The sacred silence of the Sistine Chapel will speak again. Following the death of Pope Francis, the Conclave will open on May 7 to elect the 267th pontiff of the Catholic Church. Hundreds of millions of faithful are ready to watch for the white smoke, in the most classic of rituals where mystery and spirituality intertwine with history. But while it is the Holy Spirit who inspires the final word, the choice of the Pope also remains a human, social, and political event.
Behind the closed doors of the Conclave, dynamics are at play that closely resemble those of a presidential election or the appointment of a CEO by a board of directors, but with ancient codes and rituals entrusted to a small circle of cardinal electors. How is consensus formed around a candidate? Who really influences the final choice? Is there a map of ecclesiastical power capable of anticipating the strongest names?
A group of Bocconi scholars—Giuseppe Soda, Alessandro Iorio, and Leonardo Rizzo—attempt to answer these questions with academic rigor and scientific tools that are unprecedented in this context.
The Vatican as a relational ecosystem
In their study, the three researchers applied social network analysis methods to the most closed and symbolic world that exists: that of the College of Cardinals. The goal? Not to predict the election with certainty, but to understand which relational structures increase the probability that a cardinal will emerge as a papabile figure.
“Our starting point is simple,” explains Giuseppe Soda, professor of organization at Bocconi University, “even in the Church, as in any human organization, relationships matter. The more connected, listened to, and central an individual is in the flow of information, the more likely they are to become a unifying figure.”
The
15 Comments
tyleo
It’s interesting but also reminds me of US presidential predictors. All the models that guess right come out saying they have the magic formula but are often refuted by future elections.
This model needs a few more popes under its belt to build confidence in it.
divbzero
Was this published before the Pope was elected?
The article byline indicates 08 May 2025 but response header shows Last-Modified: Fri, 09 May 2025 13:39:02 GMT and the earliest entry in the Internet Archive is Fri, 09 May 2025 12:28:01 GMT.
The white smoke emerged from the Vatican Thu, 08 May 2025 16:07 GMT and Pope Leo XIV was announced shortly thereafter.
valorzard
Shoutout to the Pope Crave (@ClubConcrave) account on Twitter/X. They somehow went from a fandom account posting yaoi/BL content for the movie Conclave to an actual journalistic outfit who posted the results of the actual conclave before mainstream news outlets did
slg
Why is "guessed" in quotes in the HN headline. That word does not appear in the article. They even say the following:
>The Bocconi team is the first to point out the limitations of the model. “We do not claim to predict the outcome of the Conclave,” Soda points out. “As the great statistician George Box said: ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful.’ Ours is intended to be a tool for reading the context, not an oracle.”
Trying to take a victory lap on something like this seems to fly in the face of the statistical thinking that goes into creating a model like this.
xhevahir
> Informal relationships: mapped through authoritative journalistic sources, these include ideological affinities, mentoring relationships, and membership in patronage networks.
So a key part of this is impressionistic stuff: labels like "soft conservative," "liberal," and so on. Doesn't sound very rigorous.
lormayna
I have tried to estimate when the Pope will be elected with a bayesian model, but it's failed predicting that the Pope will be elected at 7th ballot.
Proof: https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/1kgst9c/concla…
Maybe I can make a blog post, just for the sake of whom that are curious
the_arun
It will be interesting to add Pope Francis to this graph OR study similar graph as of 2013.
renewiltord
Should have hit the Polymarket. tbh good predictive models give you money nowadays and money lets you do more science. So if you have good model, you should use it.
jdlyga
It would be interesting to backtest this to see if it can predict previous popes.
caturopath
Their model had 15 slots spread across three lists, with Prevost appearing on one list in the top spot (and not in the other two lists at all). I am not sure we can conclude a ton about their predictive power.
jbellis
This is particularly impressive because polymarket failed harder than I can remember it ever doing at predicting the Pope https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/PRqb1nBVhA
mmooss
All they said about Prevost is that he had the highest status, which is just reporting a fact.
micw
I wonder if predictions of various models are spread more or less evenly across the candidates. Like one out of then knows the last digit of pi.
alexmolas
This is textbook survivorship bias. Out of 133 electable cardinals, someone was bound to guess Robert Prevost. If they were wrong, no one would remember. You could probably find 132 others who guessed wrong.
farceSpherule
The person who was elected Pope is meaningless if he does not clean house of sex abusing priests – past and present – as well as the cardinals and bishops who covered it up.