The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections (22 page)

It fell to Paul VI to continue the council and reorganize the curia. With
Ingravescentem aetatem
of 21 November 1970 he ruled,

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against all precedent, that no cardinal over eighty was to take part in a conclave. In March 1973 he increased the number of possible electors to one hundred and twenty and even suggested that the right of election might be extended to non-cardinals, though nothing has ever come of this. In
Romano Pontificio Eligendo
of 1 October 1975, however, while talking of the rules governing the vacancy of the Holy See, he implies that only cardinals under eighty, and up to the number of one hundred and twenty, may be electors. There must be a delay of fifteen days, says the document, between the pope’s death and the opening of the conclave, and this can be extended to twenty days. And the majority needed is, once again, to be two-thirds plus one.

As a consequence of
Ingravescentem aetatem
no less than fifteen cardinals were ineligible to vote at the conclave of 25–26 August 1978 after the death of Paul VI at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo on the 6th of the month. Three cardinals who should have been electors were too ill to attend, but there were still one hundred and eleven others, making it the largest such gather- ing in history. Some of those who had lost the vote protested vociferously, but such is the restricted authority of the cardinals during a
sede vacante
that there was nothing that could be done about it, even if the cardinals had wanted to – which on the whole they did not. There was a problem for the cardinals, however. There were a lot of them, and apart from those who lived in Rome and worked in the curia, they never met. Outside regional group- ings of, say, U.S. or Brazilian cardinals, there was no way that they would meet, certainly not often enough to get to know each other. This gave the mainly conservative curial cardinals an advantage. One man who had been long in the curia but was now Archbishop of Florence, Giovanni Benelli, emerged as the pope-maker; such a person used to be called “the grand elector.” Benelli was no con- servative despite his years in the secretariat of state, but his reputa- tion was of a di
ffi
cult man, and he believed that he stood no chance

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himself; however, he was eager to ensure that it should not be one of the curial candidates who made it to the papacy. He reasoned that the vast majority of the electors were in any case diocesan bishops; they would want one of their own kind. There was a question which had been talked about, whether it was time for a non-Italian. Benelli thought not. He therefore considered the pos- sible candidates from among Italian cardinals who were diocesan bishops and neither too young nor too old. One name emerged: that of the Patriarch of Venice, Albino Luciani, who was not quite sixty-six. The dean of the Sacred College, Carlo Confalonieri, who was himself too old to take part in the voting, arrived at the same conclusion. Both lobbied for Luciani’s election. He came from a socialist family, had attacked Communism, but had demonstrated great devotion to the poor; he was conservative in doctrine, but not closed to new ideas. He had moreover just published a rather successful book,
Illustrissimi
, made up of letters written to fictional characters, Pinocchio among them. He gave a copy to each of the cardinals.

At the first ballot Siri was in the lead, though not by many votes; the conservatives had clearly chosen their candidate and were backing him. At the second ballot Luciani had more than doubled his support while Siri had gained just one vote. And then Siri’s vote totally collapsed. At the fourth ballot Luciani’s vote went to the Brazilian cardinal Lorscheider, eight cardinals voted for no one – presumably the diehard conservatives who no longer had a candi- date – and Luciani was elected by the remainder. He chose the name John Paul, the first double-barrelled title in the history of the papacy, but understandable. Pope John XXIII had preceded Luciani as Patriarch of Venice, Pope Paul had shown him great support – and by taking the name of the two popes of the council he was indicating the tenor of his pontificate. Apart from that which elected Pius XII, it had been the shortest conclave on record. Luciani was, said Cardinal Hume of Westminster, God’s candidate.

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Thirty-three days later he was dead of a heart attack. The Vatican handled the news so badly (they thought it improper that the pope’s corpse should have been discovered by a nun and tried to disguise this fact) that conspiracy theories became common- place and an autopsy was considered. But he undoubtedly died a natural death, hastened, perhaps, by lack of care within the Vatican. The cardinals had to meet again. It was the same number of electors, the same number of those over eighty. One cardinal had died, but the other two who had been ill were now able to attend. It looked as if the dynamic would be the same as before, but there was an important difference. This time the cardinals knew each other, and they knew the weight of votes each of the candi- dates who had been named in the previous conclave could com- mand. Luciani had been commended by Benelli, who was respect- ed if not greatly liked; would Benelli himself attract enough sup- port? He thought so and was prepared to stand. Siri was still the favored candidate of the conservative curial cardinals, though he effectively ruined what little chance he might have had by revealing in a newspaper interview that he would roll back the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The other issue was that of nationality. There had been many non-Italian popes, but not for some 450 years. Yet several had been named on the ballot papers at one time or another in the August conclave, including the archbishops of Karachi in Pakistan, Fortaleza in Brazil, and Cracow in Poland. Clearly some of the cardinals were ready to make a break with the Italian tradition. There were not too many non-Italians, however, who were of the right age and came from the right country. The latter was import- ant. It would not have been politically wise to elect a U.S. citizen, or perhaps even an Englishman. But possibly a cardinal from a country other than Italy, which played only a small part in world affairs would be acceptable. Hence the name of Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Cracow, who had received votes in August, emerged among the cardinals. He had the backing of the influential

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Cardinal of Vienna, Franz König, who had met and admired him when Wojtyla was still only a bishop.

John Paul I died on 28 September. The cardinals could have waited twenty days according to Pope Paul’s instructions, but there was no need. The conclave opened on 14 October. At first Siri seemed to be in the lead but his support rapidly fell away, possibly because, after the newspaper article and the debacle of August, he was essentially unelectable. Though Benelli’s star continued to rise, Siri’s votes – those of the conservatives of various hues and some others such as König – switched to Wojtyla. By the sixth ballot Benelli and Wojtyla had polled almost identical votes. Clearly something had to give, and it was Benelli’s support. It may be that too many had less than happy memories of Benelli’s firm rule in the Vatican before he went to Florence. More likely the idea of electing a non-Italian took hold of the cardinals. In the seventh ballot Wojtyla overtook Benelli; in the eighth he had more than achieved the two-thirds majority. He was asked if he would accept and did so, taking the title John Paul II. It was 16 October 1978.

From the start, Wojtyla imposed his own will upon the papacy, refusing any assistance with putting on the white robes of a pope and departing from tradition by standing rather than sitting to receive the allegiance of the cardinals.

And it has been a long papacy. Elected a century after Leo XIII, the pontificate of John Paul II will soon rival Leo’s as the second longest in history. It has been full of incident, from an assassina- tion attempt in 1981, to his travels around the world, his incessant campaign for human rights, his centralization of Church power, and his condemnation of the “culture of death” – the acceptance in many countries of the practice of abortion, and the use of contra- ception almost everywhere despite an explicit ban by Pope Paul VI. John Paul has successfully reached out to Jews, and rather less successfully to Islam. In spite of his particular desire to establish good relations with the Orthodox, these are perhaps further away now than when they sent observers to John XXIII’s Vatican

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Council. And his refusal to countenance the ordination of women has put a stop to ecumenical progress between Roman Catholicism and the Churches of the Anglican Communion.

All this, and very much more, has marked this contentious pontificate, a pontificate which has left the Catholic Church more divided than it was when Karol Wojtyla was elected Bishop of Rome. All these things will be in the cardinals’ minds when they eventually meet to elect a new pope. This present pontificate has been so long that even now, at the beginning of 2003, all but a handful of the cardinals who file into the Sistine Chapel for that election will have been appointed by the man they meet to replace, Pope John Paul II.

They say that a cardinal who enters the conclave pope leaves it a cardinal. That is about as true as the suggestion that every rotund pope is followed by a lean one. Well, perhaps a little more true, but a number of cardinals who have been elected Supreme Pontiff have been obviously
papabile
or pope-worthy. As this book has narrated, Pacelli was the obvious successor to Pius XI, Paul VI to Papa Roncalli, and even Roncalli himself was aware, if perhaps few others were, that he was the most likely candidate to follow Pius

XII. One needs to be able to read the signs.

That is not at all easy. At the time of writing this chapter the number of electors is limited to one hundred and twenty, though just after the last consistory at which cardinals were created there were more than one hundred and twenty who were under eighty years old and therefore entitled to vote. The passing of time has reduced the number eligible to, at the present count, about the same as took part in the two conclaves of 1978, but as far as I know there is no way of dealing with a situation of more electors than there are allotted places in the Sistine Chapel. The pope could change the ruling on age, or change the maximum number of voters, at will, but no one else can – and by definition there is going to be no pope about to do so when the cardinals are next called to Rome for a conclave. But whenever that will be, the number of cardinals, and therefore possible candidates, is much higher than it used to be before the pontificate of Paul VI.

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Next time around, however, they will not be quite so ignorant of each other as they were at the election of John Paul I. After the reorganization of the Roman curia at the end of the sixteenth century, cardinals have rarely met except in conclaves and in the most formal of consistories. Cardinals did not therefore get to meet each other. John Paul II, however, has occasionally called together general meetings of the cardinals. And since the end of the Second Vatican Council there have also been regular synods of bishops, which also bring at least some of the cardinals together in Rome.

There are over fifty different countries that boast at least one cardinal. The largest number from a single country is still Italy, but the United States is running it close. The continent with the largest number is still Europe, but again, the Americas both North and South look to be catching up. Once again there are regional group- ings, technically of bishops but obviously attended by many of the cardinals. These, too, are a means of getting to know each other.

But this does not mean that conclaves will be swifter. It may even make them longer. After all, the notion of a conclave was invented in the high Middle Ages to persuade cardinals who knew one another very well to come to a more rapid conclusion – and still the process of papal elections could take months, even years. Since the conclave which elected Pius IX, however, they have been matters of days, even hours, certainly not of weeks or months. The reason is not far to seek: family interests (as in the Middle Ages and Renaissance) or the interests of the great powers (as in more modern times) no longer play a part. The considerations are now what they were always claimed to be but frequently were not: the good of the Church – though different groups interpret those interests differently.

There is just a possibility, however, that conclaves might once more become long-drawn-out. To explain why, it is necessary to turn to the Apostolic Constitution
Universi Dominici Gregis
, issued on 22 February 1996 by Pope John Paul II to replace Paul VI’s

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Romano Pontificio Eligendo
of 1 October 1975, both determining the conduct of conclaves.

John Paul lays down, as did Paul VI, that only cardinals under eighty can be the electors of the new pope, though they may take part in the preliminaries to the conclave. Even if the pope dies during a council or synod of bishops, it still falls to the cardinals to choose the next one. During the
sede vacante
the cardinals – all of them or as many as can meet in Rome – can only take decisions essential for the day-to-day running of the Church; they may not deal with anything that in other circumstances would be the prerogative of the pope. These decisions are to be taken in regular “congregations,” held by preference in the Vatican. Minor deci- sions may be taken by a small committee, the composition of which, John Paul II lays down, should change every three days.

At the death of a pope, all o
ffi
ces held under him cease, with the exception of that of the camerlengo (chamberlain) and the Major Penitentiary. It is the camerlengo’s task to look after the adminis- tration of the Vatican, to seal the papal apartments, to destroy the late pope’s seal (“the Fisherman’s Ring”), and to look after the funeral arrangements. If the pope has died outside Rome his body is to be brought back to St. Peter’s for the funeral mass nine days after his death – it is, however, not laid down that burial must take place in St. Peter’s.