a change of venue, and they used the Hall of Blessings instead. The cardinal electors Although there were 183 cardinals in all, cardinals aged 80 years or more at the time the papacy fell vacant were ineligible to vote in the conclave, according to rules established by Pope Paul VI in 1970 and modified slightly in 1996 by John Paul II. At the time of John Paul's death, there were 117 cardinals under the age of 80. The cardinal electors came from slightly over fifty nations, a slight increase from the 49 represented at the 1978 conclave. About 30 of those countries had a single participant. The Italian electors were the most numerous at twenty, while the United States had the second largest group with 11. Poor health prevented two of the 117 cardinal electors from attending: Jaime Sin of the Philippines and Adolfo Antonio Suárez Rivera of Mexico. All the electors were appointed by Pope John Paul II except for three: Jaime Sin, who was not attending, William Wakefield Baum and Joseph Ratzinger, making Baum and Ratzinger the only participants with previous conclave experience from the two conclaves of 1978. With 115 cardinals electors participating, this conclave saw the largest number of cardinals ever to elect a pope, a number later matched by the 2013 conclave. Both conclaves in 1978 had 111 electors. The required two-thirds majority needed to elect a pope in 2005 was 77 votes. Pre-conclave activities In the nine-day period of mourning following the funeral services for John Paul II, many cardinals attended a Mass celebrated each day by a senior cleric, often a cardinal elector or papabile, who had the opportunity to preach a homily. Celebrants included Bernard Law, Camillo Ruini, Jorge Medina, Eugênio de Araújo Sales, Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir, Leonardo Sandri, and Piergiorgio Silvano Nesti. On Saturday, 9 April, in Rome, 130 cardinals meeting in the "General Congregation", including some non-voting cardinals, agreed to Ratzinger's proposal that, while it would be unfair for a majority to restrict anyone's right to speak to the press, they might agree to such a restriction unanimously. In La Repubblica, veteran journalist Gad Lerner wrote that preventing "public reflection" by the cardinals "mutes their relationship to the world", deprives them of a "beneficial antidote to excessive scheming", increases the influence of the Curia. He cited "the fertility of ideas" generated by public discussion during the two 1978 conclaves. Presiding