BOSTON — Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, who recently retired as Archbishop of Boston, will attend Pope Francis’s funeral at the Vatican but will not vote for the next pope.

O’Malley, who turns 81 in June, lost his coveted voting rights once he turned 80, an aide close to O’Malley tells the Boston Herald.

“He will not be in the Sistine Chapel to vote” with the other cardinals, the aide said, but he will be among his fellow cardinals as discussions over a predecessor begin.

Any baptized Roman Catholic male can be elected pope, and that includes O’Malley and Boston’s current Archbishop Richard Henning, but it is up to the College of Cardinals to choose a replacement for Pope Francis.

O’Malley has long been respected in the Roman Catholic Church, and even mentioned by church watchers as a possible candidate for pope in the past. He also remains the president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

But pope this time around?

Ray Flynn, the former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican and onetime mayor of Boston, told the Herald Monday morning, “You never know what’s going to happen.”

Flynn said the cardinals will gather in the Vatican where most will see each other for the first time. There are now 252 cardinals in the Catholic Church, with 135 under 80 with voting rights.

“There’s a lot of change taking place in the church,” Flynn said, adding that young parishioners are filling the pews. “It’s amazing to think that it’s not just older people. It’s good for the church. And that’s what matters. Francis brought people back to the faith. It’s about Jesus Christ and he’s going to show the way.”

Flynn, who called Pope Francis a “friend,” cautioned that it is “very hard to predict” what will go on inside the hallowed walls of the Sistine Chapel.

Archbishop Henning said in a statement around dawn that he was “deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Pope Francis.”

He added that Francis “challenged us to turn away from selfish impulses and towards communion with others and respect for God’s creation. ... may he rest in peace.”

Most the top candidates to replace Pope Francis are much younger than O’Malley, with the only American named as a top candidate, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, listed as 72 years old, according to Reuters news service.

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