It's a ritual shrouded in secrecy. It goes back centuries.

Right now we are watching the cardinals, 133 of them process from the Pauline to the Sistine Chapel.

Today in Rome, Catholic cardinals from around the world gathered to begin the process known as a conclave.

They are singing the litany of saints. There's over a hundred saints' names that they are singing as they do this to seek assistance from the saints, from the Holy Spirit, and guidance for selecting a pope.

'The goal? Elect a new leader to shepherd a flock of 1.4 billion Catholic believers worldwide. It's a closed-door election that begins with an oath of secrecy, and it will not end until a two-thirds majority agree and the conclave announces Hababus Papam, or we have a new

Well, we had black smoke tonight, it billowed out from the chimney.

Sistine Chapel. CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb has been covering the Vatican for the better half of a decade and he has been on the ground for us in Rome watching all of this unfold.

This really was expected after the first ballot of the cardinals. They weren't expecting there to be white smoke or a decision on who was going to be Pope after just one ballot. But that didn't stop people gathering in St Peter's Square in big numbers. There were tens of thousands waiting and looking up at the chimney to see if a decision had been made. There was a real sense of anticipation and excitement in the square. And the black smoke came out people actually dissipated and disappeared pretty quickly. Now the first vote in a conclave is very important it is the time when you know the cards are put on the table people see who the front runners might be and also of course who outsiders might be um you there are obviously those who might be getting a lot of votes, but then there may be other cardinals who get a decent size number of votes, and suddenly cardinals say, oh, well, there's a possibility that this candidate could emerge. And of course, this is an election where no one knows the result before anyone else. Everyone gets told at the same time, other than the cardinals, of course. And it is communicated through those smoke signals, but a real sense of anticipation and excitement. In a crowd to watch really an historic moment in St Peter's.

So for the next few days, with Chris's help, we're going to be bringing you the latest news from the Vatican. We'll keep you up to date on the news of the day and dig into deeper questions like will the church build on Francis's legacy or return to a more traditional path? And what's really at stake for the U.S., a country that's becoming increasingly less religious? I'm David Rind and this is Conclave Watch. There's an old saying in the Catholic Church, after a fat pope, a thin one. No, we're not fat shaming anyone, not talking about the Pope's weight, we are talking about the pendulum swing that sometimes happens when new popes are chosen from more conservative to more liberal and vice versa. Pope Francis was known as the great reformer. He earned the nickname for shining a light on the plight of migrants, warning against the impacts of climate change. He also gave more power to women inside the church and took a less judgmental tone towards LGBTQ worshipers. That was an especially stark change from his predecessors, who focused on issues like abortion and birth control. So now the question remains, will the church continue Francis's legacy or will the pendulum once again swing? But I've been wondering, what impact does any pope have on US politics and vice versa? So for our first installment of Conclave Watch, we're taking a look at the politics of the Papacy with Massimo Fagioli. He's a Vatican expert and theology professor at Villanova University.

The papacy is a religious and a political office because the pope is also the sovereign of a state from the point of view of the other states. There has been in this last century an alliance de facto that has gone through rough times sometimes, but an alliance between the Vatican and the other States against communism. And so, as an historian put it years ago... They are two parallel empires. And so this time is different because America is changing under Donald Trump. And this is something that is raising questions in the Vatican, what it means. Trump's America for the Catholic Church, what it mean for the Holy See, choosing a certain Pope from a certain area of the world sends a certain kind of message. If you choose a Cardinal who comes from the Middle East or from Eastern Europe, that sends a certain kind of message. So that is a factor in the conclave for sure.

We've seen kind of a wave of conservatism among younger Catholics. What's behind this interest in Catholicism among conservatives do you think?

Well, because a certain kind of conservative Catholicism has seen Catholicism as the last available refuge against liberalism, now that Protestantism has become very divided in this country on sexual morality, on women's role, on LGBT, on gender. It's a long march that begins in the late 80s, early 90s, And that has been, from their point of view, a successful march, because it's a movement that is no longer on the fringes. It has become mainstream within Catholicism, but also in American politics. And JD Vance is one of the examples of the success of this long march.

One of the last humans to meet with Pope Francis.

That was the last private audience that he had in the Vatican, the last day Pope Francis lived with a Catholic vice president to whom he replied indirectly, but clearly with the February 10th letter to the US bishops warning them against nationalism, against the corruption of the rule of law. I think that letter To the United States bishops and indirectly to JD Vance is really the political testament of Pope Francis. This is one of those documents that you see once in a century.

Right. Francis was kind of not a fan of a lot of the things that the Trump administration stands for or is doing. But just the other day, the Trump Administration had this big faith event at the White House, and Donald Trump was talking explicitly about church and state. And he was basically saying, like, no, we can break down that separation. We can have the two more closely connect, how do you think the church views? That mingling of faith and politics so directly.

It might be news for Donald Trump, but the Vatican, and Pope Francis actually, they spoke in favor of a certain kind of distinction between church and state. So the Vatican is not in favor of a strict separation church and states, but clearly is worried of the manipulation of the church that happens in some countries that try to submit the church to political power.

Like they're worried about the message kind of being twisted and used for political ends.

Right, because that has happened before. The Vatican has a long memory of what happened in the European authoritarian regimes in the 1920s, 1930s.

You've written that many Catholics these days are more likely to turn to influencers than necessarily religious leaders. Can you say more about that? Like how will that dynamic shape the future of the church?

'It has changed already a certain ethos on the Catholic because it used to be a Catholic culture that was clerical or different or very respectful of the clerical authority, beginning with the Pope. That is not true anymore. So if you have a certain attitude and an internal connection, you can be your own Catholic influencer that has more followers than your Bishop. Or your Cardinal, that has happened in these last few years. And so this has given more voice and a much wider audience to lay Catholic preachers, often with questionable qualifications to impose, assert themselves as the real Catholic voice. Also some militant Catholics. Relationship with the authority. And for them, Pope Francis was just one other influencer that they were free to follow or not. I teach the tradition of the Catholic church. I mean, my office here is full of books with documents of hundreds of years ago. The difference is whether you want to, to adopt the tradition as something that is like a fetish. That you use to make a counter-argument against someone or against something, I mean, against gay people, against gender, against woke, against diversity. Okay, so here the tradition can be used in many different ways. That is a very simplified idea of the tradition, which I think does a disservice to the catholicity of the church.

Is that something, though, that a pope can push back on? Like, when you talk about the balance of, you know, faith leaders in the church, like the pope or politicians who might be kind of twisting the message for their aims, like, how does the church combat that?

Pope Francis tried with a little success, we have to say, especially in the United States. So it's a very delicate part of the job because you have to encourage people to love the church, to love tradition, to love devotions. But at the same time, we have to warn them against using them as a placebo or as a drug that actually changes Fundamentally. A healthy way of being part of a certain tradition. So here, the last thing that we should wait for is a pope that condemns those who love the tradition. I mean, that would be unseemly, but Pope Francis has been very clear in his 12 years that he was cautioning against a certain ideology of the tradition as something that means We Catholics don't change, we'll never change because we have never changed. That is a healthy memento against an ideological use of Catholicism.

That was Massimo Fagioli, Vatican expert and theology professor at Villanova University. Now, as Christopher Lamb said at the top, no white smoke yet, so we still do not have a pope. But I want to catch you up on the top contenders for the Papacy, the names you might hear in the days ahead. So this is a little end of show segment we're calling the Leaderboard. And since the theme of today's show is the politics of the Papasy, we're going to talk about a candidate who's a little more cautious, a little bit more conservative. Cardinal Pietro Parolin. Currently, he's the Holy See Secretary of State. He hails from northern Italy. Notably, he has rebuked the Trump administration's Gaza Plan, which would essentially displace Palestinians and see the U.S. Occupy the Enclave. So we could expect some clashes with the White House if the votes go Parolin's way. That's all for today's update. Christopher Lam and I will be back tomorrow. He'll fill us in on what's been going on at the Vatican. In the meantime, you can head over to CNN.com or the CNN app for the very latest on this conclave. I'm David Ryan. Thanks for listening. Conclave Watch is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by me, David Rind and Grace Walker with support from Graylin Brashear, Jesse Remedios, Kira Daring, Paolo Ortiz and Sophia Sanchez. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan DeZula is our technical director. Steve Lichtai is the executive producer of CNN audio. We get support from Mark Duffy, Alex Manessari, Robert Mathers, John Deonora, Lainey Steinhart, Jameis Andres, Nicole Passarou, and Lisa Namarow. Special thanks to Caroline Patterson and Wendy Brundage. I'll talk to you later.