The next pope will be the Catholic Church's 267th leader.
VATICAN CITY -- The conclave to elect the 267th pope and successor to Pope Francis is now underway.
In total, 133 cardinals will be voting during this conclave, the most electors ever, with 108 of them being appointed by Pope Francis. Ten are from the United States.
All of the cardinals took an oath of secrecy before beginning daily votes, two times in the morning and two times in the evening. They will continue voting until two-thirds of the cardinals have agreed on a new pope.
The ballots are burned after each voting session, and the smoke will emanate from the chimney that was built on top of the Sistine Chapel. Black smoke means a majority has not been reached and the voting will continue. White smoke means a new holy leader of the Roman Catholic Church has been confirmed.
The last three popes were chosen within days.
(The Associated Press and ABC News contributed to this report.)
Black smoke emerged from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel during the conclave.
That meant that no new pope had been elected by the cardinals.
It signified the end of the second round of voting -- and three ballots -- with no consensus.
The cardinals planned to take a break for lunch before beginning their next round of voting.
Eyewitness News Anchor Joe Torres reports from the Vatican.
Cardinals will return to the Sistine Chapel on Thursday after the first voting session of the conclave on Wednesday failed to find consensus on who will become the next pope.
The electors are expected to participate in four rounds of voting through the course of the day.
The cardinals will gather for a mass in the Pauline Chapel at around 8 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET), after which they will return to the Sistine Chapel at around 9:15 a.m. (3:15 a.m. ET) to vote.
Two ballot burnings are planned. One is expected at the end of the morning around 12 p.m. (6 a.m. ET) and the second in the evening at around 7 p.m. (1 p.m. ET)
-ABC News' Phoebe Natanson, Clark Bentson and Joe Simonetti
Black smoke spewed from the Sistine Chapel chimney after the 1st conclave vote Wednesday, meaning a new pope has not yet been selected.
Cardinals will continue to vote until white smoke appears, meaning a pope has been selected.
The balloting process for the papal conclave may be shrouded in secrecy, but it is straightforward.
Each conclave member writes his choice on a paper ballot slip and folds it once in half. He then carries it aloft between two fingers as he walks to the altar.
The slip is then deposited into a special urn used only for the balloting process.
Conclave members are instructed to write their votes "as far as possible in handwriting that cannot be identified as his" to ensure anonymity.
Any conclave member who cannot make it in person to the Sistine Chapel due to illness or infirmity casts his ballot from this room in the Domus Marthae Sanctae. Those ballots are placed in a lockbox and carried to the Sistine Chapel.
Three scrutineers then count the votes by affirming what is written on each ballot and announcing it to the conclave, which allows the cardinals to record the votes themselves.
The first candidate to secure two-thirds of the votes is elected as the next pope.
The prospect of an American becoming pope is "very unlikely," according to Dr. Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church and a lecturer of history at Oxford University in England.
"There has traditionally been a lot of wariness about a pope from the Anglosphere," Pattenden said. "I shouldn't think that the current circumstances change that, especially now with the tensions between the Vatican and the Trump administration."
An American cardinal, Robert Prevost, has nevertheless started to emerge as a front-runner for the papacy, according to Father James Martin, a papal contributor for ABC.
-ABC News' Bill Hutchinson and Megan Forrester
The master of ceremonies has called "extra omnes" -- ordering all those who are not cardinal electors to exit the Sistine Chapel prior to the start of the conclave.
The door to the Sistine Chapel closed as the cardinals begin the process of choosing the new pope.
