Chinyere Abiaziem 
In earnest expectation of who will become the next pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the conclave is slated to begin on Wednesday, May 7, where the new head of the Church would be elected.
One hundred and thirty-five (135) cardinals under the age of 80 have been summoned to meet in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City starting May 7, though it is not yet known how many of them will actually be present at the conclave to elect the next pope.
On Saturday, the cardinals of the Catholic Church held their ninth in a series of near-daily meetings at the Vatican ahead of the election.
The closed-door meeting was to allow them to discuss the challenges the successor to Pope Francis will face before they are locked into the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday for the vote.
“We do not know, we just wait for the Lord to tell us,” reportedly said Cardinal William Seng Chye Goh, Archbishop of Singapore, seen as one of the more conservative prelates.
Meanwhile, among the Cardinals from Africa eligible to vote in the conclave, there is fear that Cardinal Philippe Ouédraogo may be excluded due to a discrepancy in his age.
Reports have it that it is not certain whether Ouédraogo is 79, if truly born December 31, 1945, or already over 80 years if January 24, 1945, happens to be his exact birth date.
The 2024 Vatican yearbook has the cardinal’s date of birth listed as January 24, 1945, of which the Catholic Cathedral in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, reportedly wrote him a birthday message on its Facebook page.
Whereas, the 2025 edition of the Vatican yearbook reportedly registered his date of birth as December 31, 1945, which would mean that he is only 79 and eligible to take part in the conclave.
The cardinal in his response said the confusion over his date of birth is tied to the circumstances of his upbringing, while he was quoted to have stated: “In my village, there were neither hospitals nor schools. I was born at home and was not given a birthdate.”
He also said that January 25 was chosen at random, for bureaucratic reasons, when he entered his seminary – a training institution for priests, further saying that Burkina Faso’s national registry office later assigned him the date of December 31 as his date of birth.
