Spanish
Vatican City.- The 133 cardinals electors who will be locked up in the Sistine Chapel this Wednesday will have on their table, for their eventual consultation, a copy of the Vatican Constitution and another that regulates the functioning of this meeting destined to elect the new pontiff.
A video released by the Holy See shows how the Sistine Chapel has been arranged for this conclave and the objects that will allow the development of the votes.
The cardinals will occupy two rows of benches on the side walls of the Chapel and three - shorter - at the back opposite the monumental fresco of The Last Judgment that Michelangelo painted between 1508 and 1512.
Cardinals are seated in an established order according to their category as cardinals. Firstly, the so-called cardinal bishops -who are 5- and are the highest ranking in the College and then the presbyters -108- and the deacons, who are 20.
With that division into three blocks, they also appear on the ballot papers.
The surname of each cardinal appears on the benches, indicating where they should sit and, apart from a pen and a folder with the symbol of the Holy See, there is a copy of the Apostolic Constitution that John Paul II promulgated in 1996 and the "Ordo rituum conclavis", which regulates all the rites of this confinement of cardinals.
You may be interested in: An Asian Pope? Cardinal Tagle and his alternatives
At the beginning of the room, on one side, there is a table on which a board with numbered balls, up to 133, is placed, intended to count the voting process, as well as the ballot papers and a ball of red thread with a needle in which those votes will be threaded that will be burned to indicate to the world, through the chimney, whether there is a pope or not.
The Sistine Chapel has been closed to the public since April 28, two days after the funeral and burial of Francis, to prepare for the conclave in which his successor will be elected.
