The short, easy answer: it typically takes a lifetime of service for the rest of the church to determine if they fit the bill to be Pope.
Also, the cardinals who choose the next pope typically don’t choose candidates who are only “moderately” old (in their 60s) b/c they might end up living with a pope they regret electing for 20+ years
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Because you can see his previous work and determine if you think he is suitable for the job.
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If you make a bad pick he will see himself out soon enough anyway.
Pun intended.
The older the average pope, the shorter the average term, and the more papal elections in a given span of time.
One of the main powers of cardinals is electing the pope, so more papal elections means more power for the college of cardinals.
It doesn’t really makes much sense.
The amount of power is the same. They don’t get more power by voting a pope every 5 years rather than every 30 years. They still vote for the pope, the person in that position is always there because it was voted by the Cardinals.
If something it would be the opposite. Selecting a person for a longer period would give you more power as your decision is more time in place unable to be challenged.
The amount of power is the same
There is only one pope seat at a time which they can assign, true. But that’s not a complete measurement of all the power involved.
Think of fit this way. Every time there’s an election, everyone comes out to kiss their ass and offer favors so that they themselves or “their guy” will get elected. If elections happen only every 20 years, then this ass-kiss-fest only happens every 20 years.
They’d rather it happen every 5 years.
Technically, they don’t have to be. They could elect a venerable whippersnapper cardinal - Dan Brown wrote a book about that. And that tells you how likely that is if he wrote the story. But it is possible.
It would be rare because it takes seniority to get into the position. And politics to be well liked enough to be put forward and then elected. By mostly old people. Some of whom would like the job themselves.
They serve for life (or until resignation), so if someone relatively young is elected pope, the same person will be pope for many decades. The cardinals don’t typically want that to happen, so they’ll tend to want to elect someone who is probably going to die soon.
