In true Commonweal fashion, former Synod on Synodality Writing Fellow César “C.J.” Baldelomar contributed his knowledge on contemporary Church affairs to KNTV, NBC’s San Francisco affiliate, as the channel’s in-house conclave expert—lending his expertise to listeners engaging with Church affairs for the first time in the midst of a historic papal transition.

Baldelomar, who now works as an Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. Mary’s College in northern California, explained to listeners that the 2025 conclave would be unique for its global scale: “We have 71 countries represented here,” Baldelomar explained, far more than in any prior conclave. At the same time, this creates challenges. “One of [Francis’s] other legacies is that many of them have not spoken to each other—or know each other. So if there’s maybe a one to two day delay in choosing a pontiff, it’s only because the cardinals are just getting to know each other.”

In response to questions about the conclave’s ideological direction, Baldelomar also noted that Francis’s influence on the conclave might be hard to predict with certainty. “In terms of his pastoral approach,” he explained, Francis “really did welcome differences in ideology.” At the same time, “the consensus…is that the next pontiff will follow in the line [of Francis,] just because the Church completed a Synod on Synodality from 2021-2024 where they heard the concerns of the faithful, and most of the concerns of the faithful actually mirror Pope Francis’s agenda, which includes ecology, LGBTQIA inclusion, and the role of women in leadership positions in the Church.”  

A full collection of Baldelomar’s writing with Commonweal can be found here. Baldelomar’s conversation with KNTV, which aired on May 7, can be found here.