So, John Paul II ordered a place built that was equipped with modern plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning.
Conclaves are an oddity of the Catholic Church. In Catholic parlance, a conclave refers to the meeting to elect a new pope.
Cardinal electors are cut off from the outside world during the election. They are not allowed to have radio or television, cell phones, or Internet access. They are transported back and forth from the casa to the Sistine Chapel in buses with curtained windows. Vatican employees are not allowed to signal or contact the cardinals, and cardinals are not allowed to communicate with the outside world.
Locking the cardinals up is designed more to keep unwanted influence out than to keep the prelates in.
Conclaves are nearly eight hundred years old. In centuries past, many cardinals functioned more as a proxy vote for kings or lobbyists for rival factions in the Church. The kings of Spain and France and the Holy Roman Emperor once had veto power over who was elected pope. Influence-peddling in papal elections was once rife. Benefices and offices were traded back and forth to guarantee someone’s election or to buy someone’s support. The most corrupt pope in history, Alexander VI, the infamous Rodrigo Borgia, ascended to the papacy the old-fashioned way: by bribery.
For the first five centuries after Jesus, the Bishop of Rome was chosen by a vote of the clergy and the people of the city of Rome, just like bishops elsewhere. Gradually, only the deacons, priests, and bishops of the city and the surrounding suburbs of Rome were allowed to vote. These men were generally incardinated in the diocese of Rome; that is, they had faculties to function in Rome. In 1059, voting in papal elections was restricted to cardinal electors alone.
Not all cardinals were clerics. There were lay cardinals, and even a few boy cardinals, one as young as seven years old. As the papacy increased its power, the election of a pope became more and more contentious. Some cardinal electors represented outside interests like kings and countries. Elections could drag on for months, even years. By the Middle Ages, cardinals were locked in, with a key, to force them to come to some sort of conclusion.
The first true conclave was in 1241. It included only ten cardinals.
The longest conclave on record took almost three years, from 1268 to 1271. Back then, the conclave was usually held in the same town where the pope had died, in that case Viterbo, just south of Rome.
Twenty cardinals were locked in a little castle while deliberations dragged on for three years.
The frustrated townspeople gradually reduced the cardinals’ rations to bread and water. Still the cardinals haggled and dithered. Finally, the enraged townspeople went up on the roof and began to remove it, plank by plank. The old men inside still refused to compromise. Three of the twenty cardinals died from exposure. One cardinal resigned in disgust.
In the end, they elected a layman, Teobaldo Visconti. He was immediately ordained a priest and a bishop. So much for the need for pastoral experience.
Things have changed over the years. Conclaves are not so violent or dramatic. In the past 200 years, no conclave has lasted more than a week or so. Most of the politicking is done before they enter the Sistine Chapel.
Prior to the conclave, the cardinals meet for five or six days to discuss the state of the Church in what they call general congregations. Conclaves are secret, but the congregations are public. It is in the course of these deliberations that the real politicking takes place.
These upcoming congregations promised to be painful. Mike O’Toole was dreading them. He had been asked to give one of the meditations to the assembled cardinals. These are intended to set the tone and direction of the conclave.
He knew that all the dirty linen of the Church would be aired. Things could get rough. As diplomats might say, it would be a “full and frank exchange of views.”
With the leak of Nate’s report to The New York Times, there was no papering over the problems of the Church. It was in crisis. The relentless drumbeat of bad news made it the worst crisis since the Reformation. The local Roman newspaper, La Repubblica, asked in a headline, “Is the Barque of Peter Sinking?”
If it was not sinking, it was certainly taking on water at an alarming rate.
A black cloud had settled over the cardinals. It was in this atmosphere that Jack and Mike checked into the Casa Santa Marta. Mike went off to the meetings, and Jack to his room.
“I’m feeling very tired,” said Jack. “Maybe I’ll take a nap before lunch.” He looked pale.
The Synod Hall is a large modern theater in the Vatican, with a few hundred seats. In the arm of each seat are a headphone jack and a set of controls, so that listeners can receive simultaneous translations. Its technological amenities were in stark contrast to the rest of the Vatican.
As a truly global organization, the Catholic Church needs a way to make everyone understood at these meetings. Some people called it the Pentecost Hall, because like the hearers of the apostles on Pentecost, each person hears in his own language.
Now that Pope Thomas’s funeral was behind them, the electors would focus on the conclave ahead. What the cardinals said would determine the future of the Church and their own futures.
Mike O’Toole had been chosen as one of the two cardinals to present a meditation on the seriousness and importance of the upcoming conclave. To the insider crowd, he seemed a safe choice. He was, after all, one of them. But Cardinal O’Toole had always had an independent streak.
After the opening prayer, he made his way to the dais at the front of the theater, took a drink of water, and began to speak.
“My brothers, we are in crisis.
“The crisis is of our own making. We are charged with preaching the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is our mission. We have not been faithful to our mission. Instead, we have gone off after other things.
“Over the next few days, as we approach the conclave, the world will experience a tsunami of images from Vatican City. What picture will the world have of us? Will they see humble servants of the man from Galilee or princes of a worldly power?
“We Catholics, who love our Church and see it as the body of Christ made visible, should step back from the pomp and power of these meetings and consider what image we project.
“What would Jesus say of us? Would he say to us that we are blind guides who strain the gnat and swallow the camel?
“Let me make a confession here.
“I have been a priest and bishop for nearly half a century. In all those years I have seen in the Catholic Church more corruption than I care to admit. In truth, I have also been part of that corruption.
“I know that I have devoted most of my time to the machinery of running the Church as an institution and very little of my time to the preaching of the gospel.
“I know that I have spent most of my life in association with the rich and the powerful and very little in contact with the poor and the suffering.
“I know that I have been more concerned with my prerogatives and titles than I have been with proclaiming good news to the poor, liberty to captives, or bringing sight to the blind.
“I know that I have sought to protect our power and wealth and prestige, and as a result have served not God, but mammon.
“I know that I have made our customs and traditions more important than the spiritual needs of our people. Today, we have priests who toil with as many as ten thousand faithful in their care, and no one to help them. In my own country, more than three thousand parishes have no pastor.
“Worst of all, I know that I have allowed wolves to attack our flock, rather than be the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.
“Bishops have not protected the children in their care, and instead have protected their own image and power. Instead of consequence or punishment, they have been given the reward of prominent positions.”
There was an audible gasp in the hall at the clear reference O’Toole was making to the former Archbishop of Boston, sitting just a few feet in front of
him.
O’Toole continued anyway. “We are in crisis.
“One of our brothers has committed suicide because of corruption.
“Another of our brothers is in prison, accused of the most horrific crimes.
“People are not coming to the sacraments or hearing the voice of Christ, scandalized by our behavior.
“Many people feel that the Church does not love them, indeed that it scorns them. Many people think we offer no mercy, only judgment.
“Ours is an old and large house, elaborately furnished, but one that needs cleaning.
“For all our sins and failures, there is much good in this Church of ours.
“Here we have met Christ.
“Here we have heard his voice and known his presence.
“Here we have found community and shared love.
“Here we have experienced forgiveness and known peace.
“In the days to come, we must recapture what is best in our tradition and have the courage to dismiss that which is sinful or harmful.
“This is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one.
“We have only one purpose, to continue the ministry of our Lord Jesus.
“As St. Paul said, ‘I count everything as rubbish except the surpassing value of knowing our Lord Jesus Christ.’
“‘Forgetting what lies behind, but straining forward to what lies ahead, we continue our pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling in Christ Jesus.’”
Mike O’Toole, the Catholic boy from Salem, Massachusetts, the boy who served early morning Mass, the prefect of his class in the seminary, the obedient son of the Church, sat down exhausted, feeling weak at the knees.
The eyes of all in the auditorium were on him.
He looked up toward the back row of the auditorium and saw his friend Jim Kelleher sitting in the seat on the end. Jim gave him a thumbs-up.
Cardinal Alejandro Mendoza of Mexico, head of the Sacred Penitentiary and a member of the Soldados de Cristo, stood up and abruptly walked out. He was followed by four other members of the Soldados de Cristo who had been seated in the gallery. Clearly not everyone was pleased with Michael O’Toole.
30
CONCLAVE AND CONFESSION
AFTER MORNING MASS IN ST. PETER’S BASILICA AND LUNCH at the casa, the cardinal electors walked in procession to the Sistine Chapel, identically dressed in scarlet silk cassocks and white lace surplices, with short scarlet capes called mozzettas draped over their shoulders. On their heads, they each wore little red zucchettos and square stiff birettas. Individually, they looked ridiculous. But together, they were strangely impressive.
Just before they entered the chapel, the cardinals were required to turn in all their electronic devices: mobile phones, pagers, laptops, iPads, and anything else that could be used to communicate with the outside world. Most cardinals handed them to their secretaries or assistants. O’Toole handed his cell phone to Father Jim Kelleher, who was acting as his assistant, as he boarded the bus to go over to the Sistine Chapel.
At the entrance to the chapel, they processed down a long corridor to the chapel door, while the Sistine choir sang the ancient litany of the saints, a hypnotic chant.
“Saint Peter, Saint Paul, St. Andrew,” the choir intoned in Latin.
At each saint’s name, the cardinals answered the choir in a haunting refrain, “Ora pro nobis,” meaning pray for us. There were a lot of saints, because the procession took twenty minutes to fill the chapel.
Like prep school boys, the cardinals lined up in order of seniority, senior to junior. As they entered the Sistine Chapel, each took his place at four rows of tables, two rows on each side of the center aisle of the chapel. The tables were draped with skirted wine-colored velvet and covered with white tablecloths.
On the ceiling above them in the center panel was Michelangelo’s depiction of The Creation of Adam, showing God the Father’s crooked finger touching Adam and bringing him to life. In the neighboring panel, Adam and Eve were shown weeping at their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
On the front wall of the chapel, above the altar, was Michelangelo’s fresco of The Last Judgment. The cardinals looked up at the last judgment each time they came forward to the altar to cast their votes. It was a stirring reminder of the gravity of their decision. They would have to account for themselves and their vote when they stood before the judgment seat of the Lord.
Michelangelo included only one cardinal in his representation of the final judgment—the notorious Cesare Borgia, who at the time was the Archbishop of Valencia, in Spain. He is shown being ferried off to hell by the Greek god Minos.
Borgia was hardly an edifying reminder of the lineage of cardinals. He was the role model for Machiavelli’s scheming prince. He was the illegitimate son of his even more notorious father, Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, who was elected pope in that very chapel, fifty years before Michelangelo completed his famous painting.
Pope Alexander VI shocked even jaded Renaissance Europe with his behavior. He had multiple mistresses and fathered nine illegitimate children, including Cesare. One wonders how any conclave could have chosen the scandalous Rodrigo as pope.
This conclave promised to be more abstemious than the conclave that elected the Borgia pope.
In the middle of a long line of electors, Cardinal O’Toole proceeded slowly to his assigned place. Once at their seats, the cardinals took off their birettas and placed them neatly on their desks next to their nameplates. They were, after all, products of Catholic schools and like everyone trained by the nuns, valued order in everything.
Together, they lifted the little leather-bound prayer booklets, which had been placed at the center of their red leather blotters, also embossed with the Vatican seal. In unison, they said the midday prayer together.
At the end of the conclave, the cardinals could keep their blotters, prayer books, and nameplates as souvenirs. They were sort of papal door prizes.
Their prayers at an end, the cardinals came forward one by one to take an oath of secrecy, promising never to reveal the deliberations of the conclave. Each cardinal approached a podium set up in the center aisle of the chapel, to add his signature to the book that contained the words of the oath.
With all the preliminaries over and the cardinals back in their seats, the master of ceremonies for papal liturgical functions issued a stern order in Latin, Extra Omnes! Everybody out!
The aides to the cardinals, the monsignors, the television people, and everybody except the cardinals filed out. Then the chapel doors were gently closed and locked; the Swiss Guards, in ceremonial dress, were posted just outside the chapel doors, to keep out all intruders.
Suddenly, the conclavists were alone. In that moment of isolation O’Toole felt the weight of his conscience and of history. He took a deep breath. Be with me now, Holy Spirit, he thought. Momentarily the balloting would begin.
The first ballot is merely a beauty contest. Cardinals voted for one another as a courtesy to an old friend or an honor to an important figure. Many names received a few votes, but they were not serious candidates. The second ballot was a more radical winnowing out of the real papabile.
There were two ballots in the first afternoon session. No cardinal got more than forty votes on either ballot. Votes were roughly divided among two blocs of cardinals, one bloc from the Southern Hemisphere and the other from cardinals of the Roman bureaucracy.
Each cardinal was supposed to disguise his handwriting as he wrote the name of his candidate on a ballot, but it really didn’t matter much, since the ballots were burned after they were counted. After the ballot was filled out, they proceeded by order of seniority to the altar to cast their votes. O’Toole was in the middle of the pack.
As he approached the altar, O’Toole raised his hand holding the ballot high over his head, so all could see he had only one ballot. He declared in Latin, “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one whom, before
God, I think should be elected.”
Michael O’Toole, the fireman’s kid from Boston, placed the twice-folded ballot on the gold plate that rested on top of a twenty-five-inch-tall gold chalice that stood at the center of the altar. He looked up at Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment and then turned over the plate, allowing the ballot to drop into the chalice. He turned and walked back to his seat. He had cast a safe vote, for Cardinal Santini, the camerlengo, just another faceless Vatican bureaucrat. But he knew that vote was just a placeholder until he could see which way the wind was blowing in the conclave. For a church so deeply mired in crisis, a safe vote would not be enough. Once again he felt afraid. This time not for himself, but for the Church.
After all the ballots were cast, the three scrutineers counted the total number of ballots, to be sure it was exactly the same as the number of cardinal electors. Then they opened and recorded the actual votes on tally sheets maintained by each scrutineer. The last of the three vote counters read aloud, in Latin, the names written on the ballot. It was almost hypnotic. Johanem Cardinalem Kluger. Paulus Cardinalem Kilgari.
The first and second rounds of voting went smoothly. The only sounds were the calling of the names by the scrutineers and the hushed talking among the cardinals. The conclavists weren’t supposed to keep their own totals, but some of them made discreet coded notes on their blotters to keep track of the voting. O’Toole was surprised to hear his own name a score of times. Michael Cardinalem O’Toole. He assumed that these votes were courtesies from mission-country cardinals who had benefited from his assistance.
As evening drew near, the scrutineers burned the ballot cards from the two rounds of voting together in the potbellied stove in the corner of the Sistine Chapel, near the door. They added some coal tar to make black smoke to indicate that Rome had not yet elected a new pope. In the piazza outside, twenty thousand people were waiting. They were disappointed, but not surprised, when they saw the smoke was black.
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