Is conclave secrecy dead – and does it matter?

What effect do conclave tell-alls have on the rule of law in the Church?

A new book published on Sunday purports to pull back the curtain on the papal conclave which elected Pope Leo XIV last year.

The Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Dr pangloss via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

“The Election of Pope Leo XIV,” published March 1, offers details of the four voting rounds which returned Cardinal Robert Prevost as successor to Pope Francis, as well as specific instances within the closely guarded process — including details of the moment an elderly cardinal was discovered to have accidentally left a mobile phone in his pocket during screenings ahead of a session.

The book is the latest in a series of works reporting on the inner deliberations of the papal election process, which is meant to be protected by the strictest levels of legal secrecy in canon law.

Similar reporting emerged following the conclaves of 2005 and 2013, often related to the meetings and plans of the so-called St. Gallen Group of cardinals who were reported to have opposed the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Benedict XVI and ultimately worked for the election of Jorge Maria Bergoglio as Pope Francis.

The extent to which after-the-fact reporting on papal voting has become commonplace belies the ongoing legal requirements of total secrecy imposed by canon law, and the speed and detail with which such reporting emerges after an election seems to be increasing with each passing conclave.

Successive popes, in turn, have declined to take any action in response, either specifically warning or correcting individuals, or generally by issuing reminders about the current canonical norms and penalties attached to conclave secrecy.

In Leo XIV, the Church now has its first canonist pope since St. Paul VI, but will he engage with what has become a “new normal” with regard to the law and practice of secrecy post-conclave? And if he doesn’t, what effect do conclave tell-alls have on the general atmosphere of the rule of law in the Church?

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The new book “The Election of Pope Leo XIV,” written by two long-time Vatican reporters, is a notable publication both for the relative speed with which it has come to print — less than a year after the 2025 conclave — and the detail with which it purports to relate the ballot results of the papal election.

It is, in these senses, a kind of quantum leap forward in the genre, in that its sourcing suggests an escalating erosion of force in both the letter of the law regarding conclaves and the culture of respect for its observance.

The book is by no means the only data point in the trend. In the weeks immediately following the conclave last year, Arab language television broadcast an interview with Chaldean Patriarch Raphael Louis Sako, in which the cardinal discussed the conclave and offered the anecdote of a blank extra ballot paper being accidentally included in one of the rounds of voting.

The interview was initially received without much fanfare, at least in Rome, as an unusually frank but relatively harmless disclosure. However, in an illustration of how the culture of acceptable indiscretion is not universal, the segment became a source of serious controversy in Iraq, where it was taken as a kind of cultural disgrace for the local cardinal to have violated the conclave’s nominally absolute secrecy.

As matters escalated, Sako disowned the entire interview, saying he had never granted it at all and that the TV station had actually broadcast an impersonation of him.

The incident is especially illustrative of the vast range of expectations around conclave secrecy when compared to, for example, Cardinal Antonio Tagle, who cheerfully recounted at a press conference having offered the future pope a throat lozenge as the final votes were tallied so he could clearly articulate his accepto.

But, of course, however different cardinals choose to respect it, the actual canon law of the conclave, as articulated in the apostolic constitution Universi domenici gregis, is rather stark.

The text, promulgated by St. John Paull II and given minor amendments under Benedict XVI, lays out “the duty of maintaining the strictest secrecy with regard to everything that directly or indirectly concerns the election process itself.”

Those involved in the conclave at every level, from cardinal electors to clerical and staff assistants, have to swear to uphold total confidentiality about all aspects of the proceedings, in perpetuity, unless specifically permitted by the pope.

The text of UDG offers no fewer than three formulas for oaths to that effect, which must be sworn at different points in the proceedings by different people.

In one oath, sworn by all the cardinals individually, including Sako and Tagle, they “promise and swear that, unless [he] should receive a special faculty given expressly by the newly-elected Pontiff or by his successors, [he] will observe absolute and perpetual secrecy with all who are not part of the College of Cardinal electors concerning all matters directly or indirectly related to the ballots cast and their scrutiny for the election of the Supreme Pontiff.”

They are also required to “declare that [they] take this oath fully aware that an infraction thereof will incur the penalty of automatic excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See.”

They are also required to swear individually as they enter the Sistine Chapel that “in a particular way, [they] promise and swear to observe with the greatest fidelity and with all persons, clerical or lay, secrecy regarding everything that in any way relates to the election of the Roman Pontiff and regarding what occurs in the place of the election, directly or indirectly related to the results of the voting; [they] promise and swear not to break this secret in any way, either during or after the election of the new Pontiff, unless explicit authorization is granted by the same Pontiff.”

The explicit requirements of these oaths notwithstanding, there has been no public question of Tagle or Sako laboring under an excommunication, declared or undeclared. The upshot of this would seem to be that there is neither expectation nor appetite around the Vatican for taking seriously the letter of these particular laws — whatever its intended automatic consequences.

Of course, many in Rome would argue that seeking to apply or declare an excommunication over, for example, a good-natured story about offering Cardinal Prevost a mint would be a ridiculous over-reaction.

The obvious counter observation, though, is that one cannot have only a little, or even a lot of absolute secrecy. It is either observed absolutely or it is not. However harmless or even endearing some anecdotes might seem, the law is as it is written, and yet not observed as such.

The question that would seem to raise is clear: Which is wrong and needs to change — the law or the practice?

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However loosely it may be observed after-the-fact, secrecy during the conclave is still recognized in the Church as a practical necessity, rather than a ceremonial tradition.

The role of the Holy See in the most sensitive diplomatic arenas, including the wars in Ukraine and Middle East, underline how potentially pivotal the Vatican’s diplomatic status can be. And, whatever one makes of the balance of power and relative successes and failures of the Vatican-China deal, it is the case that the Chinese Communist Party views the Catholic Church as a serious force to be reckoned with — and neutralized, whenever possible.

Anti-surveillance and anti-interference measures are taken extremely seriously by the Vatican during the cardinals’ sequestration, and there is no suggestion that this should be otherwise.

The question, though, is whether cardinals should still be required to maintain perpetual secrecy once the new pope is safely elected. And it is possible to imagine cases in which that would still be seen as fitting, for the good of the Church and the stability of the papacy.

One hypothetical, to take an example, would be if a cardinal was elected and declined to assume the office, for whatever reason. If such news were to become widely known, it would trigger a frenzy of speculation as to why the cardinal declined, and if there had been some attempt to prevent his accession, even if he demurred for the most innocent or personal reasons.

Any such cardinal would, almost immediately, become a fixed point of reference and “what if” counter historical coverage throughout the next pope’s reign — even more so if he were perceived to be of a different ideological mind than whoever emerged on the loggia.

Similarly, if a cardinal made a strong showing in initial ballots and looked set to win election before either he himself or others in the conclave made known compelling reasons why he must not be elected, that information would, most would accept, need to be kept confidential thereafter as a protection measure for the integrity of the election process.

Of course, there is no way of knowing how many times such situations have occurred in past conclaves, if ever. But if there remains a general understanding that some things must remain secret, there is a clear general acceptance that other things — offers of cough sweets, accidental blank ballots, forgotten phones — are fair game to relate.

The line lies between the harmless and the serious seems to be the subject of a shifting Overton window of cultural acceptability: so long as it shows the Church united behind the pope and humanizes the cardinals without embarrassing individuals by name, conclave tales appear to be ok.

While that might, narrowly considered, seem to be how custom and law gradually evolve in the Church, there are near term consequences to consider. As the Church’s most visible and important governing event, how the laws of the conclave are lived set an example which can cut across all sorts of other issues in the Church. And it remains that case that the curia operates and enforces strict secrecy on a range of sensitive matters, either to do with internal Church discipline or external Church relations.

In some cases, the inverse to the conclave rules appear to be at work — despite Pope Francis lifting the pontifical secret on clerical sexual abuse trials, it is rare for the Church to aknowledge, let alone discuss, details of the substance of such cases.

The wider effects of these misalignments between law and practice is to feed a particular kind of antinomian culture in the Church, one in which the validity of the law is effectively tied to the desire of the authority to enforce it — or not.

That kind of culture leads to the problem of excesses in some places and some issues, and relative laxity in others, and can sap coherence and credibility from the Church’s governing structures.

Of course, there are several ways in which Pope Leo could address the issue, either for the sake of coherence around the conclave itself or for the wider example it could offer the Church.

The pope could, for example, issue a letter to the College of Cardinals reminding them of the oaths of secrecy they all took during the conclave, the perpetual nature of that secrecy, and spell out the dispensations he has given (or not given) to these obligations.

Such a letter from Leo would in all likelihood instill a renewed sense of seriousness in the cardinals without the pope having to cite particular examples, still less publicly invoke legal sanctions.

Leo could, of course, opt to go in a different direction entirely and change the law to loosen the secrecy provisions of Universi Domenici Gregis so that they covered only those things which he believes should be truly out of bounds for public discussion.

Crafting precise legal language to draw a bright line between what can and cannot be discussed would be a real challenge for canonists, of course. But such a move would have the arguable benefits of refocusing the law on what matters most, and recognizing that the culture of tacit approval for excommunicable breaches is unhealthy.

The third option, of course, would be for Leo to simply let the whole matter play out on its own without drawing attention to it, as was the habit of his immediate two predecessors. Almost a year after his election, and with the publication of the new book this week, it seems unlikely any new major or shocking revelations will come to light about the 2025 conclave.

It is fair to say that Leo could reasonably assume any serious breaches of secrecy will be for his eventual successors to deal with and leave it to them. But, given how each conclave now seems to be less secret than the last, eventually there may be a future pope who is left to rue his predecessors’ decisions not to act.