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Habemus papam
Cardinal protodeacon at time of election
Pope Francis: A Legacy in Profile
There is a time and a place for everything, including speculation on the next pope. This week saw some grist for the mill, with the publication of a sort of voter&#;s guide for the red hats who will pick Francis&#;s (and Peter&#;s) successor.
We&#;ll get to that.
First, we need to consider what makes the next conclave such a difficult business, and parsing that takes us back to the one that elected Francis.
The election of Pope Francis did not come as a surprise.
His name had already been circulated after the Conclave that elected Benedict XVI in , and it was the first time that the diary of a conclave had launched the name of a strong candidate, as Bergoglio seemed to have been in that Conclave. In general, this type of news does not favor the candidates. Cardinal Giuseppe Siri has the reputation of being the cardinal most rumored as the &#;second&#; among the most voted since the Conclave that elected John XXIII, but also in the one that elected Paul VI and even in the one that led to the election of John Paul II. Siri, however, never became Pope.
One might have thought it would have been the same for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but that’s not how things went in his time, nor did things go differently only because of a series of contingent factors that had changed the course of history.
The first was that we were facing a shocking and completely unexpected moment: the resignation of a Pope. The resignation extended the time of preparation for the end of the pontificate but, at the same time, shortened it. The cardinals had the idea that they had to leave the Sistine Chapel with a name and quickly, so as not to have the eyes of the world upon them—upon the Church—and so as to attenuate the impression of a Church in crisis.
The Church in crisis—the idea of it—was the key to identifying the profile of the new Pope.
He had to be someone who would know how to speak to the media, give the idea of a Church tha New popes don’t come along very often, and the election of the pontiff is unlike any other democratic process on Earth. A new pope is elected by cardinals, the senior members of the Catholic clergy who are well-known for their distinctive red garb. Cardinals eligible to vote for the new pope – i.e., those under the age of 80 – travel to the Vatican from all corners of the globe. They then form what’s known as a conclave, which is the body responsible for choosing the next pontiff. For around the first thousand years of the papacy, things weren’t quite as clear-cut as this, with various factors coming into play. Lower clergy and members of the wider Roman community could have their say, while secular leaders such as the Holy Roman Emperors would inevitably meddle in proceedings. The lack of a formalised process meant there could be all kinds of peculiar twists and turns. An 11th-century pope, Gregory VI, literally purchased the papacy from his predecessor. A 2nd-century pope, Fabian, was chosen by the Roman clergy on the spur of the moment because a dove happened to fly down and perch on his head during a church gathering. It was in that Pope Nicholas II decided to tighten things up by decreeing that popes would be chosen by cardinals only. This curbed the influence of external figures like emperors and aristocrats, paving the way for the independent conclave process we know today. Having assembled in the Vatican, the cardinals file into the Sistine Chapel, where the time-honoured conclave process takes place beneath the iconic ceiling fresco of Michelangelo. The grandeur of the religious art ensures that – in the words of Pope John Paul II – ‘everything is conducive to an awareness of the presence of God.’ Once the cardinals have taken their seats inside the Sistine Chapel, all those not involved in the conclave process are ordered to leave wi I was in Rome with a group of Fordham students in October for the global meeting of Catholic leaders, called a synod. During that time, Pope Francis met with a group of trans and intersex Catholics. It was a very powerful meeting. The pope’s affirmation of them as created by God with inherent dignity was extraordinarily moving. One of them, Nicole Santamaria, an intersex woman from El Salvador, wrote about her experience and to me, it’s a testimony more powerful than Conclave’s surprise ending. How much do cardinals really “campaign” for the part? Some cardinals do campaign, but they need to do it quietly because if you’re seen as ambitious, you’re done. The key is to have allies who campaign for you. If you are seen as an odds-on favorite, your fellow cardinals will not vote for you. As the Romans say, “He who enters the conclave a pope, leaves it a cardinal.” How plausible is it that a complete unknown gets elected pope, as Cardinal Benitez does? I’d assume that there are obvious frontrunners when the cardinals get together at their conclave. There are some frontrunners but it’s usually a large group, 15 to 20 plausible candidates. In centuries past, it was much more predictable but since John XXIII was elected as an outsider in , it’s been anyone’s guess. The cardinals don’t want to go for a total unknown — if they pick a dark horse, they want that cardinal to be a safe choice, a known quantity. But they can still be surprised by who the safe bet becomes, as it happened with Pope Francis. Does the ordination of a secret cardinal known to only the pope have precedent or is this imaginative screenwriting? There is a real custom by which a pope can name a cardinal “in pectore,” which is Latin for “in his heart” or “in his breast”. The name is known only to the pope usually, because the bishop would face persecution if his status were known. This is never explained in the film for reasons of time, I’m sure. One technical problem is that as soon as a How does the Vatican choose a new pope?
Who elects the pope?
How does the conclave take place?