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VATICAN CITY - Black smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel on Monday, a signal that cardinals had voted but not yet reached a majority needed to choose a new pope. The black smoke meant the 115 voting cardinal “princes” of the church would retire for the night and return to the chapel Tuesday morning for more balloting in their search for a successor to Pope John Paul II. If two morning ballots fail to produce a pope, the cardinals could hold two more votes Tuesday afternoon. Some 40,000 people who packed St. Peter’s Square to stare at the stovepipe jutting from the chapel roof shouted, “It’s black! It’s black!” Many snapped photos of the moment. Cardinals from six continents had earlier sequestered themselves in the Sistine Chapel, convening the new millennium’s first conclave — a secret, sacred gathering to elect a pope who will guide the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics into a new era. The doors to the chapel decorated with frescoes by Michelangelo and wired with electronic jamming devices to thwart eavesdropping were shut, leaving the 115 voting “princes” of the church to decide whether to hold their first round of voting Monday or wait until Tuesday.
One by one, they filed up to a Book of the Gospels, placed their right hands on it and pronounced a second oath to keep secret their deliberations to elect a successor to Pope John Paul II, who died April 2 at age 84. During a Mass before the start of the conclave, Ratzinger, a conservative cardinal seen as a front-runner to be the next pope, told fellow prelates they must choose a pontiff who will defend traditional teachings and reject attempts to modernize doctrine. In his homily, Ratzinger, 78, spoke in unusually blunt terms against “a dictatorship of relativism” — the ideology that there are no absolute truths. “Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as fundamentalism,” said Ratzinger, who is the Vatican’s doctrinal chief and dean of the College of Cardinals. “Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ’swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards. “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” White or black Thousands of pilgrims and tourists converged on St. Peter’s Square to watch the chapel chimney for the white smoke that ultimately will tell the world that the church’s 265th pontiff has been elected. The famous stove in the chapel also will bellow black smoke to signal any inconclusive round of voting. “I feel really cool being here,” said Kathy Mullen, 49, a writer from Beverly, Mass., among the hundreds of pilgrims who lined up early on a sunny morning to pass through metal detectors on their way into the basilica. The cardinals were to continue their deliberations on Tuesday — two rounds in the morning, two in the afternoon — and every day until a candidate gets two-thirds support: 77 votes. If they remain deadlocked late in the second week of voting, they can vote to change the rules so a winner can be elected with a simple majority: 58 votes.
On Sunday, the cardinals moved into the super-secure Domus Sanctae Marthae, the $20 million hotel that John Paul had constructed inside Vatican City so the cardinals could rest in comfort in private rooms between voting sessions. Swiss Guards, their brightly colored uniforms covered by dark rain gear, saluted the prelates as they were whisked to the residence in limousines. The daily La Stampa said cardinals gearing up for a stressful stretch of days had packed CD players and headphones in their bags along with prayer books and snacks to nibble on in their rooms. Conspicuously missing from their quarters were cell phones, newspapers, radios, TVs and Internet connections — all banned in new rules laid down by John Paul II to minimize the chances of news influencing their secret deliberations and to prevent leaks to the outside world. The Vatican’s security squad swept the chapel for listening devices, and cooks, maids, elevator operators and drivers were sworn to secrecy. Excommunication is a possible punishment for any indiscretions. No conclave in the past century has lasted more than five days, and the election that made John Paul II pope in October 1978 took eight ballots over three days. He died April 2 at 84 after a pontificate that lasted more than 26 years, history’s third-longest papacy. Europe has only one quarter of the world’s Catholics but half the cardinals in the conclave. Italy controls the largest block, with 20 votes, but Italians were divided on whether the papacy should return to them after the Polish John Paul. “I don’t care if he’s Italian or not, just as long as he’s a good man like the last one,” said Romano Mariozzi, a retired plumber from Rome.
Cardinals faced a choice that boiled down to two options: an older, skilled administrator who could serve as a “transitional” pope while the church absorbs John Paul’s legacy, or a younger dynamic pastor and communicator — perhaps from Latin America or elsewhere in the developing world where the church is growing — who could build on the late pontiff’s popularity over a quarter-century of globe-trotting. The prelates agreed after John Paul’s funeral not to talk publicly about the process, but the world’s news media have been rife with speculation centering on about two dozen candidates considered “papabile,” Italian for “pope material.” The name with the biggest buzz was Ratzinger’s, a powerful Vatican official from Germany. Among the issues sure to figure prominently in the conclave: containing the priest sex-abuse scandals that have cost the church millions in settlements in the United States; coping with a chronic shortage of priests and nuns in the West; halting the stream of people leaving a church whose teachings they no longer find relevant; and improving dialogue with the Islamic world. “We are praying together with the church for everything to get better,” said Sister Annonciata, 42, a Rwandan nun from the Little Sisters of Jesus order who was in Vatican City on Monday. Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo, an Italian who at 86 is too old to vote, told Italian state radio Sunday he was confident the conclave would be guided to the right man. “Providence sends a pope for every era,” he said. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. |
Polish-born Karol Jozef Wojtyla has held the throne of St. Peter for more than 26 years, the third-longest pontificate in history. The length of his papacy is only surpassed by that of Pius IX in the 19th century and St. Peter. He was the first non- Italian elected pope since Adrian VI more than 450 years ago.