VATICAN CITY – History towers over the 115 Roman Catholic cardinals who will gather today to begin selecting a new pope, but some of the church’s ancient traditions are shifting beneath their feet.
The cardinals’ isolation from the outside world, first codified in 1274, will be bolstered this year by jamming devices reportedly hidden under a false floor in the Sistine Chapel, there to defeat any sophisticated microphones or eavesdropping satellites.
The cardinals will be confined beginning Monday afternoon, as those in such conclaves have been off and on for more than 1,000 years, but this time with comforts previously unimagined, including private bathrooms and a chance to stroll in the Vatican gardens.
As they select the next pope, the cardinals face a more fundamental test about how to read history – and how that interpretation should guide the church’s future.
“The pope started the last century as a prisoner in the Vatican, and now the pope is the most famous person in the world,” said the Rev. John Wauck, a professor at the Santa Croce Pontifical University in Rome. “They have to find somebody who can fill that stage.”
In 1978, by choosing a pope from outside Italy, the cardinals broke 455 years of tradition. By choosing a man who put his focus on evangelizing distant corners of the earth and reaching beyond Roman Catholics, they created a new kind of papacy.
Now, in the largest conclave of modern times, cardinals from 52 countries will help determine whether John Paul II established the new model for church leadership, whether the next pope should follow a more traditional path, or whether to seek something altogether different.
“After what we’ve seen the last two weeks, with the funeral and that great outpouring, to a large extent the papacy and the expectations of the papacy have changed,” said the Rev. Mark Francis, who serves in Rome as superior general for the Clerics of St. Viator, a missionary order with 650 priests worldwide.
“The issue facing the cardinals is to find somebody who is internationally as capable as the last pope,” Francis said, somebody who has the eloquence in as many different cultures as John Paul II did. “Those kinds of attributes are going to be bottom-line expectations now, not just something nice to have.”
While that would not necessarily rule out an Italian or a European, it would narrow the list, he added.
As the cardinals gathered in meetings every day last week, dealing with everything from drawing lots for rooms during the conclave to discussing the church’s finances, they had an extended opportunity to see one another out from under the shadow of a pope.
Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said that no candidates were ever named in these secret meetings, but called the atmosphere “familiar.”
That warm-up – along with the years cardinals had to prepare for the death of John Paul II – has led many observers to predict a quick conclave.
By the middle of last week, two Italian papers were already counting heads, claiming that unnamed sources put either 40 or 50 of the necessary 77 votes behind Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the dean of the cardinals and John Paul II’s chief doctrinal enforcer.
Indeed, many church insiders say Ratzinger is well liked by the cardinals. Ratzinger’s public reputation for being stern and stiff, they say, has more to do with the job he held than with the nature of the man who turned 78 Saturday, a theologian formed in the halls of the Second Vatican Council.
But even as common wisdom makes Ratzinger a candidate, many scoff at the notion that even the cardinals could estimate the depth of support behind any particular man.
“They don’t have a candidate yet,” said Saverio Gaeta, editor-in-chief of the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana, as the cardinals began their meetings. “Most of them have not yet decided their first vote.”
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And so – in another venerable tradition, papal intrigue – some observers saw in the Ratzinger reports a campaign to build support for the German cardinal. Others added one more wrinkle, interpreting the flap as part of a campaign to trigger a backlash against Ratzinger.
The operating principle behind the backlash theory is an old saying about favored candidates: The man who goes into the conclave as pope comes out as a cardinal.
As speculation continued to build, some formerly dismissed names were getting fresh boosts in print: Cardinal Angelo Sodano, 77, the Vatican’s secretary of state, and Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, 78, a favorite of liberal Catholics.
Others who had mostly escaped the limelight began to feel it: Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa, 71, the archbishop of Santiago, Chile, who was being touted by several Latin American secular politicians; and Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo, 69, the Patriarch of Lisbon, seen as a possible compromise between moderates and conservatives, a European with Latin American flavor.
Some well-timed book releases added another layer to the handicapping.
Early last week a German publisher released the latest book by Ratzinger, “Values in a Time of Upheaval,” a call for Europe to return to its Christian roots.
On the other side of the world, a Brazilian publisher rushed out “Dialogue with the City,” a collection of newspaper essays on social themes by Cardinal Claudio Hummes, 70, a papal front-runner from Sao Paulo.
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All that buzz is measured against old adages about papal conclaves – a long-reigning pope will be succeeded by an older, caretaker pope; a strong-willed pope will be succeeded by a conciliator.
Whether or not the last papacy made expectations like that obsolete, John Paul II did change the rules for the conclave in a more literal way.
Most immediately welcome to his successors, he ended the days of cots and curtained-off cubicles in the cold marble halls of the Apostolic Palace, where long lines of elderly men shared a very few bathrooms in past conclaves.
In 1996 the Vatican renovated an old hospice as a new, $20 million lodging specifically designed for conclaves.
Reporters have not been allowed in since John Paul II’s death, as security officials immediately went to work sweeping and securing the facility. But a video released this week shows that the 106 suites and 23 singles are simple, standard hotel rooms, done in tones of white and gold, each with its own bathroom.
The cardinals also will have a communal dining room, with doctors and priests for confession on call. They will be bused the short distance from St. Martha House, the new hotel, to the Sistine Chapel.
And, while drafting a whole new set of rules designed to prevent those service employees remaining within Vatican City from speaking to the cardinals, Pope John Paul II even allowed the cardinals to take an outside stroll, a respite he enjoyed throughout most of his papacy.
That was all part of a 1996 set of conclave laws, the latest update the comprehensive church law governing the voting that Pope Nicholas II first instituted in 1059.
The 1996 revision eliminated two ancient forms of choosing a pope – election by acclamation, a frequent outcome in the church’s early days, in which all those taking part unanimously rallied around a single candidate by voice vote; and another ancient process by which a deadlocked conclave could delegate the choice to a small group of cardinals.
At the same time, he eased the 1179 requirement that a pope receive a two-thirds majority of votes. While that still holds for the first 10 days of voting – a total of 30 to 33 secret ballots with breaks for prayer and contemplation – cardinals can then vote to reduce the threshold for election to a simple majority.
Some observers, noting the more comfortable conditions, have speculated that a small but determined majority in a split conclave might hold out until they could prevail.
The anxiously awaited announcement of a new pope will be preceded by an ancient sign, a puff of white smoke, as the secret ballots are burned with special chemicals to create the affirmative signal.
But the color of the smoke has been difficult for the cardinals to control in recent conclaves, leading to widespread confusion in St. Peter’s Square.
So, in a nod to the needs of thousands of journalists reporting instantaneously, the Vatican is backing up the smoke with an only slightly less ancient sign – the tolling of the enormous bell of St. Peter’s Basilica, which just 10 days ago reverberated through the funeral for John Paul II.
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(Chicago Tribune correspondent Tom Hundley contributed to this report.)
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(c) 2005, Chicago Tribune.
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AP-NY-04-17-05 1715EDT
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