The 133 cardinal-electors will surely feel the weight of heaven and earth on their shoulders when they behold the sacred grandeur of the Sistine Chapel at the start of the conclave to elect the 267th successor of St Peter and a replacement for the late Pope Francis at around 3.30pm Irish time this afternoon.

And if they are not sufficiently chastened by the oaths they will swear individually and collectively on the Book of the Gospels to maintain secrecy and to be scrupulously impervious to any external interventions, they will have Michelangelo’s awe-inspiring Last Judgement looking down on them from above the chapel altar.

When voting gets under way, on that altar will be a large chalice into which each cardinal in turn will place his ballot paper, uttering in Latin: “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.”

I am told, incidentally, by those who should know that the recently released movie Conclave accurately portrays the voting process –whatever licence it may have taken elsewhere in the production.

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It is hard to overstate what is riding on any conclave at different levels: ecclesial, geopolitical, public opinion formation (the Pope is one of the world’s chief opinion-formers), but with the globe in the state that it is in, this papal election suddenly looks more crucial and potentially more globally impactful than any in recent memory.

The death of Pope Francis has not just created a vacancy at the top of the world’s largest Christian denomination, significant as that is for an estimated 1.4 billion baptised Catholics.

It has also created a serious vacuum in moral leadership in an ever-worrying and uncertain world now lacking a prophetic voice prepared to speak........

© The Irish News