The History, Secrecy, And Politics Of The Conclave
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It's solemn and secret. A conclave starting today at the Vatican to elect a new pope. The cardinals are really cut off from the rest of the world. There's no phones, no televisions, no radios, nothing. It's them and their Bibles and themselves. And then that is it.

I'm Jared Halpern. President Trump is in no rush to close trade deals as U.S. trading partners are reaching agreements. So usually when you are negotiating with a country, everybody thinks that they can take advantage of the U.S. And now I think countries know that the longer they drag this out, the worse it's going to be for them. And I'm Tom Shalhoub. I've got the final word on the Fox News Rundown. ♪

This is an important day for Catholics around the world. Cardinals have gathered inside the famous Sistine Chapel of the Vatican to secretly elect a new pope to replace Francis, who died the day after Easter at the age of 88 last month after leading the Catholic Church for 12 years. This is a death in the family. We didn't call him Holy Father for nothing. We grieve.

that so many of you, our friends and neighbors, share in that grief this afternoon means the world to us. That was Cardinal Timothy Dolan at a mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Dolan is among the 133 cardinals who will pick this next pope in the conclave, a term that comes from Latin, meaning with key. It originated in the year 1268 AD.

When it took cardinals a little over a thousand days to decide on a new pope, prompting frustrated Catholics to lock the cardinals in a palace in Italy, feeding them only bread and water at one point, even removing the roof over their heads, trying to force them into finally electing somebody.

In more recent conclaves, like for Pope Francis and Pope Benedict, it only took a few days. It's a great moment historically. This is going to be a very diverse conclave. Mary Fiorito is a senior fellow at the Catholic Association joining us from Rome.

Involved in the church for decades, she was the first female vice chancellor at the Archdiocese of Chicago. The first time in the history of the Catholic Church in 2,000 years where we've had cardinals coming literally from every continent. And, you know...

Countries from all over the world that previously didn't have cardinals have cardinals now, thanks to Pope Francis. Okay, so there are 133 cardinals gathering that will be voting and choosing the next pope. So you say this could take a while. A lot of these cardinals don't know each other. They're just meeting each other, right?

Correct. Right. And so many of them would have come, you know, two weeks ago for Pope Francis's funeral. And then after that, they began to have these what they call daily congregation meetings. And those are the meetings. And initially, those meetings are held to plan the funeral, et cetera, et cetera. And to and to get through all of that process.

you know, structured events that have to happen when a Pope dies, including the nine days of mourning. But then also at that time, they would have been getting to know each other, you know, finding out the strengths and weaknesses that each particular cardinal might have. So it's kind of anybody's guess what might happen and who might emerge as a consensus figure. Now, who are the candidates? Do we have any idea? And

Is the next pope in the Sistine Chapel today among the cardinals meeting and gathering and voting?

Oh, yeah, for sure. After the cardinals assemble, you will hear the words extra omnes, which is Latin for everybody out. And then at that moment, everyone who is not a cardinal elector is dismissed from the Sistine Chapel. So it's a very, you know, kind of profound moment for Catholics. Everybody sort of is on pins and needles and you have anticipation. But also, you know, there's a certain degree of, I guess, anxiety, though that's a little bit more of a dramatic word than I would imagine.

use normally whenever you have a new pope who is going to be elected, because it can mean so many different things to many different people. But we do believe that because we have so much prayer surrounding this particular event that, you know, we are praying that the cardinals will be able to discern what God's will is for the church going forward and elect the man who can best serve the people. So you said absolutely that the next pope is in the meeting of the 133 cardinals. Is it— Right. That's not a—

The only thing, to my understanding, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the only qualifications you need to be the pope, you have to be Catholic and male. Right, correct. So theoretically, any baptized male Catholic can be the pope. That's not going to happen, though. I mean, it's just not. I mean, you would have to have...

There's a novel I had to read in my religion class when I was in high school about, I think it was called Choose the Fisherman. I'm not sure. I'd have to go back and look. But where they a novelist actually speculated on what would happen if the cardinals chose someone outside of among the cardinal electors. So that is a fun little kind of trivia point. But I doubt very much I would be stunned if that actually happened in real life. OK, so the speculation is.

Who do you hear most talked about as possibly the next pope? The name I have heard most often mentioned is that of Cardinal Parolin, who is Parolin, I think they say with the Italian accent, who is the Vatican Secretary of State. He has a long diplomatic career and history working at the Vatican.

He speaks multiple languages. He's been entrusted with varying degrees of responsibility during his career here. And so he's somebody who could probably do the job on day one, which is an important consideration. You don't want someone who won't be able to hit the ground running, so to speak, or who would have a long learning curve.

getting into the position because it's not just a spiritual one of course you are the center of unity um you you are the person who is supposed to be directing every baptized catholics uh towards christ and towards living out the gospel in their daily lives but

It's also a very large operation to run. It has a very large budget. There's a lot of administrative gifts that you need to run an organization this big to be able to appoint people whom you trust and who also have good organizational and diplomatic skills. So it really needs someone who has a number of different talents.

but who also is someone who can, again, be a center of unity for a widely diverse church. I've heard about someone that has been called like the Asian Pope Francis. Yes, that's Cardinal Tagle from the Philippines. Yes.

A very charismatic man, a very kind man. He's very highly regarded in the Philippines. Whether or not we'll see the first Asian pope, I guess that remains to be seen. He is certainly a key contender. Another name that you hear with some frequency is that it's kind of a fun name to say Cardinal Piazzabala.

who is the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, who is Italian by birth. So he speaks actually Italian and English flawlessly, but also Hebrew. And, you know, he's been entrusted with a very, you know, sensitive diplomatic mission in the Holy Land. And in fact, some of your listeners may recognize his name because when October 7th occurred and there were so many Jewish children taken hostage in

He actually offered himself in exchange. He offered his life in exchange for any of the children and said, please take me instead. I will go if you release all the children. Now, he wasn't taken up on that offer, but he made it very sincerely. And that had him noticed, you know, he he wasn't trying to, you know, to grandstand. He really felt like God was calling him to put himself there to take the place of the children who were being held hostage.

So he's someone who's held kind of like Cardinal Toggle in very, very high regard. And I didn't hear his name as much initially, but now as I've been here for several days and I've been meeting with different people who have different jobs with Inside the Vatican, I'm hearing his name more and more. Okay. Now we mentioned Asia. The Catholic population has grown in that continent. It's also been growing in Africa. Is there a chance of a candidate from that continent?

There certainly is. I think probably the most prominent among them would be Cardinal Serra. He's almost 80. Anyone you speak to about him will say, my, what a holy man he is. The amount of time every day that he devotes to prayer, the wisdom that he has and that he shares with others. He is beloved by

in Africa. He has inspired many, many vocations to the priesthood. He is really someone that

again, every his spirituality, the gifts that he has in that area, just absolutely define him. And so he is someone that if the Cardinals decide that, you know, right now, maybe we don't need as much of a manager, we really just need someone who is so close to Christ personally, he'll be able to inspire many, many others to be close to Christ as well. And so,

you know, it's going to depend on what kind of surfaces as really the key issue that has to be faced by the church right now. Let's go to the process again. Inside the chapel, everything's secret, right? We only know that there's, what, a couple of votes a day potentially? Correct.

Right. Yes. So there will be usually two votes a day, sometimes three. And again, this is what might be helpful for your listeners who aren't Catholic to understand is that this is a liturgical process. So that's the reason it's held in a chapel and not one of the meeting halls in the Vatican. It's actually held in the Sistine Chapel because they will go in and they will take a very solemn oath with their hands on the scriptures, each cardinal individually. And

and then they will vote, and then the votes are counted, and then there's prayer, and then there's another vote. And before each vote, each cardinal must take one of these

promises, these solemn vows and promises that they will they will keep everything confidential. But also, as they write out their ballots, that they are saying that, you know, in their conscience, they believe that this is the person who should be the next Holy Father. So it's a very solemn and serious and prayerful event. Is it after each vote we see smoke or is it after each day we see smoke?

No. Well, let's see. No, it's after each day. It's after each day. So if a decision has not been made now, if, for example, the decision to elect a new Holy Father is made in the morning, you'll see that midday. If no decision has been made by the end of the day, you'll see the smoke at the end of the day. And that's black smoke if there's no choice, correct?

Correct. Black smoke if a two-thirds consensus has not been reached, and then white smoke if one has. And everything is secure, right? There's no electronics. Nothing can get in and out of that? Right. No leaks? No cell phones. Now in this day and age, there's, you know, the cell phones, any cell phones in the area will be jammed.

No electronics, nothing. And the Cardinals are really cut off from the rest of the world. There's no phones, no televisions, no radios, nothing. It's them and their Bibles and themselves. And then that is it.

What would happen if a cardinal or if an aide working for a cardinal let the secret out as to how the vote went or how that cardinal voted? Yeah, well, I mean, there's very serious consequences. That is a real betrayal of a vow that you've taken. And it does carry with it what we would call the canonical penalty, which is canon law, the canonical penalty of an automatic excommunication censure. So it's very, very serious. And

You know, the church holds that out not as a threat, but rather as a reflection of how gravely serious this process is. And you don't want anything corrupting it. Right. You don't want someone who might be able to create a book deal or something out of it. You know, I'm just like, again, I'm thinking in very American terms, but it reflects that automatic excommunication penalty is reserved for.

for the very most grave, serious sins. And so to betray something that is such a sort of sacred vow is treated with the ultimate penalty, if you will. Mary Fiorito, Senior Fellow at the Catholic Association, great to talk to you. Thanks for joining us from Rome. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

I'm Janice Dean. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at Fox News podcast dot com. This is Tom Shalhoub with your Fox News commentary coming up. When will President Trump sign his first trade deal? He says maybe he won't. We don't have to sign deals. We could sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we want it.

We don't have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market. We don't want a piece of their market. We don't care about their market. They want a piece of our market. President Trump striking an aggressive negotiating position during an Oval Office meeting with Canada's newly elected prime minister.

Well, we don't do much business with Canada from our standpoint. They do a lot of business with us. We're at like 4%. And usually those things don't last very long. You know, we have great things, great product. The kind of product we sell, nobody else can sell.

The president suggests there's not much Prime Minister Mark Carney can do to eliminate or reduce a 25% tariff imposed on many Canadian goods sold in the U.S., but Carney says it's clear parts of the USMCA, the trade deal struck during the first Trump term, do need to change. It is a basis for a broader negotiation. Some things about it are going to have to change.

And part of the way you've conducted these tariffs has taken advantage of existing aspects of USMCA. So it's going to have to change. There's other elements that are come and that's part of what we're going to discuss. In the meantime, other U.S. trading partners are making deals. Tuesday, India and the U.K. announced a new trade agreement, a deal about three years in the making. White House officials say those types of deals will not undermine agreements with the U.S.

Yeah, I think that there's just incentive. So usually when you are negotiating with a country, everybody thinks that they can take advantage of the U.S. And now I think countries know that the longer they drag this out, the worse it's going to be for them. Mae Melman is a White House senior policy strategist.

And you always want to be first with the deal with President Trump. So being first, getting to the table first, signing an agreement first, there's a real incentive for that. And there hasn't been before. So I would say that everybody who's in line right now is...

is going to be taken seriously and I think be able to strike a deal that is in the U.S. best interest, but that maintains some of the things that these countries might want to have as far as access to the U.S. market and stuff like that. And people who are not dealing with the United States need to get on board quickly. The timeline here is still this 90-day window. I mean, there's not an expectation that that pause will be delayed any longer. Right.

I have not heard any indication that that's going to be delayed further. So that doesn't mean it's not going to happen. I think that just means right now, 90 days is 90 days.

The president, I know, next week makes his first major foreign visit. I know he was at the Pope's funeral in Rome, but this week-long trip to the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, obviously key Arab allies, countries that the president is hoping to expand the Abraham Accords with. How much is trade a part of kind of that trip and those negotiations, those talks that are going to be happening over the next several days?

yeah i think trade is a serious part of any conversation of any relationship with a different country with any national security agreement with any economic agreement trade is a key part of that and and i don't expect that to be different i think you're going to see a lot of positive announcements on economic advancements national security all of this but uh

Trade is a piece of that. It's kind of like border security is national security. Trade is just part of, wrapped up in our national and economic security.

One of the questions that has been raised ahead of this trip is the business transactions that the president's business, the Trump Organization, has some of these crypto firms that are working, for instance, with Eric Trump and the businesses that are happening in Abu Dhabi and in the UAE. Why should that not be viewed sort of skeptically or with an eye towards conflicts of interest as the president now negotiates with these governments?

Yeah, I think the president's sole and only focus is not what his family members are invested in, although I think, you know, everybody is...

like a successful part of the American economy, it is 100% focused on his country. And I will say as a member of the White House, I have no idea. I have genuinely no idea who's invested in what. It's just, it's not part of our day. It's not part of what we think about. The only thing, it's not part of trade deals. The only thing that's going on is how can we have a climate in the U.S.,

that is friendly to U.S. businesses and foreign investment of whatever type. So that might...

You know, how can we yesterday we signed an executive order that was about drug manufacturing. So how can we streamline FDA regulations to get more drug manufacturing here? Those are the things that we're focused on, not who's invested in what here and what like that. That's just it's not it's a zero percent part of our day. One hundred percent is manufacturing.

figuring out U.S. and foreign investment in the United States, good policies in the United States to attract that, and then combating dangerous practices from other countries that have allowed us to become weaker. Let me finish with this conversation about Harvard University, obviously this big back and forth now. What does the president need Harvard to do? What does the administration need Harvard to do to restart federal funding?

So Harvard has $53 billion endowment. And the idea that they need moms to work a second job to make sure that they can provide for their families because they're paying taxes to Harvard is offensive. So for one, Harvard, there are a lot of universities that get federal funding, not just Harvard, right?

There are a lot of universities, but there are no universities that have a $53 billion endowment, which is larger than the GDPs of more than 100 countries. I mean, this is a bloated amount of money. And yes, it's tied up in real estate or these types of things. But that's a conversation with them and their donors. I mean, that's just a conversation of how the gift looks. So for one, I think it is their...

There's just a need to be self-sufficient. And if, for whatever reason, you can't figure out how to run your university on a $53 billion endowment, then that's a bad investment for the taxpayer. Then that shows that this is not an entity that actually is focused on promoting the best interests of our country. I mean, there's a lot of waste. There's a lot of bureaucracy going on there. But if...

If Harvard really did want to have a better relationship with the government for, say, its existing grants, then I think it's a pretty basic request for Harvard, which is to comply with the law. I mean, no racism in its admission, no racism, no sexism in its hiring practices. It used to be on Harvard's website, 70% of their tenure track jobs

of their tenure track faculty are not white men. So they overemphasize the importance

factors that are not related to your teaching in order to promote people. That's obviously against the law. They obviously need to protect students. They you know, there's there's a list of things. But it just is there a request for a curriculum change? Is that something that the federal government thinks, you know, federal dollars ought to be tied to?

So it depends. I mean, if a university wants to be crazy, I guess that's one thing. Have weird classes, a Taylor Swift class. I don't think that's a good use of federal funds should be used to promote that. But whatever. Everybody's taking a silly class in their college.

If your curriculum is being used to promote radicalism that rises to the level of terrorism that inspires violence on your campus, all of a sudden now the conversation of federal funding is

is a little is more serious, right? So this is no longer a Taylor Swift class. This is are we the federal government funding the indoctrination of racism and violence? So curriculum changes, it's like on one hand, no, you can you can have silly classes.

We don't want to fund that for sure. I think that the federal government should make sure that federal funding is directed in a positive way. And that's the difficulty here is because that is an important part. Right. Because when we talk about federal funding for universities, a lot of times those are like research grants. Right.

They're research grants, but they're bloated research grants. So they want the money not just for the research, which you would think that a huge university like Harvard would be able to find private donors who are very interested in C3 research.

donation for research. The problem is so much of these grants have huge overhead components that end up just paying the bureaucracy. And so you end up paying for a lot of the silly classes and you end up paying for a lot of the dangerous classes.

things, the dangerous student groups that are terrorizing people on campus. And so it's not just it's not as simple as saying, I'm going to pay this. I'm not going to pay this. This is a very it's a long term conversation about how to make sure that the federal government dollars are going to good and not going to bloat. And Harvard's mismanagement is

from plagiarism scandals on down, do not give the government confidence that the money that we are spending is actually being used for good, but rather is being used for either frivolity or for evil. Are those conversations with Harvard ongoing or have these lawsuits kind of stopped all those talks? I think that Harvard has not currently shown the willingness to

to make the changes necessary to be a positive steward. So I think people saw that there was a letter from Secretary McMahon to Harvard that basically said, we stand by our requests in the letter. So that stands. But moving forward for new grants, just the answer is no. All right. We'll leave it there. Then May Melman, appreciate your time and have a great week.

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Rate and review the Fox News Rundown on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It's time for your Fox News commentary. Tom Shalhoub. What's on your mind? For many people in my generation, the Pope we grew up with, the only Pope we ever knew was Pope John Paul II. I remember when JP II, as we now affectionately refer to him, came to the United States and

My mother and I went to see him and his motorcade, and we stood along the parade route, and my mom was so excited. And when his vehicle approached, my mother was so happy she was jumping up and down in a way that I'd never seen her. It was like the images I remember of women screaming and carrying on in the presence of the Beatles. At that age,

I didn't know much about the Pope or the church hierarchy or anything like that. I was an altar boy and I knew the priests and I knew the head priest, the Monsignor, was kind of their boss. He was a little bit more intimidating than the other priests. You were always a little nervous when you had to serve Mass with the Monsignor. And when a bishop or cardinal came to our parish, all the priests, including the Monsignor, seemed a little bit on edge. So I assumed when the Pope came to town,

Everybody was going to be a little scared, but it was just the opposite. When Pope John Paul II came to town, everybody was in a joyous mood. And when the Pope spoke, he had a great smile, and it seemed to rub off on everyone in his presence. I think because of this, Pope John Paul II had a great effect on my relationship to the Catholic Church, all during my teenage years. And this is the time when I think a lot of people can drift away from the Church. So during this conclave, I'll be praying a very simple prayer.

that the next pope will have a similar effect on some young people of this generation. I'm Tom Shalhoub. You've been listening to the Fox News Rundown. And now, stay up to date by subscribing to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. Listen ad-free on Fox News Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts. And Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on Amazon Music. And for up-to-the-minute news, go to foxnews.com.

Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy, host of the Trey Gowdy Podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com.