As members of the College of Cardinals prepare for the conclave, they face a profound choice: Build on the late pope’s reforms and vision, or slow things down and make a course correction.

Pope Francis was not afraid of messiness. That seems to have been part and parcel of his pastoral freedom, charging into crowds to embrace people and, as I once saw on that 2013 World Youth Day trip, accepting a cup of mate passed to him through the window of his Fiat by someone in the crowd.

The proportion of cardinal electors from Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, and countries in Europe has grown since the 2013 conclave.