History of the Papacy Podcast
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Conclave Markets: The Rise of Leo XIV
Original Publish Date: 5/8/2025 Description: The conclave is over and the prediction markets were dead wrong. In this episode of History of the Papacy, we dive into the fascinating rise of Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope. Just days before his election, he barely registered in the prediction markets. So how did he win in less than five ballots? We explore how these markets work, why they usually get things right, and why the conclave is one place where money can’t predict the Holy Spirit. Support the show: Buy me a coffee! https://buymeacoffee.com/historyofthepapacy Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacy Buy me a book! https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1MUPNYEU65NTF Have questions, comments or feedback? Here are ways to contact me: Email Us: steve@atozhistorypage.com https://www.atozhistorypage.com/podcast Music Provided by: "Sonatina in C Minor" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Funeral March for Brass" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Crusade Heavy Perfect Loop" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite Kevin MacLeaod (incomptech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Begin Transcript: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the History of the Papacy Podcast, a podcast about the Popes of Rome and Christian Church. Prepare yourself to step behind the ropes and leave the official tour of the story of the Popes and Christianity. I am your host, Steve Gura, and I thank you for joining me on this journey. Hey everybody, it's Steve here. I recorded this episode about, uh, maybe two days ago, and a lot has changed since that recording. We do have a new Pope, Pope Leo the 14th, who was former Cardinal. Robert Prevost, who is the [00:01:00] first American Pope, or who is the first American pope. We'll get into a lot of the details about this future Pope. We'll probably do an episode on this Cardinal Prevost, where he came from. There's a lot of interest. Details with his life. We probably won't get into a tremendous amount of detail because there's just so much new information coming out about him, but related to this episode that I recorded before, and I think this, this, uh, you should definitely hang on all the way to the end because it's so interesting. This whole episode was based around the prediction markets around who would be Pope, and I said it in this episode and I've said it many times. Prediction markets are very accurate in some ways, but I think that it was very inaccurate with this current Pope and just it would be inaccurate with Popes in general because it's such a unique election and that the only data points are the [00:02:00] 140 cardinals who go in, or the X amount of Cardinals will say in future conclaves. And we just don't know what the politics are. We don't a hundred percent know what the politics are going in, and we know. Basically 0% of what political machinations went on in that enclave. It must have been fascinating because of how quickly they came up with him. It was less than five ballots to get Cardinal Privos to become Pope Leo the 14th. It's one of the shortest conclaves of all times, only two days to get white smoke. So I think that that is fascinating. So definitely keep listening and let's see a little bit of how these markets worked. I'll just say that going in Cardinal Perlin was up. To 67% and Prevost was [00:03:00] pretty low down there. I don't even think he was on my uh, radar at all. He was on the poly market in the under 5%. So this will be definitely an interesting pay papacy to watch out for with this young pope, relatively young, not super young. 69 for an elected leader or of any sort or stripe in this era. That's young. So let's, let's check out and think a little bit more about these markets today. I'm going to address some of the top contenders for the, uh, next Pope. I'm not gonna get too much into the, the detail of each of these Cardinals, because again, there's 140 of them. All of them are in play as. To be the next Pope. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a little different tack than our friends over at Pontax or Popular History. Definitely tune [00:04:00] into both of them because they are doing continued coverage as well. Way I'm going to look at it today is I wanna look at some of the, what are these cardinals who are meeting in conclave looking for in the next Pope? And then what I'm also going to look at is. The poly market prediction. Market website. And what the poly market is, is people literally put their money where their mouth is. They put um, I guess what you might call wagers or their maybe investing in their own money on who they, the next Pope is. Honestly, they don't, most of these people, they're not gonna have any more insider information than you or I do. They're just predicting who they think the next Pope is. And what I think is valuable about poly market is this was more, this website was more accurate in the 2024 [00:05:00] presidential election than any of the polling and generally. Poly market is very accurate, especially as it gets closer and closer to the actual events, the more accurate it becomes. Again, there's some problems with the, the nature of. The conclave process because once they're in conclave, these 140 cardinals, a lot of politics breaks down when they're face to face and they're horse trading inside of the inside of the conclave. Somebody could be up, up, up, up, up in the ballots, but they're just not hitting that number, and then the whole conclave starts to switch and they could. Do a 180 turn that person who on the first initial ballots could have been the top contender, and then they start to lose steam and it [00:06:00] starts swinging towards somebody else. That can very easily happen when these popes. When these cardinals are on lockdown, could this be a quick conclave or could it be a long, drawn, drawn out affair? We just don't know at this time. Now, before we get too far into the actual, who's the, who are our top contenders? As on poly market. Let's talk a little bit about what these cardinals are actually looking for and what are some of the, the factors at play. This, it really is the, the chest, the 3D chest, the five D chest, if you will, of a conclave. What, what some of the factors that they're looking for is regionality. Is it going to be somebody from Europe inside of Europe? Is it an, is it an Italian or a Southern European versus the [00:07:00] Germans who have a really powerful block? Is it, are they looking? Are they looking for somebody who is. Theologically driven from a certain bent. Are they a moderate theologically? Are they liberal? Are they conservative? Are they a moderate conservative or liberal politically? And that politically charged moderate tism or liberalism or conservatism can very much change whether they are depending based on what region they're from. And then another factor, of course, is the. The person's age, are they looking for a pope that is younger or older? Are they looking for somebody who could be a placeholder? Fra? Pope Francis was Pope for a long time. He made a lot of changes. Are they looking for that cardinal? Who will become Pope, who's gonna be pretty much status quo? Are they gonna be a [00:08:00] Francis site, so to speak and continue his. Reforms and his changes and his policies, or are they going to look for somebody who's Auntie Francis, who's gonna go back on a lot of the things that he's done? Then there's the, it's sort of the X factor. Most of the popes who are real contenders are, uh, are all Latin, meaning that they're Roman. Roman and they're vet. But there's also this, uh. The so-called Sury Juris or Sury juris churches that are self-governing autonomous churches within the Roman Catholic Church. They're generally, uh, on the outside they would look like an Eastern Orthodox or an Oriental Orthodox, but they're not in communion with the Orientals or the. Or the Eastern Orthodox, but externally they look like them and [00:09:00] they have a lot of the same theological bents. None of these guys are really in the running, but it, it could be interesting that they wind up going with one of these. It's kind of an a way outsider possibility, but it's not. Impossible. So let's just talk about region quickly. Regions, we have the United States, we have South America, Europe. Then Africa and the East China and, uh, China really being the, that 800 pound gorilla in the room, generally speaking, the I. African cardinals are much more theologically conservative than maybe your European cardinals. You've got South America who many of their cardinals are much more. [00:10:00] Liberal politically and liberal, more liberal on the theological bent America, a real mixed bag. You have some very conservatively political and conservatively theological cardinals mixed in with some very liberal on both political and theological. Issues Europe. Again, a a mixed bag, but generally more liberal theologically and a mixture of liberal conserv or conservative politically. Now talking about theologically, you have your conservatives, your liberals, and your moderates, and your moderates. It's not like they're 50 50. A lot of times they don't have a a, they haven't drawn stark lines either liberal or conservative, or they do [00:11:00] have a mixed bag of both opinions. I. As far as somebody liberally, theologically, they're gonna be people who are more for remarriage, which was always a big no-no in the, uh, in the Catholic church where if you got divorced and you're not. You haven't been, your marriage wasn't a nulled in an official church capacity. These people, people, these laypeople who were married and divorced, were not allowed to get communion. They were essentially ex-communicated. So there's a lot of cardinals who wanna liberalize that. You have liberals who want to be ecumenical, meaning they
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