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There will be smoke: Papal election

 Pope vote: cardinals approach the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican before the start of the conclave in 2005. This time there will be 115 cardinals casting votes twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, trying to achieve a two thirds majority plus one
Pope vote: cardinals approach the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican before the start of the conclave in 2005. This time there will be 115 cardinals casting votes twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, trying to achieve a two thirds majority plus one 
The first smoke signal from the locked‑in cardinals is due at about 6pm GMT today. I forecast black – no pope. While the cardinals are locked into their conclave, an umbrella is, perhaps surprisingly, in charge of the Catholic Church.

On his coat of arms, Pope Benedict XVI sported a mitre above the cross keys. The keys stand for the authority of St Peter, whom Jesus told: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Now that the Church is in the popeless condition of sede vacante, the mitre has been replaced by an umbrella (red and gold striped), the umbraculum.

The umbraculum is not in use these days, but if it were it would open out, not like the curly umbrellas in a Renoir painting, but flat on top. The papal umbraculum is the badge of the Camerlengo, the Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church. He is one of only two curial officials to keep their office during the sede vacante, but his powers are not wide.

If the umbraculum, the flabella (ostrich-feather fans), the pallium (a scarf of wool from lambs presented in a basket to the Pope on St Agnes Day, January 21) and other accoutrements of the papacy were instead connected with the Dalai Lama, we would probably think them mysteriously sacred, instead of rather odd.

Yet we like immemorial custom. Take the white smoke. At the weekend, Italian firemen fixed up a stove chimney to let it out of the Sistine Chapel. At the same time, carpenters fixed up a raised wooden floor over most of the Sistine Chapel, lest the elderly (though under 80) cardinals voting should trip over a step. It sounds like a recipe for an inferno, like the conflagration of the Houses of Parliament in 1834 through the burning of unwanted wooden Exchequer tallies in a stove. After all, in 2005, following the final vote that elected Benedict XVI, the inside of the Sistine Chapel was filled with smoke – and a Japanese television company had recently spent $4 million cleaning its frescoes.

The smoke, white or black, has no liturgical or political significance, and is of no great antiquity. It is a mere indicator of what is going on in the incommunicado conclave (no mobiles, no pigeons, no newspapers). It doesn’t really work, usually coming out grey. They used to add wet straw to the papers burnt after each inconclusive ballot. Now unspecified “chemicals” are added. A successful outcome has also been accompanied since 1978 by bell‑ringing, though in 2005 no one could find the key to the ringing chamber for a quarter of an hour.

If all goes well, we can expect a lapse of 40 minutes between the election of a pope and his appearance on the central balcony outside St Peter’s, accompanied by the announcement: “Habemus Papam! ”.

All this fiddle-faddle has grown out of a simple enough act: the choosing of a bishop for Rome. Before the Emperor Constantine cosied up to Christianity in the early fourth century, the lay people of Rome as well as its clergy had a say in the choice. For the next 700 years or so, the emperors and rival kings tried to gain control of papal elections.

There were counter efforts. The first German pope (if Ostrogoths can be called German), Boniface II (530-32), was named pope by his predecessor. He thought it such a good idea that he named his successor as well, but the practice didn’t catch on, for too many vested interests pushed their own candidates.

It was seven years before the Battle of Hastings that Pope Nicholas II decided that, from then on, only the higher clergy of Rome should have a vote for pope. These are what we call cardinals. Each is assigned a church in Rome. England’s Cardinal Cormac Murphy-Connor (a few months too old to vote) has the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (the one with a Renaissance elephant outside, bearing an obelisk).

A two thirds majority was introduced in 1179, and the locking-in of the cardinals in 1274 (the aim being to speed things along). The Sistine Chapel as a place to vote is a Johnny-come-lately, only having been built by Sixtus IV (hence its name) in 1480.

Often the elections were not even in Rome. Everyone likes to remember the election at Viterbo, a champion among lengthy conclaves, when in 1269 the city refused to send in more than bread and water after the cardinals had been deliberating for a year. When that didn’t shift them, the impatient citizens took the tiles off the roof. After three years they elected Gregory X, a goody who established relations with Mongolia but died after four years.

In that century the number of cardinals had sunk to seven. In the 15th century it rose to 24, then to a set number of 70 in 1587, at which it stuck until the 1960s, being raised to 120 voting cardinals in 1970. I had thought that Benedict XVI might have held a farewell consistory to name a handful more cardinals, perhaps including the current Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols. It was not to be. So 115 will vote.

We forget how recently the security of a conclave has been certain. Pius IX (reigned 1846-78) was elected not in the Sistine Chapel but at the Quirinal Palace in Rome; he had to flee the city three years later. In 1878 the new Pope could not be proclaimed from the balcony for fear of violence. Pius XII was said to have made provisions for his resignation if captured by the Germans in the Second World War; election of a replacement would have been no easy feat.

Even when the Sistine Chapel was used for elections, the cardinals did not sleep in it, but in cells drawn by lot in adjoining buildings. It was uncomfortable, though each was allowed two servants. Today the cardinals stay in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a kind of clerical hotel round the other side of St Peter’s, near the Vatican railway station. They can talk during meals.

Secrecy inside the conclave is reckoned a good thing. Pope Benedict XVI tightened up the rules before he abdicated so that any cardinal who spills the beans is automatically excommunicated.

The voting process is not like a political rally. Speeches there have been, more than 100 since March 4, during the daily closed pow-wows – the “general congregations” of all the cardinals, including those too old to vote. Subjects have included Christian unity and care for the poor. Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, tweeted a bland tweet after one meeting, and the cardinals soon resolved there should be no more, even before the conclave.

An element leading to the election of Benedict XVI in 2005 was his sermon at the Mass of the Holy Spirit before the beginning of the conclave. It impressed. He was speaking as Dean of the College of Cardinals. The present Dean is Cardinal Angelo Sodano, presiding at this morning’s Mass before the conclave, but the difference is that he is over 80, and so ineligible to enter the conclave.

This afternoon at 3.30 GMT the cardinals will walk in procession into the Sistine Chapel, to the accompaniment of a litany invoking the saints: “St Michael pray for us… St Abraham pray for us, St Moses pray for us” – all the way through the ages, via Sts John Fisher and Thomas More, to St Charles Lwanga, a Ugandan martyred in 1886. “From every evil, deliver us, O Lord,” they will chant in Latin, the language of the conclave liturgy. “From anger and pride and all evilness of will, deliver us, O Lord.”

They will listen to a meditation by the Maltese Cardinal Prospero Grech about their responsibilities, take their blood-curdling oaths of secrecy and then they’re off.

Each cardinal writes the name of his candidate on a slip of paper (disguising his handwriting if he wants) and the slips are placed one by one in an urn (it used to be a chalice). The scrutineers count up the votes and (if they are all there) declare to the cardinals who got how many votes. Then they vote again, twice in the morning, twice in the afternoon till someone gets two thirds plus one. The laborious process would put the Lib Dems to shame.

Benedict XVI abolished the possibility of immediate election by acclamation, but even if the cardinals can’t decide within a few days, a two thirds majority is still required. An earlier experiment with a simple majority in cases of deadlock was thought to introduce an element of ganging up. It could take some days. One thing is sure: no one knows who will win.

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