Waiting for Smoke Signals

Dear Blog Readers — Tomorrow is the big day– the first day of the Conclave to elect the next Pope.  I wanted to write a lengthy post on all the ceremony and traditions involved in a Conclave, but I’m too wiped out.  Fortunately my fellow blogger Tiffany Parks did that.   Check out her blog post (How A Conclave Works: All the Rules and Rituals of a Papal Election)

All I have the energy for tonight (despite the double espresso I just made myself) is to share a few notes from today and some photos from the past few days.

The photo above was taken last Saturday morning by my colleague Gregorio Borgia as firefighters attached the famous chimney to the roof of the Sistine Chapel.  Starting around 7pm tomorrow evening we will all be gluing our eyes to that chimney waiting to see either black or white smoke.  For those who are not familiar with Vatican traditions– black smoke means the Cardinals have NOT elected a Pope, white smoke means they have.

As the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi explained rather giddily on Saturday the fun part is that most of the time you can’t tell if the smoke is black or white.  It always seems to come out in grey puffs.  That is why the Vatican has instituted a new system of ringing the bells when a Pope has been elected. So, grey smoke + bells = new pope.

Lombardi explained to the packed press briefing, “But that is also the beauty of these events, a minimum of suspense is part of it. I remember very well the last time that I couldn’t figure out if it was black or white, the bells were not ringing,  I was calling to Monsignor Boccardo who was supposed to make the bells ring saying “what’s going on?” — therefore, (and here Father Lombardi stopped to giggle) it is all very beautiful.  It just lasts a few minutes and I find it much more interesting than if everything was being run like a Swiss Watch. ”

At that point the over one hundred journalists in the press room broke out in a hearty round of applause.  After all, this is Italy, nobody wants anything to run like a Swiss Watch.

Tomorrow morning the Cardinals will participate in the Pro Eligendo Romano Pontefice Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica– which is open to the public– then in the afternoon they will process into the Sistine Chapel.  The 115 Cardinal electors will take the oath of secrecy with their hand on the Gospel and then the Master of Ceremonies will declare the famous line “EXTRA OMNES” – everyone out– and everyone but the 115 electors will have to leave.  The Master of Ceremonies then closes the large wooden doors and the voting begins.

Today the Vatican’s spokesman said that the commission that is guaranteeing the security of the Conclave area was sealing roughly 30 doors and entrances in the Conclave zone today.

This afternoon roughly 90 workers who will participate in the Conclave — working in the sealed off zone – had to take a secrecy oath.  Those workers included cooks, Swiss Guards, waiters, cleaning people, nurses, and the drivers of the vans who will take those Cardinals who don’t want to walk from the Santa Marta Residence to the Sistine Chapel entrance.

I was among the many journalists who were let into the Sistine Chapel on Saturday to check out the set-up (see photo below).  I did try to tweet from the Chapel and it did not work, so I guess they’ve got their Jamming equipment up and running.

Today the Vatican said the number of journalists accredited to cover the Conclave is up to 5,600, and you can tell, I could hardly make it around the edge of the Square today for all the TV journalists standing in front of cameras.

It looks like the race is in a close heat with front-runner Italian Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan still ahead with the Archbishop of Sao Paolo Brazil Pedro Odilo Scherer a close second.  The names of the Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan and my favorite “Cappuccino Cardinal” (see my last post “My Cappuccino Cardinal) Sean O’Malley of Boston keep popping up.  I doubt either one has a real chance but it does seem that the 11 American Cardinals at least have some pull.

Interestingly, the Cardinals held their last General Congregation meeting this morning during which the Chamberlain, the former Vatican’s Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, gave a briefing on the Vatican Bank, known as the IOR (Institute for Religious Works).  I am not surprised Bertone waited until the last possible minute to talk about that one. The situation with the Vatican bank is very messy.  Pope Benedict attempted to get in cleaned up to meet with international standards but his efforts were stymied.  Whoever is the next Pope, sorting the Vatican bureaucracy and the Vatican bank will be on the to-do list.

But back to the Cardinals…

Another of my favorites is Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle of the Philippines.  I wanted to dedicate a post to him, but I have run out of time.  Tagle seems to have a unique combination of charisma and humility.

If you are regular readers of this blog, you will know that I have a passion for the Philippines as I started out by career in journalism there in a splendid “year of living dangerously”  (See Blog Post “How I Ended Up in Italy“), so when I found out there was a Filipino Cardinal at the top of the list, I wanted to know more about him.  Now when I was living in Manila, the Archbishop was Cardinal Sin – whose name was not a reflection on his character, Tagle has now taken over.

Tagle seems to have an unusual ability to reach out to people.  I saw a video of him speaking at a Eucharistic conference in Quebec in 2008 in which he recounted how a poor woman in the marketplace gave him a lesson about faith and humility. He explained how she said to him,  “Are you not supposed to encourage me in faith?” Then he went on to say,

“I was quite embarrassed, but for me it was an experience of spiritual worship.  I, the religiously and culturally accepted  “presence” of God, was revealed to be a weak representation of God.  That simple woman, offering herself to God, in trust, for love of her family, became for me that manifestation of God. She brought the Eucharist sacrifice and the spiritual worship of Jesus from the elegant Cathedral to the noise and dirt of the marketplace.”

It is my impression that Tagle is a Cardinal who — if he became Pope — would not forget that woman in the marketplace, and would remember that there are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world and many of them are living in poverty.

My friend John Thavis, author of “The Vatican Diaries” thinks that the other Cardinals are taking the Tagle choice seriously.  John told me in an interview “Tagle is someone who would have been of course unthinkable a few decades ago as Wojtyla (John Paul II) would have been unthinkable before his time. But it seemed like the time had arrived right in that moment.  And there are people, even Vatican officials here who have whispered to me, ‘Tagle, he’s the man’  because they too, some people here at the Vatican, want a change”

Last week, Tagle got an endorsement from an unlikely place.  The non-profit group known as SNAP (Survivors against Sexual Abuse by Priests) gave out a list of three prelates who they thought would be good Popes. Tagle was at the top of the list. Barbara Dorris, a spokeswoman for SNAP, said “We will start with Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines, some of the things he said that made us feel that he would be a good candidate is that he talks about the “culture of shame” and that the church must help the victims to find healing.”

I have tried to get an interview with Cardinal Tagle since he arrived in Rome and spoke several times with Father Greg Gaston as the Pontifical Filipino College in Rome where Tagle is staying, but every time I called, I got the same response, “Cardinal Tagle is not giving interviews, but you can pray for him.”  The first time I responded, “I am actually praying for an interview with him.”  The good natured Father Gaston laughed, but that was that.

And now back to that smoke….

It is highly unlikely that we will be seeing any white smoke tomorrow. Apparently the way Conclaves work is that Cardinals throw out their first vote to someone they like or want to push, then steadily as the voting continues the Cardinals tend to coalesce around the few candidates who are getting more votes. The Cardinal who becomes the next Pope will need a two-thirds majority, or in this case 77 votes.

So tomorrow I will be at the Vatican waiting for smoke signals….

And in case anyone is wondering what I was doing 8 years ago during the Papal Election, check out this post: The Election of Pope Benedict XVI

Final Note: For those who asked, Gregorio’s email is: gborgia@ap.org