Despite widespread illegality and a traditional disdain for betting on the outcomes of papal conclaves, gambling on who’s going to be the next pope is probably as old as the Holy See itself; which takes it back some 2,000-years to St. Peter, the rock on whom Christ built his church.
Such strictures mean nothing for Kalshi and other similarly disruptive “prediction market” betting sites.
On a roll, having successfully called President Trump’s victory back in November, Kalshi is now further upending betting markets and grabbing media headlines by taking wagers on who will be the next leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, following the death of Pope Francis on April 21.
The conclave–a gathering of the so-called College of Cardinals–will come together in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel tomorrow, Wednesday (May 7), and remain in camera until they’ve made their decision.
Kalshi’s action, and that of other prediction market sites, such as Polymarket–and the recent runaway success of Robert Harris’s book ‘Conclave’, and subsequent award-winning movie–has given the secret proceedings an added frisson.
According to recent reports, Manhattan-based Polymarket, a crypto platform, has “traded” more than US$12 million of contracts on papal betting (£9.01m), while Kalshi, headquartered in Massachusetts, has taken some US$4 million (£3 million).
Papal Front Runners
So who are the papal front-runners?
Pretty much no-one that you or I have heard of; although MAGA acolytes may be forgiven for thinking that Mr Trump is in the running, after he posted a picture of himself in full papal regalia on his Truth Social media platform.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, is the current leader of the holy papal pack, with a predicted 23 percent chance of winning, according to the prediction market sites.
Running a strong second at 19 percent is Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, a liberal dubbed the “Asian Francis”.
Disruptors
African Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana surprisingly surged into third place reckoning over the weekend with a predicted 17 percent chance of being declared the next pontiff — despite, or perhaps in spite of, the current wave of nationalist politics and anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) backlash.
Until the reforming 1917 Code of Canon Law, the Roman Catholic Church strictly prohibited betting on papal conclaves and threatened excommunication for breaching the edict.
And to this day a number of U.S. states–but not most international jurisdictions–ban gambling of this nature.
But as the slew of legal injunctions and cease-and-desist lawsuits against Kalshi and similar sites testify, the prediction market iGaming disruptors are currently happy to take-on all comers.
Unlike traditional bookies, either digital or retail, they’ve got nothing to lose as papal punters are betting against each other — and not the house.
Just don’t expect the perception or prediction market to be right on this one, as so little is known about the runners.
Back in 2013 at the last papal conclave Argentina’s Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was only given a four percent chance of winning, for example.
And he went on to be elected Pope Francis.
