Tranblay took the lead in the fifth round of voting

The fifth ballot of the conclave gives Joseph Tremblay a clear lead for the first time, but not the votes needed to become Pope. In the darkening Sistine Chapel, he draws 40 votes to Goffredo Tedesco’s 38, with Aldo Bellini and Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli further behind. The result makes Tremblay the leading candidate without ending the contest: Lomeli closes the ballot and sends the cardinals back to Casa Santa Marta, while the black smoke above the Sistine Chapel announces that no Pope has been elected.

Background and mounting instability

The ballot follows a volatile series of vote counts. In the first ballot, 34 cardinals receive at least one vote, and the tally reveals no obvious victor. Tedesco, Joshua Adeyemi, Bellini, and Tremblay emerge as the strongest contenders, but even their support is dispersed: Bellini finishes third behind Adeyemi, and Lomeli’s five votes trouble him because he fears they may have come at Bellini’s expense. No candidate is remotely close to the 79 votes then needed for election.

The second ballot briefly appears to clarify the field. Adeyemi gains 16 votes from candidates who have fallen away, while Tedesco adds seven; Bellini’s support does not grow enough to sustain his prospects. Tremblay remains relatively still in the count, and Vincent Benítez rises from one vote to two. That small gain is easy to overlook amid the competition among the established candidates, but it foreshadows Benítez’s later emergence.

The balance shifts again after the cardinals’ lunch break. Adeyemi loses 32 votes, more than half his support, as the disclosure that reaches the electors changes their perception of his candidacy. Tremblay gains 11, Bellini eight, Lomeli six, Tedesco four, and Benítez three. Tedesco returns to the lead, while Tremblay appears positioned to benefit if support among the cardinals from the developing world moves toward him. Benítez, previously little known to the electors, now has five votes. The fifth ballot begins amid a newly unsettled contest rather than a settled two-candidate race.

Voting and the result

The fifth ballot carries a pointed historical expectation. In Lomeli’s recollection, recent conclaves have generally elected a Pope by the fifth ballot; the late Pope was elected on his fifth, while Benedict XVI and John Paul I won on the fourth. The precedent makes a five-ballot election seem conventional and orderly, the kind of outcome Lomeli has privately hoped for. This conclave, however, has already resisted that pattern.

As the cardinals file forward to vote, the mood of the morning has drained away. The visible sky darkens, and the five o’clock bell from St Peter’s sounds to Lomeli like a funeral knell. He still votes for Bellini, whom he considers the best choice, but his previous tallies—18, 19, 10, and 18—show that Bellini cannot break beyond his core support. Lomeli weighs the alternative of Tremblay against Tedesco, recognizing Tremblay’s ambition but also considering whether a less forceful personality might better preserve the Church’s unity.

The count produces the ballot’s decisive reversal. Tremblay receives 40 votes, Tedesco 38, Bellini 15, and Lomeli 12; Benítez receives four. Tremblay has moved ahead of Tedesco, but neither is close to the 79 votes required. The shift establishes a front-runner, not a Pope. Tremblay bows his head and joins his hands in prayer as the other cardinals look toward him. Lomeli, who had feared the prospect of Tedesco’s victory, briefly closes his eyes and gives thanks for what he reads as an indication of divine will.

An election still unresolved

As dean, Lomeli announces that the fifth ballot has ended without the necessary majority. He tells the cardinals that voting will resume the next morning, instructs them not to take written notes from the Sistine Chapel or discuss the deliberations until they return to Casa Santa Marta, and asks that the doors be unlocked. His procedural instructions underline the difference between leading the count and securing the election: Tremblay has the most votes, but the conclave must continue.

At 6:22 p.m., black smoke pours from the Sistine Chapel chimney, illuminated by a searchlight mounted on St Peter’s Basilica. Television commentators express surprise, since many had expected a Pope to have been elected by then. Public speculation shifts with the tally: doubts grow about Bellini’s ability to win, and in the United Kingdom bookmakers make Adeyemi the new favourite, renewing expectations that the conclave might elect the first black Pope. The ballot’s result therefore does not settle the contest even beyond the locked chapel; it gives the watching world a new set of predictions to debate.

Coalition arithmetic and significance

The figures soon become the basis for renewed coalition calculations. After the next ballot, Bellini and Lomeli discuss whether their supporters can unite behind another candidate. Giulio Sabbadin argues that Bellini’s 15 votes and Lomeli’s 12 cannot make Lomeli a viable alternative, even if the Bellini bloc transferred its support intact. Adding their combined 27 to Tremblay’s 40 would give Tremblay 67, leaving him 12 short of the two-thirds threshold. Bellini accepts that Tremblay has demonstrated broad appeal, even though neither he nor Lomeli is enthusiastic about supporting him.

The fifth ballot thus changes the practical terms of the election without resolving its spiritual or political meaning. Tremblay’s lead makes him the strongest immediate option, and later discussion treats him as a possible focus for a wider alliance; nevertheless, his 40 votes remain far from the required majority, and his candidacy will not determine the final outcome. The ballot dramatizes the conclave’s central tension between formal electoral thresholds and the shifting support that may make a candidate seem providential, inevitable, or merely the least impossible choice. Its apparent movement toward a conventional fifth-ballot conclusion instead leaves the cardinals—and the public beyond the chapel—waiting for another turn.