With Benedict XVI's abdication taking effect Thursday, the Roman Catholic Church has no pope until the conclave of cardinals settles on a new one. Like many other procedures of the church, the rules for running the institution during this period are ancient and little-known. Here are answers to questions you might have about exactly what happens when the papacy changes hands:

Who's in charge now?
When a monarch leaves, the period before the new king or queen takes over is called an interregnum. In the Roman Catholic Church, it's called a sede vacante (or "empty seat"). The Cardinal Chamberlain, or Camerlengo — currently Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone — is in charge of running the church, working with three cardinal assistants who are chosen at random and are replaced every three days.

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Why did the pope use a helicopter?
Benedict headed off to a temporary retirement home at Castel Gandolfo, the summer papal retreat, while his permanent home on the Vatican grounds is renovated. To get there, he took a helicopter. Pope Paul VI started the tradition in 1975 purely for practical reasons: The ancient Appian Way — the only way to get there by car — is narrow and a traffic nightmare.

Benedict has a pilot's license, and he's been known to fly the chopper himself on visits to Castel Gandolfo. That didn't happen this time.

Who's going with him?
Benedict's private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, accompanies him to Castel Gandolfo and will continue as head of his household. At the same time, he'll continue to play an important role in the affairs of the new pope, an arrangement that has raised questions about the possible division of his loyalties. (As in all other matters, of course, the new pope could reassign Gänswein for any reason.)

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Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman, said the arrangement was likely chosen for the sake of simplicity.

"I believe it was well thought out," he said.

Not staying with Benedict are the famous Swiss Guards. Regular Vatican police now are responsible for his security.

Why isn't Benedict going back to being a cardinal?
There's no modern precedent for what to do with a living ex-pope, so the Vatican has essentially been making new procedures on the fly. 

According to the Vatican's Code of Canon Law, "cardinal" isn't actually a job. It's an honor bestowed upon a bishop or archbishop, which remains his formal job. When Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he ceased being a cardinal and assumed the duties of bishop of Rome. The new pope takes on that title. Hence the Vatican's decision to bestow upon Benedict the unprecedented honorific of "pope emeritus."

Does he get to keep the robe?
Yes, but not the red shoes or the ornamental fur fringe. Those are reserved for the active pope. 

Although it's been widely reported that the red "shoes of the fisherman" are made by Prada, they're not, the Vatican says. They're made by the pope's personal cobbler. ("The Pope, in summary, does not wear Prada, but Christ," it said.) Regardless, they're still quite eye-catching: In 2007, Esquire listed Benedict among the world's best-dressed men — mainly for his red shoes. "The point is: Have a signature," it said.

Benedict also relinquished the gold "ring of the fisherman," which is personally made for every pope. In accordance with tradition, it's to be smashed with a silver hammer by Bertoni, the camerlengo, to keep it from being used to forge documents. Benedict's personal seal will be broken for the same reason.

What happens to @Pontifex?
Benedict was the first wired pope — the first to have an iPod, the first to have a cellphone (it's engraved with his coat of arms, the Vatican says) and the first to have a Twitter account.

This was Benedict's final tweet Thursday (because the account was wiped clean in preparation for its next user, there's no link):

Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the @Pontifex handle will be turned over to the next pope, who may do with it whatever he pleases.

How do they make the black and white smoke?
Short answer: with difficulty.

After each vote of the papal conclave, the cardinals' ballots are burned. If the vote produces a new pope, the ballots are burned alone, which is supposed to produce a white smoke. If the vote's unsuccessful, a chemical compound is added that's supposed to turn the smoke black.

The official Vatican history says that traditionally, wet straw was used to produce black smoke, but that produced too many false alarms during the election of Pope John XXIII in 1958, so in 1963, the Vatican turned to science. 

(Covering the gray-smoke mixup in 1958, The Associated Press wrote: "So great was the confusion on that Sunday — there were two false alarms — that conclave marshal Sigismondo Chigi told reporters he would have the cardinals briefed 'in the hope that something can be done to remedy the situation Monday.'" The Vatican says it will also ring bells this time to make it clearer when a new pope is chosen.) 

Does the pope have to take a new name?
Not necessarily; it's an ancient tradition, not a law. Until 533, popes used their own names. But that year, a priest named Mercurius of Rome was elected. He was named for the Roman god Mercury, which was  obviously inappropriate for the leader of the Christian church, so he took the name John II. (The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that "the basilica of St. Clement still retains several memorials of 'Johannes surnamed Mercurius.'")

Almost every pope since then has adopted a so-called regnal name.

Lou Dubois and Mary Lou Ahern of NBC News contributed to this report.

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As March Madness looms, a religious news website has created its own bracket for the papal conclave featuring not basketball teams but a "Sweet Sistine" of cardinals who could become pope.

The topical online contest was devised by the non-profit Religion News Service, part of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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It came as the world’s cardinals gathered in Rome to see Pope Benedict depart the Vatican for the last time as pontiff Thursday.

They are expected to begin the process of choosing his successor at the Vatican from early next week.

By late Thursday more than 7,000 had 'played' in the first round of the poll, which pits New York's Archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan against Boston’s Cardinal Sean O'Malley and Canada’s Marc Ouellet against Mexico's Norberto Rivera.

First round voting ends at midnight ET on Friday. You can play the game, and see the early results, here.

To boost your chances, there’s insight on some of the contenders here.

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Even though Pope Benedict XVI is leaving the papacy, he'll remain in sumptuous, familiar surroundings — at least for a few weeks.

Sometime in April, Benedict will take up permanent residence in Mater Ecclesiae, a modest convent for cloistered nuns at the Vatican. The convent is under renovation, however, so in the meantime, Benedict will live at Castel Gandolfo, the small town of about 8,000 people a few miles southeast of Rome that has been the summer retreat for popes for almost four centuries.

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Vatican records indicate that Benedict has spent an average of five weeks a year at the grand Apostolic Palace at Castel Gandolfo since he assumed the papacy in 2005, so he should feel quite at home.

And what a home it is. The complex, which overlooks Lake Albano and what's left of the enormous villa of the first-century Roman Emperor Domitian, actually dwarfs Vatican City by almost 400,000 square feet. It comes complete with landscaped gardens, an arboretum, natural conservatories, museums and fish ponds.

Step inside Pope Benedict's temporary new home

The sculptured gardens, which make up more than half of the estate, are a favorite retreat for popes, who have been known to frequently take long walk along their paths. 

And don't forget the 25 dairy cattle, which are reputed to produce some of the finest milk in Europe.

The town is named for the castle of the Gandolfi family of Genoa, which was built around 1200. It was originally a fortress against marauders, which explains its high walls and other ancient barriers. 

Formally speaking, the Vatican assumed control of Castel Gandolfo only in 1929 under the Lateran Treaty, which formalized relations between Italy and the independent state of Vatican City. But in reality, it has been the church's domain since 1596, when Pope Clement VIII seized it from the Savelli family in lieu of unpaid debts, according to the Vatican's official history.

Today, it's home not only to the Apostolic Palace but also the Vatican Observatory (where visitors can see a moon rock collected during the Apollo XVII mission), the Villa Barberini (where many remains of Domitian's palace are still visible), Villa Cybo (which is used by school of the Maestre Pie Filippini religious community), apartments for 21 employees and the Pontifical Church of St. Thomas of Villanova.

The spectacular view of Lake Albano from the complex has inspired many artists. Landscapes of the scene by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, J.M.W. Turner and Claude Lorraine, among others, hang in some of the world's premier museums.

The complex itself is the setting for stunning works of religious art, as well, among them frescoes by Jan Henryk de Rosen and Angelo Righetti's statue "Madonna of the Park."

The Pontifical Church, designed in 1658 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the leading sculptor of his age, features interior domes and statues by Antonio Raggi, famous for grand pieces such as the "Virgin and Child" in Paris and the marble "Death of Saint Cecelia" in Rome. One of Bernini's own masterpieces, a fontana, or fountain, adorns the the piazza facing the Apostolic Palace.

At Castel Gandolfo, "I find everything: a mountain, a lake; I even see the sea," Benedict remarked in 2011. Those words are now engraved on a plaque in the town hall.

Benedict will move in to Castel Gandolfo late Thursday afternoon. He'll get there by helicopter — a tradition started in 1975 by Pope Paul VI, who wanted to avoid traffic on the ancient Appian Way.

Paul VI was an especially enthusiastic visitor to Castel Gandolfo. In 1972, he described its charms in words that might resonate with Benedict, who said he was abdicating because of his age and declining health:

"We, too, enjoy this God-given gift, by breathing the fresh air, admiring the beauty of our natural surroundings, appreciating the enchantment of its light and silence and seeking here to restore our lack of energy, which is never enough and now even a little scarce."

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Pope Benedict XVI assured a huge, cheering crowd at the Vatican Wednesday that he was not abandoning the Catholic Church, saying he would remain at its service through prayer.

"I ask each of you to pray for me," he told tens of thousands who gathered in the sunshine to watch his final general audience before Thursday's abdication.

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Referring to the many turbulent moments of his papacy, he acknowledged its moments of joy but also difficulty when "It seemed like the Lord was sleeping."

 

"There were moments when the waters were choppy and there were headwinds," he said.

He said he was not "coming down from the cross" despite renouncing his office, saying his decision was taken "in full awareness of its gravity and rarity but also with profound serenity of spirit."

Earlier, pilgrims and onlookers from around the world cheered as Benedict arrived and made a circuit of the square on his "popemobile."

Benedict waved as he swept through the crowd, pausing briefly several times to bless babies, before heading to a platform in front of St. Peter’s Basilica to make his address.

Among the audience was New Yorker Elise O'Donnell-Tixon, who is now living in Rome. "I'm sad because this will likely be the last time I see him," she said. "I was lucky, because my husband and I were blessed by the pope at an audience last Christmas. We got front-row seats."

At the end of the speech, the crowd stood to applaud.

Vatican communications adviser Greg Burke told TODAY that Pope Benedict had appeared to be calm during the speech, despite the emotion of the occasion.

"He has always been very serene," Burke said. "Above all else, he showed he has faith. His message was that it's not our church, it's not my church, it's the church of Christ."

Vatican organizers said more than 50,000 had applied for official tickets for Wednesday’s event – eight times the usual number of applications. An estimated total of 200,000 were expected in square and surrounding streets.

The size of the event means there was not expected to be any kissing of the pontiff’s hand as is traditional after papal audiences.

Young members of the Catholic group Opus Dei served as stewards at the entrance to the square, managing the queues of people filing in past metal detectors, AFP correspondent Gildas Le Roux reported.

Not all of them supported Benedict's resignation, Le Roux said, quoting one of the stewards, Leonardo Rossi, as saying: "I do not share the pope's decision to step down. It is not a fitting time, with all the problems the church is going through."

Many in the crowd waved flags and banners wishing the pope well, although the overall tone of the event remained sombre.

Sister Carmela, who lives north of Rome, traveled to the square with her fellow nuns and members of her parish, Reuters said.

"He did what he had to do in his conscience before God," she told Reuters. "This is a day in which we are called to trust in the Lord, a day of hope. There is no room for sadness here today. We have to pray, there are many problems in the Church but we have to trust in the Lord."

Tens of thousands had been in the square since early Wednesday in the hope of securing a good place from which to see the audience.

Among them was a marching band from Pope Benedict’s native Germany. Balthasar Bauer, 23, from Bavaria, who was in traditional dress, lederhosen, said: "This will likely be the last Bavarian pope, so I had to come here to see him for one last time."

After the address, the Pope's Twitter account, @Pontifex, posted a message that said: "If only everyone could experience the joy of being Christian, being loved by God who gave his Son for us!"

Pope Benedict will leave his residence inside the Vatican and travel by helicopter to his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, about 15 miles south-east of Rome at about 4.55 p.m. local time (10:55 a.m. ET) Thursday. His papacy will officially end at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET).

After stepping down, the pope will keep his name, His Holiness Benedict XVI, but get a new official title, "Emeritus Pope." The Vatican on Tuesday said he would wear a simple white cassock and swap his traditional red shoes for a pair of brown leather loafers he was given on his trip to Leon in Mexico last year.

Meanwhile, the Vatican said Wednesday that the date of the conclave to elect Benedict's successor may not be known until after Monday.

Father Federico Lombardi told the Catholic News Service that cardinals eligible to take part cannot set a start date for the conclave until they have met at the Vatican, and that invitations for them to meet will not be sent out by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, until Friday.

NBC News' Carlo Angerer and Andy Eckardt and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

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This story was originally published on Wed Feb 27, 2013 4:16 AM EST

A potentially explosive report into embarrassing leaks from the Vatican will be seen by only two people — Pope Benedict XVI and the man who succeeds him.

Italian newspapers have already angered the Vatican by suggesting that the report found evidence of corruption, blackmail and a gay sex ring, and that it triggered Benedict’s decision earlier this month to give up the papacy.

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The Vatican said in a statement Monday that Benedict, who commissioned the report on leaks from three cardinals, is the only person who knows its contents and will make them available only to the next pope.

The pontiff also praised the cardinals for showing "the generosity, honesty and dedication of those who work in the Holy See," considering "the limitations and imperfections of the human component of each institution."

Over the weekend, the Vatican took the unusual step of lashing out at the Italian press — accusing it of "unverifiable or completely false news stories" designed to influence the conclave that will pick the next pope.

Father Thomas Reese, author of "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church," said that Benedict’s decision to keep the report secret was not a surprise.

"The Vatican doesn’t like to do its laundry in public," he said.

In any event, he added, the new pope could always decide to make the report public. Benedict’s decision simply gives him cover in case he wants to keep it private, Reese said.

The pope ordered the report on what has become known as the Vatileaks scandal last year after documents became public that deeply embarrassed the church, including some of Benedict’s own correspondence and letters alleging corruption.

Benedict pardoned the ex-butler, Paolo Gabriele, just before Christmas.

The pope, 85, announced earlier this month that he would abdicate, the first leader of the Catholic Church to do so since the Middle Ages. His last day is Thursday. A conclave to pick successor begins next month.

The decision to keep the leaks report secret adds a layer of intrigue to what has already been a tumultuous papal transition.

Just Monday, the most senior cleric in Britain, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, resigned after The Observer newspaper reported that three priests and a former priest had accused him of inappropriate behavior going back 30 years.

Also Monday, the pope changed Vatican law to allow his successor to be picked sooner — as soon as all the voting cardinals are in place in Rome. Under previous law, the conclave could not have begun before March 15.

Related:

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This story was originally published on Mon Feb 25, 2013 9:59 AM EST

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI cited failing health for his historic decision to step aside, but it is increasingly clear that the rich seam of scandal and strife running through the Vatican weighed heavily on his mind.

Allegations of corruption at the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church were "great challenges" for the pontiff, according to his brother who on Tuesday referred to them coyly as "irregularities."

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Experts said only the appointment of a strong replacement willing to exert a tighter grip on its divided hierarchy would succeed in giving the church a clean break from its troubles.

"They are going to need a reformer who can bring management skills," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, S.J., author of "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church." "After all, it is often said that a good bishop needs to be like Jesus with an MBA."

The biggest headache for Pope Benedict XVI was the issue of alleged child sex abuse and the extent to which it had been ignored in some quarters of the church.

But it was the Vatileaks affair that fostered "perceptions of in-fighting, cover-ups and disarray," according to John Allen, Rome-based senior correspondent at the National Catholic Reporter.

Division between rival camps within the church hierarchy — on one side, the pope’s ally and Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, and on the other, state figures from previous papal regimes — motivated the illegal leaking of thousands of documents that portrayed Bertone in a poor light.

In October, the pope’s former butler Paolo Gabriele was given an 18-month prison sentence after being found guilty of stealing of the documents, which included some of Benedict’s private papers and letters alleging corruption within the church.

Letters and memos show that a senior Vatican figure, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, was removed from his post not long after blowing the whistle on nepotism and overpayments for goods and services that he said had wasted millions of dollars, including more than $500,000 on Christmas nativity figures.

Bertone was also accused of ousting the reformist head of the Institute for Works of Religion — the so-called ‘Vatican Bank’ – and, bizarrely, of being involved in a plot to smear the editor of a Catholic newspaper as a homosexual.

The litany of scandals that surfaced during Benedict’s papacy is a “long and not especially edifying list,” Allen said, although he added that some revelations had been exaggerated. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read about the Vatican in Italian newspapers.”

Vatican historians do not have to look far for evidence of similar problems. The 1984 payout of more than $200 million to creditors of Banco Ambrosiano was an acknowledgement of the role church funds had played in the collapsed bank’s dealings. The bank’s chairman, Robert Calvi, was a financial adviser to the Vatican. He was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.

“Like any other workplace, the Vatican needs to have in place a system that ensures there are no personal interests in awarding financial contracts and so on,” said Reese. “The problem is that the church has been its own auditor and policeman.”

“The last two popes have been academic characters, and academics are not the best at reforming organizations.”

Allen said: "The Vatican is going to need somebody who can act as a strong rudder, to bang heads together if necessary and to be seen as above the various factions. It's a very tough job."

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Published at 5:21 p.m. ET: Pope Benedict XVI always said he was first and foremost a teacher and a writer, and in his retirement he intends to pick up where he left off before he was called to church leadership, the Vatican said Monday. But is that a realistic expectation for a man universally known for his restless and questing intellect?

Roman Catholic Church law doesn't extensively account for a pope's abdication — among the hundreds of thousands of words in the Code of Canon Law, there's just one sentence: "If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone."

And since that hasn't happened in almost 600 years (or in more than 700 years depending on how you interpret history), there's no precedent for just what role, if any, a living ex-pope plays in the church.

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What little is known came in a brief statement Monday from the Vatican, which said that when he leaves the papacy on Feb. 28, Benedict would move to Castel Gandolfo, the pope's summer residence in the Alban Hills a few miles south of Rome. Eventually, he will take up residence in a former cloistered monastery in the Vatican. What he will do there hasn't been clarified, but when he was elected pope in 2005, he said the job had interrupted his plans to retire and spend the rest of his life writing "in peace and quiet."

Beyond its obvious authority, the papacy is unique within the Catholic Church because of its temporal status — it doesn't come with the equivalent of tenure. So the moment he steps aside, Benedict will return to being just Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, with no special authority or official prerogatives. 

"This is all very new territory," said Donald S. Prudlo, a historian at Jacksonville State University in Alabama and scholar of theology and church history at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College in Front Royal, Va. "No set of guidelines exist for an ex-pope, even including where he should live, what he should be called and what liturgical role he would play."

It's not even certain that Benedict will resume being an active cardinal — that would be up to the new pope. Prudlo told NBC News he thought it was "unlikely," saying he expected Benedict would want almost no public visibility in his declining years.

Even if Benedict, 85, does resume life as Cardinal Ratzinger, he's beyond the cutoff age of 80 to be eligible to vote, meaning he'll be locked out of the room when the College of Cardinals elects his successor as the leader of more than 1.2 billion Roman Catholics around the world.

But that doesn't mean he won't have influence should he choose to exercise it, and that could be tricky for his successor, said John Thavis, Rome bureau chief of Catholic News Service.

"The church has not really had a situation of two popes in many centuries," Thavis told NBC News from Vatican City. 

One reason is that the church has historically discouraged papal abdication out of concern about divided loyalties. Benedict's predecessor and mentor, John Paul II, declared that "there cannot be an 'emeritus pope.'"

"It is going to be hard for people to forget that Pope Benedict is still alive and he is still perhaps writing, still perhaps expressing himself," Thavis said. "I think it's going to fall to his successor to find a way to utilize this kind of expertise perhaps in a way that does not create new difficulties for the church."

But George Weigel, a Catholic theologian at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a nonprofit religious research foundation, said Benedict "understands there is not room in the church for two popes."

"He will be very discreet about even writing new books," Weigel told NBC News.

Prudlo also predicted a smooth transition — perhaps the most orderly in centuries — because Benedict will be there to give the new pope the lay of the land.

"A new pope is often left flummoxed by the ins and outs of the office, usually taking years sometimes to gain a foothold," Prudlo said. "Having a 'senior pope,' for lack of a better word, would prove invaluable to easing into the throne of Peter."

Tracy Connor of NBC News contributed to this report.

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When Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday morning that he would step down at the end of the month, the news spread around the world in minutes.

The last time this happened, things were a bit different.

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When Pope Celestine V abdicated in December 1294, five months after being elected, just 37 years had passed since the first recorded meeting of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire, according to Ohio State University’s History Timeline.

Only three years had passed since the Crusades had ended, and a scant 79 years —a single human lifetime — had gone by since King John of England signed the Magna Carta.

A few scratches with a pencil will tell you Celestine abdicated 719 years ago. But let’s have some more context. That same year, Kubla Khan, the last of the great Mongol rulers, died.

The next year, Marco Polo returned from China, full of all sorts of stories about the Far East and its exciting products. Accounts vary, but he is widely credited with introducing Europe to the ideas of paper money, coal and eyeglasses, among other things.

The Knights Templar were still riding around. They wouldn’t disband for another two decades.

It would be another 30 years before iron cannons were first forged in France; 31 until the Aztecs settled their capital in Tenochtitlan; 53 years before bubonic plague, or the Black Death, first struck Europe.

Seventy-four years would pass before Zhu Yuanzhang threw the Mongols out of Beijing and established the Ming Dynasty, whose objects we now consider almost unfathomably old.

A schism, and a resignation
There would be another resignation of sorts in 1417, when Gregory XII stepped down at the end of the Great Western Schism, according to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. But there were also two rival popes with their own followers, cardinals and administrators, and all quit or were forced out (the records are a bit sketchy), so it wasn’t quite the same as Celestine V’s simple act, and many historians simply don’t count the whole episode as a proper resignation.

But it would still have been long ago. It was less than a decade after the first windmills were built in Holland, according to the OSU history timeline, and just two years after the English army, under King Henry V, defeated the French at the famed Battle of Agincourt.

That was during the Hundred Years’ War. Remember that one from history classes? It’s not a problem if you don’t: William Shakespeare memorialized Henry’s bravery in “Henry V,” so there’s a relatively recent account. Mind you, Shakespeare died 397 years ago, which was 199 years after Gregory XII resigned and 322 years after Celestine.

But maybe even that doesn’t properly emphasize enough how long it has been since a pope resigned. A lot of things have happened since. Pretty much all of them, some would say.

That might be a stretch, but from an American perspective let’s look at it this way: In 1294, America was -- well, it wasn’t, as far as Europeans were concerned, except perhaps for some Vikings who are thought to have popped in once or twice.

That would change, of course. A mere 157 years after Celestine’s resignation, Christopher Columbus was born (Leonardo Da Vinci would be born a year later), and we all know that he went on to discover America. Except that many scholars say he didn’t.

Ah, well. He at least came close enough to get the credit in Europe, where a more modern culture that would eventually give rise to ours was forming.

Not terribly modern, of course. Pope Nicholas V would give his blessing to slavery 161 years after Celestine resigned. Printing presses would eventually come along, too.

In case you still don’t appreciate the rarity of Benedict’s announcement, consider this: 181 years after the last time this happened, Michelangelo was born, which meant the Sistine Chapel could get a proper paint job.

And just eight years after the great artist’s birth, Martin Luther was born, so Protestants would eventually have a stronger voice and a whole new schism would erupt for people to talk about.

But that’s been a while. And not much of note has happened since, unless of course you count the 16^th, 17^th, 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries.

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US will have unprecedented voice in electing new pope

Updated at 6:41 p.m. ET: When the next Papal Conclave meets behind closed doors to replace the retiring Pope Benedict XVI, the United States will have an unprecedented voice in the process.

Eleven cardinal electors, almost 10 percent of the conclave, will be Americans -- the largest share the country has ever had, even though it has historically had a large Catholic population.

The retiring pope gets credit for the greater influence of the U.S.

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Last year, he named three new American cardinals, increasing the U.S. total to 19. Only 11 will be electors because in order to vote in the papal election, the cardinals must be under 80 when the pope being replaced dies or leaves his seat.

With 11 votes, the U.S. is now the second-largest bloc, behind only Italy, which has 28 electors, according to the Holy See press office at the Vatican. Germany is third, with six. The new pontiff is expected to be elected by the end of March, according to Vatican officials.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York who was elevated to cardinal last year, is considered a longshot candidate to succeed the pope.

When asked about the qualities necessary for the next pope, Dolan told TODAY that "a good place to start would be to look at Pope Benedict."

He added: "There's a learning, a savviness about the world, there's a theological depth, there's an unquestionably personal piety and holiness, there's a linguistic talent, there's a knowledge of the church universal."

When asked whether he would be allowed to vote for himself, Dolan laughed. "Crazy people cannot enter the conclave," he joked.

The shift in power toward the U.S. “reflects the vitality of the Catholic Church in the United States,”  John Paul II biographer George Weigel said in November.

"But I don’t think it likely that any American will be elected pope for as long as the United States remains the world’s pre-eminent power," he added.

Alessandro Speciale, Vatican correspondent at Religious News Service, echoed Weigel’s opinion, adding that “coming from the world’s only superpower could still be seen as a negative factor in a global church.”

What the increasing U.S. presence among the cardinal electors might mean is that Benedict XVI was very much aware that Catholicism is no longer a predominantly European religion.

The U.S. has as many as 78 million Catholics, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. For comparison’s sake, Italy, despite having the largest share of electors and being primarily Catholic, has a total population of fewer than 61 million residents, according to World Bank estimates from 2011.

"It remains to be seen whether this numerical weight will actually translate into influence at the conclave," Speciale said in November. "Though national links are powerful, many other factors ... play into the secret voting at the Sistine Chapel."

Some experts have suggested that the next pope might be from Latin America.

Reuters noted Monday that Latin America now "represents 42 percent of the world's 1.2 billion-strong Catholic population, the largest single block in the Church, compared to 25 percent in its European heartland."

Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, who now holds the pope's old post as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is among the senior Vatican officials to suggest that it might be Latin America's turn.

"I know a lot of bishops and cardinals from Latin America who could take responsibility for the universal Church," he told Duesseldorf's Rheinische Post newspaper in December.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, announced in a statement Monday that he will help pick the next pope: "I look forward to traveling to Rome soon to help thank Pope Benedict XVI for his gifted service to the Church, and to participate in the Conclave to elect his successor."

Mahony's announcement that he'll participate in the decision came despite documents revealing he was complicit in protecting priests accused of sex abuse during his tenure as head of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

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