Pope John Paul II Cardinals would be the ones who would give him most support at his eventual election to the papacy In August 1978, following the death of Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Wojtyła voted in the papal conclave, which elected Pope John Paul I. John Paul I died after only 33 days as pope, triggering another conclave. The second conclave of 1978 started on 14 October, ten days after the funeral. It was split between two strong candidates for the papacy: Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, the conservative Archbishop of Genoa, and the liberal Archbishop of Florence, Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, a close friend of John
Pope John Paul II's political views and against man.”" The Pope also reaffirmed the Church's existing teaching on gender in relation to transsexuals, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which he supervised, made clear that transsexuals can not serve in church positions. In an address on 22 October 1996, to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Church's openness to the theory of evolution: In the same address, the Pope rejected any theory of evolution that provides a materialistic explanation for the human soul: John Paul II also wrote to the "Pontifical Academy of Sciences" on the subject of