Except that I do believe the statement has been made that it’s the Holy Spirit who chooses the next Pope. So now you are saying that it’s really the Cardinals who choose but the Holy Spirit puts a list of options up for consideration?
First, dear Bear, you must be suppressing a vocation to be a Canon Lawyer.
:o)
Second, yeah, that's approximately right, mutatis mutandis. The Cardinals choose. We know they do. We ask the Holy SPirit to guide them. We know He does.
Luke 11:13
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
People are free, of course, to choose against the Holy Spirit --- at their awful peril. We have had some morally skeevy popes. Seven or eight of them by my count, when I did some intensive reading on it as a teenager. (I wanted to grit my teeth and get all the $#@$#@$# news at once.) I'll tell ya, after the Borgias, most of 'em looked pretty good.