The Coming Conclave
Bellitto, Christopher M.
THE COMING CONCLAVE How the next pope will be chosen Christopher M. Bellitto S omehow, talking about conclaves feels unseemly—even ghoulish—while John Paul II suffers so visibly. Still, we must...
...Paul VI's decision is being questioned again as John Paul II's health continues to deteriorate...
...As lay people continue to grow in their service to the world, the Society of Jesus will find opportunities for cooperation with them...
...Just this fall, a few of the newest cardinals indicated they'd like at least to talk about hot-button issues such as mandatory celibacy, episcopal collegiality, and subsidiarity...
...The papal apartment will be sealed, the pope's ring defaced—a remnant of the time when the ring was used to seal documents with wax: the ring is destroyed so no one can claim a deathbed appointment to a choice job...
...Doubtless, eligible cardinals have been assessing each other for years...
...In one of the 1655 ballots, twenty-one of the sixty-six cardinals voted for "no-body...
...A century later, in 1179, Lateran III gave the cardinals the exclusive right to elect a pope, and mandated a two-thirds majority as sufficient for election, since unanimity was surely impossible...
...Following the rules codified in 1975 by Paul VI and in 1996 by John Paul II, the conclave will begin fifteen to twenty days after the pope's death, with his funeral taking place during a nine-day period of mourning...
...Educating the laity and religious for collaborative ministry Office of Admissions 3 Phillips Place Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone 1.617.492.1960 Fax 1.617.492.5833 www.wjst.edu admissionsinfo@wjst.edu Commonweal 22 January 16, 2004...
...Moreover, John Paul II has often balanced the selection of a cardinal at one end of the ideological spectrum with a counterpart on the other...
...To accelerate the process, the rules stipulated that the cardinals be locked in a room with a key (cum slave = conclave), could not draw funds from the papal treasury, and would be fed only bread, water, and wine if they failed to reach a decision after eight days...
...When a pope dies these days, there is no mystery as to what will occur next...
...In 1059, Nicholas II took the first of several steps to shelter the medieval papacy—especially papal elections—from the interference of such families...
...Should no clear winner emerge, the ballots are burned, and black smoke rises through the chapel's chimney...
...Earlier in the Middle Ages, when popes fought the Holy Roman Emperors in central Europe, a German cardinal was seldom seen...
...Latin and South America, Canada, and the United States, with about half of the world's 1 billion Catholics, can claim almost 30 percent of the cardinals...
...However, with as many as 135 cardinals in attendance, it's possible many of them will not know each other well, conceivably slowing down the process...
...In the 1922 conclave, a stowaway photographer was discovered, along with a reporter attempting to masquerade as a waiter...
...If the number of ballots doesn't match the number of electors, the ballots are destroyed unopened and another vote is taken...
...He granted the cardinals the lead role in selecting the pope, although the sitting pope and the Roman clergy could let their choices be known...
...The Italians dominated the college for 500 years, from 1458 to 1958, but today make up about 17 percent of the college...
...At the moment there are nearly 225 cardinals...
...The great unfinished business of Vatican II will surely dominate the conclave that will follow one of the most centralizing papacies in church history...
...For the first millennium of Christianity, the college as we know it did not exist...
...the authority of the papacy and the bishops' role in the magisterium...
...if he does, he then announces his papal name...
...from Eastern Europe about 13 percent...
...The conclave opens with a Mass of the Holy Spirit, including a key homily stressing the particular challenges facing the next pope...
...He didn't, however, set an age limit for a pope, which raised some episcopal eyebrows...
...The college of cardinals The story of papal elections is really the story of the college of cardinals, which functions like the unelected aristocracies of the ancien regime...
...Modern changes to conclave procedures have eliminated voting by acclamation...
...In the past, cardinals have made their dissatisfaction with T Commonweal 2 I January 16, 2004 the candidates known in various ways...
...Despite the sometimes colorful history of papal elections, a serious point must be remembered: Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit, through the college of cardinals, elects the pope...
...In 1549, the emperor Charles V bragged that he was so well informed on what was happening in the conclave that he knew when the cardinals used their chamber pots...
...Another piece of conventional wisdom tells us that because John Paul II has selected so many members of the current college of cardinals, his successor will be a John Paul III or a Wojtyla Jr...
...The last time a noncardinal or someone outside the conclave was elected was in 1378...
...At meetings during the most recent consistory, after all, the cardinals had to wear name tags...
...About a quarter of the cardinals are Vatican officials...
...In turn, Leo was succeeded by Pius X (1903-14), who was even harder on modern trends in scholarship than the previous Pius...
...His most recent books are the companion volumes Renewing Christianity and The General Councils (Paulist...
...The ballots are read silently by two cardinals acting as counters, who then pass the ballots to another cardinal who reads the name aloud and runs a needle and thread through the ballot so it cannot be counted twice...
...Pope Paschal H (1099–1118) appointed numerous cardinals legates to export the idea of papal monarchy in their travels and, back in Rome, to head curial departments, a practice that persists today...
...Finally, the city's leaders locked the cardinals in a house, removed the roof, and promised to CHARLOT Commonweal 20 January 16, 2004 put them on a strict diet if they couldn't agree on a candidate...
...There have been many conclaves of weeks and months, but since 1846, conclaves have lasted less than a Who's in the college...
...and from the Oceanic countries another 4 percent...
...Today, once a man has received a two-thirds majority (or two-thirds plus one should the number of cardinals not be divisible by three), he is asked whether he accepts...
...Giovanni Battista Montini's election as Paul VI was largely expect-ed...
...This structure mirrored the royal monarchies that challenged the church's supremacy and limited her freedom...
...When the popes lived at Avignon from 1305 to 1378, nearly 100 of the 134 cardinals named that century were French...
...Yet recent church history suggests otherwise...
...Cardinals from Western Europe now make up only slightly more than a third of the college...
...and the shared governance and decision making of all the baptized...
...This system—minus the restricted diet—remains in place, although the next conclave will be held in Rome regardless of where the pope dies...
...So how did the idea of a conclave come about...
...At that, the ballots are burned with straw, white smoke rises, and the announcement Habemus papam...
...If the conclave were held today, about 135 could participate because they are under eighty, the age limit for voting members set by Paul VI...
...The person selected to be the next pope will surely be from among the cardinals in the conclave, though the rules stipulate only that the candidate be a baptized male...
...Electing the pope In the first millennium, cardinals shared the task of choosing the popes with the leading families of Rome...
...C.M.B...
...It was open, fractured, and politicized...
...This was not without precedent: during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, servants working in the conclave sometimes scribbled names of candidates with their vote tallies on the bottoms of dirty dishes, which they handed out-side so the people of Rome—and especially bookies—could follow along...
...Conventional wisdom says that whoever goes into the conclave as pope exits as cardinal...
...Gregory XV banned acclamation in 1621...
...He also moved the sleeping quarters from the Sistine Chapel complex to the Domus Sancta Marthae, a dorm-like building located nearby in Vatican City, from which the cardinals will be shuttled like a sequestered jury...
...but only God knows who the next pope will be...
...If the numbers match, the counting begins...
...This is not necessarily true...
...At Lyons II in 1274, he ordered that the cardinals would subsequently meet in the city where the pope, who frequently traveled in Italy and France during the Middle Ages, had died...
...It was Pope Gregory XV in 1621 who stipulated how many votes per day, in the hope of cutting down time for negotiating...
...the 1978 elections were carried out by 111 electors—a huge and unprecedented numChristopher M. Bellitto is academic editor of Paulist Press and author of the pamphlet, When a Pope Dies (Liguori...
...We can find traces in the late Roman Empire and early Middle Ages, when up to three dozen cardinal bishops, priests, and deacons con-trolled the most important churches in Rome and its suburbs...
...The conclave that selected John XXIII had 58 cardinals, and Paul VI was chosen in a conclave of 80...
...Who's Next...
...Frontrunners don't always win, but while the world may have been surprised by John XXIII's election, insiders weren't...
...is made...
...The Sistine Chapel and nearby rooms will be swept for recording devices after the traditional call of Extra omnes ("Every-body else out...
...All means of communication (phone, fax, computers) between the pope's rooms and the outside world will be severed...
...They weren't the only bloc in history, however...
...Anything longer would send a signal of division that might cripple the next papacy before it began...
...Pius IX (1846-78), the longest-reigning pope after Peter and a man deeply suspicious of modernity, was followed by Leo XIII (1878-1903), who opened the Vatican archives and championed the social-justice movement that invigorated twentieth-century Catholicism...
...In the longest period in church history without a pope, almost three years (1268-71), the election was held in Viterbo...
...Before the late twentieth century, the college rarely exceeded several dozen cardinals, although the rules set by Sixtus V (1585–90) provided for up to 70 members...
...If a nonordained man is selected, he must immediately be ordained priest and then bishop, with his succession to the papacy turning on the moment of his episcopal ordination...
...The last time an election was held outside of Rome was in Venice in 1800 after Pius VI died as Napoleon's prisoner in France...
...Each cardinal votes in disguised handwriting on a preprinted Latin form, folds it, and walks individually to the Sistine Chapel's altar, where he places the ballot on a paten and slips it into a chalice so all can see that a vote was cast...
...Then the process begins again...
...ber...
...And no one would mistake John XXIII for Pius XII (1939-58...
...The serious personality flaws of that man, Urban VI, contributed to the Great Western Schism, when for nearly four decades as many as three rival papacies and colleges of cardinals competed for power—a bad precedent indeed...
...although today a high-tech bug could re-main hidden or powerful sensors could listen from afar...
...A few wise voices predicted Albino Luciani's 1978 election as John Paul I. When he died a month later, it appears that the next conclave simply chose the candidate who also had been prominent in the first conclave that year: Karol Wojtyla...
...In 1996, John Paul II reiterated the ban, and also eliminated the process in which a deadlocked conclave could designate a small subcommittee that would make the final selection for the rest of the college...
...His death triggers a well-defined process...
...Voting then follows, with two sets of ballots cast in the morning and two in the afternoon, though there will probably be just one ballot in the afternoon of the first day...
...Cardinals who cannot vote because of their age, such as Fordham University's Avery Dulles, may participate in these preparatory meetings and exercise a measure of influence...
...The college of cardinals took shape in the High Middle Ages, when popes built the papacy as a monarchy with its attendant court, bureaucracy, and ideology...
...from Africa and Asia about 10 percent each...
...Still, we must talk about conclaves and what comes next, just as we should have those unsettling conversations about health-care proxies and wills...
...he college of cardinals is more international than it's ever been—thanks to John XXIII, Paul VI, and especially John Paul II...
...Insuring secrecy during the next conclave will not be easy...
...Before the conclave, the college of cardinals will meet several times...
...To spread their authority, popes, beginning with Leo IX (1049–54), granted the status of cardinal to their closest advisers, and made their roles more administrative than liturgical...
...week, and those of 1978 lasted just a day or two...
...They selected Gregory X (1271-76), who did not soon forget the lesson of his election...
...This conversation leads to and touches on the biggest ecclesiological issues of our time: the collegiality of bishops...
...Then, as now, the laity did not elect the cardinals or play even a limited role in their selection...
Vol. 131 • January 2004 • No. 1
