The process of choosing a pope is not divinely inspired. It is a human creation that has changed over time and can change again.

The current system, in which cardinals elect a new leader by a two-thirds vote, has been firmly in place since 1179.

Before that, popes were sometimes elected by the clergy and people of Rome.

The conclave, in which the cardinals are held behind locked doors until a pope is elected, has been in place since the 13th century.

In the 20th century, the process was dramatically changed by the internationalisation of the College of Cardinals.

Italians no longer make up most of the electors.

Pope Paul VI, who headed the church from 1963 to 1978, also increased the number of cardinals while limiting the electorate to cardinals under the age of 80.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI made further changes with unintended consequences.

Traditionally, it has required a two-thirds vote to elect a pope in order to make sure that he had wide support within the church.

If the leading contenders could not attract the required two-thirds, the electors were forced to find a compromise candidate who could.

In 1996, John Paul II revised the rules so that after 33 ballots, the two-thirds requirement could be suspended by a simple majority vote. If they could then give one candidate the same majority, they would have a new pope.

This change was made to avoid a hopelessly deadlocked conclave.

The church does not want to be embarrassed like the Republicans in the House of Representatives who have had so much difficulty electing a speaker.

However, long conclaves are in fact rare. The last conclave to go more than five days was in 1831; it lasted 54 days.

Since the 13th century, 29 conclaves have lasted a month or more, but the delays were often caused by wars or civil disturbances in Rome.

Under John Paul's system, the conclaves' dynamics changed dramatically.

Once a candidate received a majority of the votes, his backers knew that if they stuck with him, he would eventually be elected.

After waiting through 33 votes, they could vote to suspend the two-thirds requirement and elect him with their majority.

Some believe the rule was changed to make it easier to elect Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was the leading papal candidate in 2005.

And indeed, once Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger got a majority vote, his supporters had no need to switch to a compromise candidate. Nor did his opponents have any chance of stopping him. Better to get it over with, vote for him and go home.

In 2007, Benedict returned to the hard and fast two-thirds supermajority.

After 33 votes, however, the two top candidates would enter a runoff.

This caused a new problem.

A conclave deadlocked between a liberal and a conservative, both unacceptable to slightly more than a third of the cardinals, would have no choice but to pick one extreme or the other, with no option for a moderate compromise candidate.

Nor do the rules explain what to do if there is a tie for second place in the 33rd vote.

In the absence of specific instructions, canon law would probably give it to the cardinal with greatest seniority, but the lack of a rule could blow up the conclave.

Francis should return to the traditional system of electing a pope by a two-thirds vote with no limit on the number of ballots.

This would leave the door open for a compromise candidate in a deadlocked conclave.

Recently, a new reform proposal has been put forward by Alberto Melloni, a professor of church history at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia.

While the current electoral process pushes the cardinals to decide quickly, Melloni wants to slow the process down.

He argues that the election of a pope is too important to do quickly.

Rather, the cardinals should take more time to pray and discuss the election. He would propose having only one vote a day, as opposed to the current practice of holding four votes a day.

While in the past, most cardinals lived in Rome and knew each other, today the cardinal electors are from all over the world and need time to get to know each other.

This is especially true under Francis, who has rarely brought the cardinals together in Rome for a consistory, as John Paul did, to discuss issues facing the church.

Many cardinals are dependent on the media and other cardinals to tell them about the candidates. It would be better to give the cardinals more time before and during the conclave to get to know each other.

Melloni's proposal received a positive reception from Pillar's Ed Condon, a canon lawyer who takes a more conservative view of church matters.

Granted the lack of long conclaves in recent history, I agree with Melloni that limiting the conclave to one vote a day would provide more time for prayer and discussion.

It would be important, however, to clearly communicate to the media and the public that taking a week or two to elect a pope is the new normal and not a sign of chaos in the church.

I would even slightly modify Melloni's proposal by adding an additional vote each week the conclave is in session — one vote a day the first week; the second week, two votes a day; the third week, three votes a day; and finally, the fourth week would return to having four votes a day.

We do not want the conclave to go on too long.

Others have suggested using procedures of the Synod on Synodality in the pre-conclave general congregations when the cardinals gather to discuss issues facing the church.

This would include "conversations in the Spirit," with its emphasis on sharing and listening in small groups, rather than speeches by each cardinal.

It might also involve non-cardinals, even laity, in discussing the issues facing the church. This would build consensus and mutual familiarity.

I am sympathetic to the new synodal procedures, but I believe it should be an option for the cardinals, rather than a mandate. The cardinal electors should be free to determine what process best meets their needs.

Providing the cardinals with more opportunities to get to know each other, both before and during the conclave, would reduce the danger that the cardinals could be swayed by fake news and videos created with artificial intelligence.

Like U.S. elections, papal elections face threats from bad actors who want to manipulate the electors.

Already some in the church are doing "opposition research" on progressive cardinals with the idea of releasing negative information right before the conclave.

Accusations of sexual activity, abuse or ignoring abuse, true or not, could kill a candidacy if amplified by social media just as the cardinals are entering the conclave and being cut off from the outside world. Even if it were found to be fake news, the cardinals in the conclave would not know. They might pass over a good candidate rather than risk that the stories are true.

The purpose of isolating the cardinals from the outside world is to keep outsiders from influencing the election.

But the same isolation could keep the cardinals from getting information they may need before deciding.

The church needs to think about the threats that new technology may pose to papal elections.

Above all, Francis should move carefully, consult with experts, consider unintended consequences and issue a draft for discussion.

John Paul and Benedict made mistakes because they did not consult widely. Francis should not make the same mistake.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Sadly, in many parts of the world there is a Eucharistic famine, precisely because there are no priests to celebrate the Eucharist. This problem has been going on for decades and is only getting worse.

Last year, the Vatican reported that while the number of Catholics worldwide increased by 16.2 million in 2021, the number of priests decreased by 2,347.

As a result, on average there were 3,373 Catholics for every priest in the world (including retired priests), a rise of 59 people per priest.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate reports that in 1965 there were 59,426 priests in the United States. In 2022, there were only 34,344 .

Over much the same period, the number of Catholics has increased to 72.5 million in 2022, from 54 million in 1970.

Priests are also getting older. In 2012, a CARA study found that the average age of priests rose to 63 in 2009, from 35 in 1970.

When a Jesuit provincial, the regional director of the order, told Jesuits at a retirement home not long ago that there was a waiting list to get in, a resident wag responded, "We are dying as fast as we can."

In many rural areas of the United States, priests no longer staff parishes but simply visit parishes once a month or less frequently. In 1965, there were only 530 parishes without priests. By 2022, there were 3,215 according to CARA.

All of these numbers are only going to get worse.

In the early 1980s, the archbishop of Portland came to a rural parish to tell them they would no longer have a priest and that most Sundays they would have a Scripture service, not a Mass.

A parishioner responded, "Before the Second Vatican Council, you told us that if we did not go to Mass on Sunday, we would go to hell.

After the Council, you told us that the Eucharist was central to the life of the Church. Now you are telling us that we will be just like every other Bible church in our valley."

Many American bishops have tried to deal with the shortage by importing foreign priests to staff parishes, but Vatican statistics show that the number of priests worldwide is also decreasing.

New U.S. immigration rules are also going to make it more difficult to employ foreign priests in the United States.

The Catholic hierarchy has simply ignored the obvious solution to this problem for decades.

Under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the discussion of married priests was forbidden. Leaders in the hierarchy tended to live in large cities where the shortage had less of an impact than in rural areas.

Even Pope Francis, who expressed his respect for married clergy in Eastern Catholic churches, did not respond positively when the bishops meeting at the Synod for the Pan-Amazon Region voted 128-41 to allow married deacons to become priests.

At the recent meeting of the Synod on Synodality, the issue of married priests was hardly mentioned.

The decline in the number of vocations has many explanations depending on whom you ask. Conservatives blame the reforms coming out of the Second Vatican Council.

Certainly, the council did emphasise the holiness of marriage and the vocation of the laity. Priests seemed less special after the council.

Prior to the council, only a priest could touch the consecrated host. Today, lay ministers of Communion do so at nearly every Mass.

However, sociologists note that vocations decline when families have fewer children and when children have greater educational and employment opportunities.

Thus, in a family with only one or two children, the parents prefer grandchildren to a son who is a priest.

And, in the past, priests were the most educated person in the community and therefore had great status. Today, parishes can have many lawyers, doctors and other professionals, and becoming a priest does not confer the status it used to.

Those who point to the continued increases in vocations in Africa and Asia need to listen to the sociologists.

Already, there are fewer vocations in urban areas of India where families have fewer children and more opportunities for education are available.

Africa and Asia are not the future of the church. They are simply slower in catching up with modernity.

Anti-clericalism has also impacted vocations, first in Europe and now in America. Priests are no longer universally respected. They are often treated with ridicule and contempt. Being a priest is counter-cultural.

Despite this, there are still many Catholics who are willing to take up this vocation. People are being called to priesthood, but the hierarchy is saying no because those who feel called are married, gay or women.

A 2006 survey by Dean Hoge found that nearly half of the young men involved in Catholic campus ministry had "seriously considered" ministry as a priest, but most also want to be married and raise a family.

Having a married clergy will not solve all the church's problems, as we can see in Protestant churches.

Married ministers are involved in sex abuse, have addictions and can have the same clerical affectations as any celibate priest. But every employer will tell you that if you increase the number of candidates for a job, the quality of the hire goes up.

Nor is allowing priests to marry simply about making them happier. For the Catholic Church it is a question of whether we are going to have the Eucharist or not.

At the Last Supper, Jesus said, "Do this in memory of me." He did not say, "Be celibate."

• First published by Religion News Service
• Thomas J. Reese is a Jesuit priest, is a Senior Analyst at Religion News Service. Previously he was a columnist at the National Catholic Reporter (2015-17) and an associate editor (1978-85) and editor in chief (1998-2005) at America magazine.

Careful readers will note that rather than closing Limbo, as reported by the media, what the International Theological Commission did under Benedict in 2007 was downgrade Limbo from church doctrine to a hypothesis or theory.

It no longer must be presented as church teaching.

In other words, you don't have to believe in Limbo, but you can if you want.

Make no mistake about it; Benedict killed Limbo just as much as the Second Vatican Council killed the Latin Mass.

Hypothesis or not, no one is going to teach it.

Limbo will become a theological anachronism that historians of theology note but everyone else ignores.

It is not mentioned, for example, in "The Catechism of the Catholic Church."

Limbo was a theological solution to the problem of what happens to good but unbaptized people after they die.

The New Testament is full of passages that say baptism is necessary for salvation. Catholic teaching said baptism was necessary to wash away original sin, which we inherited from Adam and Eve.

But sending unbaptised infants to hell seemed especially cruel.

How could God, who is described as merciful and loving in the parable of the prodigal son, do such a thing?

We need to remember that for the ancients, hell or Hades was the underworld, the place of the dead.

Thus, in the creed when we say Jesus "descended into hell," we are not speaking of the place of eternal damnation but the domain of the dead.

No church father before Augustine thought unbaptised children would be punished.

St Augustine, however, believed unbaptised children would experience the misery of the damned but be consigned to the mildest part of hell.

Augustine was such a theological giant that there was reluctance to question his teaching, especially when all theologians at the time were men without children.

Around 1300, the term Limbo, from the Latin "limbus," meaning edge or boundary, became used for the dwelling place of the good or innocent dead who were not baptized.

This is distinguished from purgatory, where sinners are purified before they go to heaven, and hell, where the biggest sinners spend eternity.

Medieval theologians debated how much innocent babies suffered in Limbo, and as time went on, the consensus view was that they did not suffer at all.

They experienced natural happiness but not supernatural happiness.

Also debated was whether they would remain in Limbo forever or just until the end of time.

Theologians twisted themselves into pretzels trying to reconcile what Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, church councils and others said about Limbo and unbaptized infants. For an example, see the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia.

Limbo eventually came to be seen as a temporary holding area or waiting room at the edge of hell where the unbaptised would be kept until the end of time, when they would be admitted into heaven.

Residing there were not only unbaptised children but also the patriarchs and other good people from the Old Testament. It was also open to the millions of good people who had never heard of Jesus.

When I grew up in the 1950s, this was all clearly taught in the Baltimore Catechism, along with all the other dogmas we had to accept to be a Catholic.

No good Catholic could question such teaching.

Benedict threw Limbo out the window

Pope Benedict threw open the gates of heaven for the unbaptised, reversing centuries of church teaching.

Strictly speaking, the International Theological Commission was only willing to affirm that there are "strong grounds for hope that God will save infants when we have not been able to do for them what we would have wished to do, namely, to baptize them into the faith and life of the Church."

Anyone who pays attention to what Jesus says about his Father will have not only strong hope but absolute certainty that unbaptised children go directly to heaven.

Of course, the church would never admit something it was teaching or doing for centuries was dumb.

Rather, it has to find some way to pretend it was all a misunderstanding.

Allowing Limbo to be a hypothesis is the theological equivalent of reforming the liturgy but allowing people to continue attending the traditional Latin Mass, in the belief that it will eventually die out.

The theological commission argues that Limbo "never entered into the dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium, even if that same Magisterium did at times mention the theory in its ordinary teaching up until the Second Vatican Council."

That is a sophisticated way of saying the church can never be wrong. But there is no question that most Catholics in previous centuries thought Limbo was a dogma of the church.

Thousands of parents were told their unbaptized infants were in Limbo.

Pope Benedict made the greatest change in church teaching since the Second Vatican Council.

In terms of its pastoral impact on ordinary Catholics, it ranks up there with the major changes that came out of Vatican II. While mourning their dead infants, parents can now rest assured that their unbaptized children have gone to heaven.

If it had been Pope Francis who questioned Limbo, conservatives would have condemned him for challenging church dogma.

Benedict could get away with it because accusing him of unorthodoxy would have gone against stereotypes, akin to President Richard Nixon going to China.

In the history books, Benedict will be remembered as the pope who resigned and as the pope who got rid of Limbo.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.