I'm sure many of us have questions since the death of Pope John Paul II. It's a confusing, mournful time for millions of people, especially kids, all over the world. Probably the top questions in our minds are:

1) Who is in charge of the Catholic church?
2) Why isn't the church turned into a mass chaos when the pope dies?
3) How do we find another pope?

These are the questions on most kids' minds, I think. I'm going to answer them right now.

1) The pope has a lot of people that our like his secretaries, assistants, and other supporters. They act as his second in command. It's a lot like
the U.S. vice-president, but in this case they're holy bishops and cardinals. These people take the place of the pope in the event that he cannot be of service (like if he's sick, or something like that).

2) The church hasn't gone into mass chaos because of the advisors as described above. Without them, the church wouldn't exactly be mass chaos, but we would have no leader to make important decisions if we needed to make one.

3) The Catholic church has had many different ways of electing the pope in the past. For the past 800 years and more, Roman Catholic cardinals have been the ones to chose the next pope.

Please go to the website for the Boston Globe newspaper, which has a great pop-up series about how the next pope will be selected. It's where I got most of my research:

http://www.boston.com/news/specials/pope/galleries/elect_a_pope

Thanks!
lolly565