The New Pope: Data Science Analysis of the 2025 Papal Conclave

"The New Pope" is an independent data science initiative that employs social network analysis and statistical modeling to examine the 2025 papal conclave. Utilizing open-source tools such as R, Gephi, and GitHub Pages, the project analyzes the relationships and dynamics among cardinals, betting odds, and historical church data to provide insights into the conclave's proceedings and outcomes: the-new-pope.org

Key Components of the data set:

• Conclave Network Analysis: Visualizes and analyzes the connections between cardinals participating in the 2025 conclave.
• Consecration Network Construction: Explores the historical relationships and consecration events among bishops to understand influence patterns.
• Global Bishop Network and Cocnlave Network: Maps the broader network of bishops to contextualize the conclave's participants within the global church hierarchy.
• Reproducible Research: Provides a comprehensive scientific use file containing all code, documentation, and data to ensure transparency and facilitate further research.
• Scraping date: was the 6. May 2025
• Network files: As additional files (which are produced for the scrapte date you find g_conclave.graphml and g_bishops_network.graphml, compatible with gephi)
  
  

Significance:
This project offers a novel, data-driven perspective on the papal conclave, moving beyond traditional analyses to uncover underlying patterns and relationships. By making the data and methodologies publicly available, it contributes to the growing field of reproducible research in religious studies and political science.