For nearly 500 years, Jesuit schools, social programs, and parishes have uplifted and transformed communities around the world.

American Jesuits International continues this faith-driven mission, serving as a bridge between the United States and Jesuit programs in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Join us in building a brighter future for communities

on the margins. Donate, advocate, and pray with us at American Jesuits international.org.

You're listening to American Magazine's coverage of the conclave to elect the 267th Pope and Bishop of Rome, the successor to Pope Francis.

I'm Sebastian Goams, an executive editor at America Magazine, and I'm just one of many staffers from America are here on the ground in Rome to cover the conclave for you.

We're going to be producing a podcast every day until a new pope is elected.

And you'll be hearing the podcast in both our Inside the Vatican and Jesuitical podcast feeds.

I'm also here with the hosts of those two shows, Colleen, Dolly and Gerard O'Connell and Zach Davis and Ashley McKinless, so you'll hear

them from time to time on the podcast. And be sure to head over to Americanmagine.org

where all of our news analysis coverage in print is happening. Our team here is writing

daily conclave diaries, also doing interviews, and covering all angles of this historic moment. So we're going to start our

episode today by bringing in Colleen Dully, who's our host of Inside the Vatican, and she's

going to provide us with just some news of the day. What do we need to know about what happened

today on Monday, April 28th? Sure. Today we are in day three of the nine days of morning for Pope Francis. The Cardinals are having their general congregations right now. And we heard that during today's general congregation, so these are the meetings that the Cardinals have before they go into Conclave, where first off, they plan the post funeral, they plan out some logistics. And then they discuss what the church

needs out of the next pope. In today's, they decided on a start date for the conclave, which is super

important. It's starting on May 7th. So they'll start with mass in the morning. Then they'll have the

extra omness, the declaration that everybody who's not a voting cardinal needs to get out of the

Sistine Chapel. Once they get in the Sistine Chapel, then they kick everybody out. Yep, absolutely. And then they'll have their first vote that

evening, which is exactly how it played out in the last conclave. Now, I know that not all of the

cardinals are here yet. So from the moment that the Pope died, obviously there are some cardinals

who live here in Rome. They work in the Curia or doing other types of ministry. But most of the cardinals are obviously residential bishops who live around the world,

...