When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected in 2013 as Pope Francis, he was a near total Vatican outsider. He had never been a Vatican official, instead spending decades in local ministry. And he came from Argentina, the first pope from the Americas.

As the world's Catholic cardinals meet this week to discuss who should succeed Francis, the deliberations will have to contend with untold questions, like whether or not tap another relative outsider.

But whoever it is, the choice is very unlikely to be from the United States, according to Father Bryan Massingale, a professor at the Jesuit Fordham University in New York.

READ: What we know ahead of the conclave

"Candidates from the United States, cardinals from the United States enter [the papal conclave] with somewhat of a handicap. Because the United States is such a major global force in the world, I think many are reluctant to add the power of the papacy also to the United States's power in the world," Massingale said while speaking from the Fordham University Church.

Moreover, the lack of prominence for U.S. leaders within the church is in keeping with the status of the U.S. diocese, Massingale noted.

"It's important, especially for Americans, to understand that the Catholic Church in the world is about 1.4 billion persons, and American Catholics only comprise 6% of that total. And I think that's important because sometimes because of our outsized media that we have, we can kind of maybe think that our concerns in America, our experience in America are somehow normative for the entire Catholic Church. I think it's important that when we see the conclave in action, we're going to see a global body, global Catholicism in action."

Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88, focused much of his papacy on outreach to places where the Church was not traditionally strong.

Many of his 47 foreign trips were to countries with small Catholic populations, such as South Sudan, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, and he was especially committed to Catholic-Muslim dialogue.

The late pope's unusually open style attracted criticism from some Catholics, but also global interest. His funeral on Saturday and a procession through Rome to his burial place at the Basilica of St. Mary Major attracted crowds estimated at more than 400,000.

And according to Massingale, whoever is selected as the next pope, he is unlikely to embrace a radically different outlook as Francis.

"One thing we do know about the conclave is that 80% of the electors are cardinals that have been promoted by Francis. And so many people think that, 'Well, does that mean that the next pope will continue his policies?' I think it's fair to say that the cardinals as a group are in broad agreement with the general direction that Francis established," Massingale said. "So I would say that we shouldn't look for a radical departure from Francis."

(Production by: Hussein Al Waaile, Dan Fastenberg)