a sniffle there’s a fresh round of “How sick is the pope?” and “Will this be it?” coupled with the practically obligatory “Who’s next?”

Pope Francis is an 88-year-old suffering from chronic health problems and prone to respiratory infections, who announced he is dealing with a bout of bronchitis and decided to take his weekend meetings at the Santa Marta guesthouse where he lives inside the Vatican.

It’s perhaps surprising there hasn’t been more speculation this time, but this is hardly the first time Francis has caught sick. Indeed, he has fairly bounced back from far worse. He has shown himself to be remarkably resilient and frequently appears to possess such stores of energy as much younger men would like to have.

Then, there’s the old Roman expression: Er papa nun è malato sinché n’ è morto – the pope ain’t sick ’til he’s dead – which isn’t quite true these days and hasn’t been since Pope St. John Paul II’s very long and very public decline, but is still true enough. Only a very few people ever have any idea how sick the pope really is.

Under Francis, there have been a few almost farcical episodes of understatement from the Vatican in the face of evident health emergencies.

One was in 2023, when Francis went to Gemelli hospital in Rome for what Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni originally said were, “previously scheduled tests.” When the pope was admitted to hospital, the Vatican admitted the visit had followed complaints of respiratory difficulty. A few weeks later, Pope Francis confided to an Italian friend that he was rushed to Gemelli and was unconscious when he arrived.

It’s worth mentioning, in this context, that the friend in whom Francis confided is Michele Ferri, a fellow from Pesaro, Italy, who had written to the pope in a time of desperate life crisis after the murder of his brother in a robbery gone bad. The pope called him after receiving the letter in 2013 and they’ve spoken regularly ever since.

Francis’s record of leadership is as amenable to criticism as any other powerful public figure’s, but the dozens of calls he’s made to Ferri and others – most of which don’t make the papers – are part of the picture and the story of the man, as well.

The pope is a man and all men die.

Morto un papa, se ne fa ‘n’artro – When one pope dies, another is made – is another Roman saying, only it is reasonable to think the making of the next one rather a less than perfectly uncomplicated matter.

The Church is facing multiple converging crises – abuse and coverup, governance, leadership culture, to name three – with general confidence in institutions at an ebb and powerfully disruptive political, social, and technological forces unleashed on the world.

Cardinals, for their part, are always thinking about the next guy. Sometimes, their thinking is like a subroutine running in the background. Sometimes, it is in the fore and deliberate. Mostly, they do it because it is their job to pick him, and much of their thinking is dedicated to crafting a profile of the fellow who will get the job.

The group of cardinals who will choose Francis’s successor will face challenges different and greater than conventional or prevailing wisdom appears to recognize.

Francis’s preference has been for cardinals from the peripheries and for using the red hat as a mark of personal appreciation. He has only very infrequently called consistory meetings of all the cardinals to discuss major issues. The last such meeting was in 2022, to discuss a major piece of reform legislation, Praedicate Evangelium. The last meeting before that was in 2014. So, they don’t know each other as well as they might.

Also, the usual voting blocs are divided among themselves.

There are such blocs, but their composition is variable at any time and even if they may be called “liberal” and “conservative” in reasonable shorthand, the issues through which dividing lines run are not those of secular Western politics.

There’s little agreement over what is wrong, but more agreement over that than there is over what may be the way to put things right. Francis’s practice of “government by surprise” was bracing in 2013 but has not given either the Roman Curia – the Church’s central governing apparatus – or the global Church much in the way of stability.

Both things give an Italian an advantage in the conclave.

The Italians know each other better than others, and there are seventeen voting cardinals from Italy by my count. That is more than 10% of the 138 current electors – a far cry from the absolute majority Italians had until World War II, but still an outsized showing – and what’s more, they tend to be higher profile figures, meaning they are known quantities to others from places off the boot.

In other words, it isn’t that the Italians would get together and pick one of their own – they couldn’t accomplish that with their numbers, even if they wanted to – but that one of theirs is likely to be well enough known to others, and that helps.

Also, the Italians are insiders by circumstance. It is a fair bet there will be a preference for someone not only with strong institutional knowledge but who is also an institutionalist by temperament. A fellow like Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, for example, is frequently mentioned among papabili, not only because he is president of the Italian bishops’ conference but because he is known to others as a consensus builder rather than a culture warrior.

On the other hand, the Church in Italy has been slow to address abuse and coverup in the country – a protracted global crisis arguably the weakest point of the Francis pontificate – and much of the Vatican’s current and ongoing financial woes are somehow tied to Italian figures, institutions, and ways of doing things.

So, what are the chances the cardinals will choose an Italian to succeed Pope Francis?

Somewhat greater than 17/138, most likely, but the odds are still tough to give. “If the season ended today,” is an old baseball mavens’ commonplace, used not so much to introduce hypotheticals about the post-season as to illustrate the futility of such exercises. There’s still ball to play.

One ought not expect the conclave – whenever it comes – to be brief or straightforward.

Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri