VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider
Benedict XVI is to issue a document motu proprio allowing cardinals to start the election process before the fifteen day waiting period stipulated by Vatican law, if they wish to
ANDREA TORNIELLI
Vatican City
Benedict XVI’s final act as Pope will be to publish a brief motu proprio allowing cardinals to bring the date of the Conclave forward. This will be the second modification Ratzinger will be making to his predecessor’s Constitution Universi Dominici gregis.
In recent days, some of the cardinals said they wished to bring the date of the Conclave forward. The Constitution states the Conclave should take place between fifteen to twenty days after the papacy become vacant due to the death or resignation of a Pope: “I furthermore decree that, from the moment when the Apostolic See is lawfully vacant, the Cardinal electors who are present must wait fifteen full days for those who are absent; the College of Cardinals is also granted the faculty to defer, for serious reasons, the beginning of the election for a few days more. But when a maximum of twenty days have elapsed from the beginning of the vacancy of the See, all the Cardinal electors present are obliged to proceed to the election,” Wojtyla’s Universi Dominici gregis reads.
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