A plume of black smoke floated out of a tall, thin stack erected on the roof of the Sistine Chapel on Monday night, indicating that the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church charged with choosing the next pope had held a first ballot, but failed to agree on a name.
The first wisps to emerge appeared white, causing delighted but mistaken chants of ”bianca, bianca” from those in the crowd in St Peter’s Square who thought a new pontiff had been chosen.
The successful candidate will need a two-thirds majority of the 115 cardinals in the assembly, or conclave. Earlier, the man known as ”God’s Rottweiler”, Joseph Ratzinger, had launched the search for the new pontiff with a dire, if coded, warning to his fellow cardinals on the perils of choosing a reformer.
In the nearest thing to a campaign speech for the conservative camp, the German cardinal cautioned his listeners against being ”whirled about by every fresh gust of teaching”. The quotation was from St Paul but, said Cardinal Ratzinger, it was ”very up to date”.
What he did not say — but which his audience will have known only too well — is how that quotation continues, with the apostle describing those who succumb as ”dupes of crafty rogues and their deceitful schemes”.
Cardinal Ratzinger delivered his admonition during a mass in St Peter’s Basilica attended by the cardinals who, a few hours later, filed into the Sistine Chapel in their vermilion robes to begin electing John Paul II’s successor. For the first time, the Vatican provided television pictures of the electors as they took their places.
Then the master of papal liturgical celebrations, Archbishop Piero Marini, declared: ”Extra omnes” (everybody out), and ushered everyone not involved in the election through the chapel’s huge doors.
Cardinal Ratzinger, the late pope’s doctrinal watchdog, was chosen to deliver Monday’s sermon by virtue of his position as dean of the College of Cardinals. Until the death of John Paul, he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the institution once known as the Inquisition.
Warning against the ”tides of trends and the latest novelties” his sermon won applause across the basilica and the piazza outside.
Cardinal Ratzinger is a candidate for the papacy and his emergence as a frontrunner has created consternation among progressive forces within the church. But his message will resonate with the Roman Curia, the church’s central bureaucracy, and, conservatives hope, among cardinals from the developing world, particularly Africa.
It will go down much less well with other European cardinals and perhaps those from North America, where an unbending doctrinal message is thought unlikely to rebuild declining congregations.
Nevertheless, one American tourist in the piazza, Michael Brennan, of New York, said: ”I have come to see Ratzinger get the top job. He is definitely the man to clean up the filth.”
The 78-year-old cardinal and other prelates who want to keep intact the body of doctrine built up in the almost 27 years of John Paul II’s papacy face a stiff challenge from reformist cardinals, including the archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.
Another reformist, the Portuguese cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo, told a congregation in Rome on Sunday that the church’s message ”can never be the cold proclamation of a doctrine, but one that moves and involves”.
The reformists have initially rallied around the retired archbishop of Milan, Carlo Maria Martini, and the first round of voting was expected to be a trial of strength between the liberal Italian and Cardinal Ratzinger.
The conclave, the assembly to elect the new pope, is open-ended. But none in modern times has lasted more than five days. From today, there will be two ballots in the morning and two in the afternoon.
If, by Thursday night, there has still not been a result, the conclave will be suspended so that the cardinals can pray and discuss the deadlock before continuing on Saturday. – Guardian Unlimited Â