WE CAN ALL be guilty of leaving things to the last minute, but leaving something until the eve of your 80^th birthday can look a little suspect.

The conclave to appoint the next pope will begin on 7 May and one Cardinal will be allowed a vote after he changed his age in the months running up to his 80^th birthday.

Only Cardinals aged 80 or under when a pope dies (or resigns) are allowed a vote, and in March, it was reported that a Cardinal from Burkina Faso had legally changed his age.

In last year’s Annuario Pontificio, essentially a Vatican Yearbook, Cardinal Philippe Ouédraogo’s date of birth was listed at 25 January, 1945.

On the Wayback Machine – an internet archive – his date of birth on the Vatican website is listed as 25 January, 1945 in a webpage capture from last year.

Several news articles also reference his date of birth as being 25 January, 1945 and people wished him a happy 80^th birthday on a Facebook group for the parish of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on 25 January last.

However, in this year’s Vatican yearbook and on the Vatican website, his date of birth is now 31 December, 1945 – 11 months later, granting him a vote in the conclave.

Journalist Hendro Munstermann, of the Dutch newspaper Nederlands Dagblad, interviewed Ouédraogo on the issue in Burkina Faso in March.

“In my village, there were neither hospitals nor schools. I was born at home and was not given a birthdate,” said Ouédraogo.

He added that when he became a priest in 1973, he had to choose one and came up with 25 January.

However, in Burkina Faso it is common practice to assign 31 December as a birthdate when the actual date of birth is unknown.

Ouédraogo said his passport also lists 31 December, 1945 as his date of birth.

But when asked why his date of birth had only been changed on the Vatican website and in the yearbook when he was approaching his 80^th birthday, Ouédraogo “remained silent”, according to Munstermann.

Il Messaggero, an Italian daily newspaper based in Rome, joked that Quédraogo had “found the secret to stopping time”.

Final conclave list

Earlier this week, another conclave drama came to an end when Angelo Becciu, an Italian cardinal convicted of embezzlement and stripped of his privileges by Pope Francis, confirmed he will not take part in the conclave.

Meanwhile, it was originally thought that the conclave would involve 135 cardinals.

But this has been reduced to 133, meaning the next pope requires 89 votes to be elected.

Two voting cardinals have dropped out due to illness, John Njue, a Cardinal from Kenya, and Antonio Canizares Llovera, a Spanish Cardinal.

Last year, Cardinal Njue, who won’t vote due to illness, similarly became two years younger when the Vatican changed his date of birth from being the somewhat vague “1944” to 1 January, 1946.

Elsewhere, while Cardinal Vinko Puljić is too ill to be in the Sistine Chapel for the conclave he has arrived in Rome to have his say.

Three Cardinals are chosen by lot for the task of collecting the votes of those who are sick and unable to be in the Sistine Chapel to vote.

Puljić will vote from his sickbed in Santa Marta, the guesthouse which Pope Francis lived in.

It’s a hotel-like building constructed during the reign of Pope John Paul II to house cardinals during a conclave.