However, his chances of becoming pope had faded somewhat in recent years. No Jesuit has ever sat in the Chair of St. Peter. And there was another stumbling block: he, like John Paul before him, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and, at seventy-eight, was one of the oldest men in contention. In 2002, John Paul had granted Martini’s request to resign from his position as archbishop of Milan, and he relocated to Jerusalem to live out his retirement in scholarly peace—hardly the actions of a man who wished to take on the greatest responsibility of his life.
Cardinal Claudio Hummes of São Paulo (71)
Known for his exemplary skills as a pastor and for championing marginalized peoples, the archbishop of São Paulo “assumed mythical status in his battles with the generals of the Brazilian dictatorship” as a young bishop in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His radicalism had softened somewhat with age, and he had been invited to preach to John Paul and senior clergy at the Vatican in 2002, which many felt indicated strong approval from the late pope. As a leading voice in favor of reform, he believed that the church was too concerned with the West and should open itself up to place developing nations on an even footing. As 42 percent of the world’s Catholics lived in Latin America, the election of Claudio Hummes would no doubt receive a rapturous response.
THE MODERATES
Falling somewhere in between the conservatives and the reformers, the moderates were not bound by a united vision for the future of the church, as the opposing two camps were, and as a consequence were perceived as more malleable by either side, should one of them be elected pope. Conversely, however, they had the potential to disrupt any clear conservative or progressive candidate’s chances, if a losing side decided to put votes behind a moderate to try to force a stalemate.
Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan (71)
Aptly described as being “roly-poly, affable,” and “short, stout, and quick to smile,” Cardinal Tettamanzi was another socially conscious conservative who had been very close to John Paul. With a strong background in theology, he worked with the late pope on his seminal encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), which reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s views on the sanctity of life with respect to abortion, euthanasia, birth control, and the death penalty, but according to leading Vatican commentator Sandro Magister, “now that these topics have become more crucial than ever in the United States, Europe and Italy, both inside and outside the Church, a real ‘epochal question’ in Ratzinger and Ruini’s judgement, he doesn’t talk about them anymore.” Tettamanzi was a vocal campaigner for the rights of underprivileged populations. He stood in support of the antiglobalization protests at the G-8 summit protests in Genoa in 2001 and was quoted as saying, “A single African child sick with AIDS counts more than the entire universe.”
All this had made him one of the odds-on favorites in the always-a-bit-myopic Italian media, but Tettamanzi did not speak English, and a poor grasp of languages would create a significant barrier for any potential new pope.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires (68)
Another Jesuit, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was known as the “slum bishop” on account of his compassionate work with the poor in his native Argentina, but his politics were more conservative-liberal than liberal-conservative—he was a strong supporter of traditionalist doctrine and had opposed legal reforms on same-sex marriage, gay adoptions, and abortion. At sixty-eight, he was the youngest contender; he also stood out in that he had been made a cardinal only four years earlier, in 2001.
Bergoglio had a reputation for being a compassionate, humble, and spiritual man who rejected the luxurious trappings available to one in his position and instead chose to live alongside his parishioners in a modest apartment and to ride the buses and subways of Buenos Aires rather than using a chauffeur-driven limousine. He had first come to prominence in 1998, when he made headlines by washing and kissing the feet of HIV/AIDS sufferers at a hospital in Buenos Aires. He had also made an impression within the church when, in October 2001, John Paul II selected him as relator at the Synod of Bishops, responsible for summarizing information to the conference, replacing Archbishop of New York Edward Egan, who had stayed in the city following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
At the time of the conclave, Latin America’s Catholics made up 40 percent of the church’s 1.1 billion followers; it was a long shot, but the prospect of a pope from one of the developing countries was not to be dismissed easily. As a cardinal (from a developing country) is quoted in John Allen’s book The Rise of Benedict XVI, “If we elect a pope from Honduras or Nigeria, there would be a very dynamic and excited local church behind him, as there was with John Paul II and Poland. If we elect someone from Belgium or Holland, can you imagine the Belgians or the Dutch getting excited? He simply wouldn’t have the same base of support.”
Bergoglio had garnered significant high-ranking support among those who thought him capable of lowering the Vatican’s fortresslike walls and opening the church up to the wider world, while at the same time maintaining an “unwavering commitment to rather traditional doctrinal views.” But there were concerns as to whether he would even accept the pontificate if he won the election on account of his preference toward a humble lifestyle and the fact that Jesuits are oath-bound not to seek power.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State (77)
The fourth and final Italian in contention, Cardinal Sodano had occupied many senior roles within the church before settling into his post as Vatican secretary of state in 1991. He accompanied John Paul on numerous diplomatic missions abroad, and controversially struck up a friendship with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, even campaigning for his release from detention in the United Kingdom in 1999. He maintained strong ties with Latin America and was a respected theologian, but his old age and rumored poor health meant he, too, was an unlikely successor to John Paul.
THE CONCLAVE APPROACHES
During a conclave (“with a key”), cardinals are literally locked inside the Sistine Chapel, with Vatican Swiss Guards keeping watch outside the doors, until they come to a successful agreement on who should be the next pope. John Paul had left strict instructions about maintaining the secrecy of the gathering, so Wi-Fi is blocked throughout the Holy City for the duration of proceedings, the Sistine Chapel is closed to tourists and swept for bugging devices, and sophisticated jamming devices are fitted throughout the Apostolic Palace to prevent information from leaking out. Inside the chapel, wooden walkways are specially laid to preserve the ancient floor, and long trestle tables with deep crimson fringing are brought in to seat the cardinal electors, adding even more color to a room already adorned with five-hundred-year-old frescos on its walls and ceiling.
One could easily be forgiven for assuming that, during the election of a pope, those locked inside the chapel debate the various merits of candidates and the importance of issues facing the church, just as democracies do throughout the world. Not so. A conclave is a quiet period of solemn prayer and reflection during which cardinals look for guidance from the Holy Spirit in their election of a new pope. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio later described “a climate of intense recollection—almost mystical—that was present at those sessions. We were all conscious of being nothing but instruments, to serve divine providence in electing a proper successor for John Paul II.”
Before the beginning of the conclave, during sede vacante (the period when the seat of St. Peter is vacant), all cardinals met in a general congregation presided over by Cardinal Ratzinger, as dean, and in smaller groups of just four cardinals, known as particular congregations. In these meetings, they were required to act on any pressing Vatican business that could not wait until a new pope was in place, as well as review John Paul’s fourteen-thousand-word apostolic directive Universi Dominici Gregis (The Shepherd of the Lord’s Whole Flock), in which he explained updated rules for how the conclave was to be conducted, revising the previous set of changes decreed by Pope Paul VI in 1975. Cardinal Ratzing
er insisted that it be read aloud, line by line.
As he had at the funeral, Ratzinger surprised his colleagues with a glittering display of authority, fairness, and diplomacy. Not only did he know every cardinal by name—a feat John Paul never quite managed—but his facility with languages meant he could address and be understood by the many cardinals who did not speak Italian, let alone Latin. But it was not just his display of memory and linguistic flair that was impressive; the cardinals felt that he was genuinely concerned with what they had to say. At several times during proceedings he is said to have “intervened to ask those who had not yet spoken to do so”; and “when he had to summarize a discussion, he always seemed fair to the various points of view that had been expressed.” Some even came away from these discussions feeling he had outperformed the late, great pontiff himself, saying that “Ratzinger had heard them in a way that John Paul II did not always manage.”
TENSIONS AND SMEAR TACTICS
It is fair to suggest that the conduct of the general congregation was largely collegial and that cardinals were able to put their differences aside for the greater good of the church. But arguments did, on occasion, get heated and, even worse, smear stories began to appear in the media about each of the men considered papabile, despite the press blackout.
The most frequent bad press focused on candidates’ health, and stories of illness ranging from diabetes to depression surfaced in the papers and on TV news channels. The most aggressive form of sabotage, however, emerged three days before the conclave was scheduled to begin, when a deeply compromising emailed dossier “dropped anonymously into the inbox of senior cardinals as they gathered in Rome.” The email contained details of a complaint filed by Argentinian human rights lawyer Marcelo Parrilli, accusing Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of “complicity in the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, whose work with the poor in a Buenos Aires shanty town was considered by Argentina’s military death squads in 1976 to be subversive.” Bergoglio had dismissed the priests a week prior to their disappearance, and Parrilli claimed that this dismissal had contributed to their being tortured and kept hooded and shackled during their five-month-long detention.
There was little time in which to refute these claims on any grand scale, let alone establish who had sent the email—we shall return to this chapter of Bergoglio’s life later—but what was immediately clear was that his candidacy was considered to be a significant threat among certain factions of the church, and there were some prepared to take desperate measures to discredit him. Supporters of Bergoglio strenuously denied the accusations in hushed conversations down the Vatican’s marble corridors and over dinners hosted by anti-Ratzinger “conclave power brokers,” one of whom wryly remarked, “Ever since the Last Supper, the church has decided its most important affairs at the dinner table.” But as the congregations drew to a close and the conclave began, it was uncertain whether the campaign against Bergoglio had been successful.
“EXTRA OMNES!”
And so it was time.
* * *
At exactly 4:30 P.M. on Monday, April 18, the 115 cardinals, resplendent in their traditional crimson “choir dress,” with accompanying wide white-lace sleeves, took their final steps of the procession from the Hall of Blessings—traditionally cardinals start the procession in the Cappella Paolina, but it was undergoing extensive renovations between 2002 and 2009—into the Sistine Chapel, singing the ninth-century “Litany of the Saints” as they walked. For the first time in history, this dazzling spectacle was broadcast live on television, and Catholics around the world were given a glimpse of ancient ritual as the cardinals took their assigned seats, arranged in order of seniority, and then an oath of secrecy, first collectively and then individually.
Once the last cardinal had placed his hand on the Book of the Gospels and stated that he did “promise, pledge, and swear, so help me God and these Holy Gospels which I now touch with my hand,” transmissions were ceased and at 5:24 P.M. Archbishop Piero Marini, papal master of liturgical ceremonies, declared “Extra omnes!”—Everyone out! When all but the cardinal electors had departed, the Swiss Guards, on duty during the entire process, locked the doors of the Sistine Chapel from the outside, and the voting began.
THE FIRST BALLOT
Tradition states that no one but cardinal electors are permitted inside when voting is taking place. Consequently, the cardinals have to roll up those beautiful sleeves and take turns at pivotal jobs. Nine names were drawn each morning by lot and assigned equally to the following roles:
Scrutineers These three men sit center stage at a table in front of the altar, beneath Michelangelo’s imposing fresco of the Last Judgment, and count the ballots.
Infirmarii Though none was required in the 2005 conclave, three men are still assigned to collect the ballots of any cardinal electors too ill to make it to the Sistine Chapel.
Revisers Another three cardinals are required to double-check the work of the scrutineers to ensure that the tallies of names and ballots are correct. If they are, the revisers return the ballots to the scrutineers, who read each name aloud before piercing the word Eligo on each ballot with a needle, then preserving the papers for burning in the chapel’s special stove once the count is complete.
During each round, cardinal electors were presented with a rectangular ballot paper with the words Eligo in Summum Pontificem (I elect as Supreme Pontiff), and required, per John Paul’s directive, to write, somewhat comically, “as far as possible in handwriting that cannot be identified as his,” the name of the man he would like to be pope (naturally excluding themselves). After folding the paper in half, the cardinals approached the altar, knelt to recite a prayer, and then took another oath, before placing their ballot on a gold paten, or plate, for all to see, then tipping it into a specially designed urn.
No pope has ever been elected after the first round of voting, and tallies are generally very disparate, after which numbers begin to align behind leading candidates until the final candidate is chosen. In his book The Rule of Benedict, David Gibson notes that it is customary for cardinals during the first ballot to “vote for a friend or to honor someone who will never be pope but who can at least know that they received a vote in a conclave”; it is even joked that they “vote for who they want on the first ballot, then they let the Holy Spirit guide them.” In the eight conclaves held during the twentieth century, the greatest number of ballots held in any one papal election was fourteen (Pope Pius XI, 1922) and the fewest was three (Pope Pius XII, 1939); the average is just under eight ballots per conclave, over an average of 3.5 days.
The number of cardinal electors had risen significantly from just sixty-four in the 1903 conclave to 111 in 1978, when John Paul II was elected. With the record-breaking 115 cardinals in 2005, the process of voting took a significant amount of time, but shortly after 8 P.M. on April 18, the forty-thousand-strong crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square was momentarily confused when a weak plume of what looked to be whitish-gray smoke began to emerge from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel. The unfortunate coincidence of the first ballot being burned at the same time as the hourly chiming of the bells of St. Peter’s Basilica caused many to erupt into cheers and applause. However, what would truly have been a miracle—a pope elected on the first ballot—was quickly dispelled by the sight of a thicker trail of dark gray-black smoke.
The Vatican had been using a white smoke signal to indicate the election of a new pontiff only since 1914, but its reliable unreliability had become something of a running joke. Countless hours and a significant amount of money had recently been spent upgrading the system … only for it to fail again on the first try.
As many had expected, this conclave did not end on the first day. What was unexpected, however, was that in September 2005 an anonymous cardinal broke the oaths of secrecy he had sworn to God on the altar of the Sistine Chapel and published an account of the voting tally throughout the conclave in the Italian foreign affairs magazine Limes.
Thanks to
this anonymous cardinal’s decision to break his oath, we now know that in line with the initial predictions of many going into the conclave, Ratzinger was way out in front of all the other candidates but had not yet won the race. To secure the papacy, a cardinal is required to obtain seventy-seven votes (equivalent to two-thirds of the total), so he still required a hefty thirty minds to swing in his favor.
Among Ratzinger’s hotly tipped rivals, Tettamanzi performed the poorest, managing just two votes; and Martini’s meager nine felt more like a token of respect—recalling Gibson’s remarks regarding the first round of votes—for all his years of being papabile, rather than any serious move to elect a retired man with Parkinson’s.
The real surprise of the first ballot was Jorge Bergoglio’s count of ten. He was not considered by the secret diarist to be “a true candidate of [the] ‘left,’” but in the absence of Martini, he became the one to whom liberal, anti-Ratzinger votes would now fall. Still, he needed a significant number to swing behind him if he was to catch the Panzer Kardinal, who would likely benefit from the votes of John Paul allies Ruini and Sodano in the next round.
At the end of the first day, the cardinals made their way out of the Sistine Chapel and were bundled into waiting minibuses that whisked them back to their luxury lodgings—which the Vatican had spent a modest twenty million dollars on—for dinner, deliberations, and debate, in discreet but deliberate contravention of the rules, ahead of the next day’s voting. Cut off from the outside world, conversations ran long into the night and the air was thick with speculation about Bergoglio as a potential successor to John Paul.
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