There are many different factions among the cardinals entering their conclave to select a successor to Pope Francis, so the voting process could be more protracted than many would expect, Edward Pentin, the senior Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Register, said on Newsmax Wednesday.
"Apparently, there are five," Pentin told Newsmax from Italy, in an interview airing on "Wake Up America." "This is what's going around. Nobody knows for sure. But there is talk about five different factions within the sort-of pro-Francis contingent, who are all divided."
And if that is the case, the conclave could extend into next week, where the usual time for selecting a Pope is 3-5 days, he added.
Meanwhile, the divisions will start becoming apparent as the votes progress, said Pentin, who has covered three conclaves in his career.
"What can happen is you can get somebody leading the way with maybe 30, 40 votes," He said. "But if they don't keep the momentum going and they get more votes, then they can fall back and somebody else comes up. It's like John the 23rd said, 'It's like peas in a pot of boiling water. They go up and then they go down, so that's how it works.'"
Pentin added that in other conclaves he's covered, there was more of a sense in who was leading the votes for Pope, but "this one is very different."
"Certainly in 2005, there was lots of talk about Cardinal [Joseph] Ratzinger becoming Pope because he was so close to John Paul II, and there would have been a continuity with his pontificate," he said about the man who became Pope Benedict XVI.
But this conclave is "very different," Pentin said.
"It's very diverse," he said. "It's the largest number we've ever had voting in a conclave so there's a lot more unexpected things to happen."
Pentin also dismissed concerns on Wednesday over whether there could be leaks from the conclave once the cardinals are sequestered.
"There's nothing coming out, no leaking whatsoever," he said. "They do it very well here. They keep it very under wraps. Just going to the Mass this morning in the basilica, there was no coverage at all on the phones. It was completely blocked."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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