Conclave

7 The First Ballot

LATER, WHEN THE experts who were paid to analyse the Conclave tried to breach the wall of secrecy and piece together exactly what had happened, their sources were all agreed on this: that the divisions started the moment Mandorff closed the doors.

Only two men who were not cardinal-electors now remained in the Sistine Chapel. Mandorff was one; the other was the Vatican’s oldest resident, Cardinal Vittorio Scavizzi, the ninety-four-year-old Vicar General Emeritus of Rome.

Scavizzi had been chosen by the College soon after the Holy Father’s funeral to deliver what was described in the Apostolic Constitution as ‘the second meditation’. This was stipulated to take place in private immediately before the first ballot; its function was to remind the Conclave one last time of their heavy responsibility ‘to act with the right intention for the good of the Universal Church’. Traditionally it was given by one of the cardinals who had passed the age of eighty and was therefore ineligible to vote – a sop, in other words, to the old guard.

Lomeli could not remember how they had ended up choosing Scavizzi. There had been so much else for him to worry about, he had not paid the decision much attention. He suspected the original proposal might have come from Tutino – this was before it was discovered that the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who was under investigation for his wretched apartment extension, was planning to switch his support to Tedesco. Now, as Lomeli watched the elderly cleric being helped towards the microphone by Archbishop Mandorff – his shrivelled body listing to one side, his notes clutched fiercely in his arthritic hand, his narrow eyes bright with resolve – he had a sudden premonition of trouble.

Scavizzi grabbed the microphone and pulled it towards him. Amplified thumps ricocheted off the Sistine’s walls. He held his pages up very close to his eyes. For a few seconds nothing happened, and then gradually from the rasp of his laboured breathing words began to emerge.

‘Cardinal brothers, at this moment of great responsibility, let us listen with special attention to what the Lord says to us in His own words. When I heard the dean of this order, in his homily this morning, use St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians as an argument for doubt, I felt I could not believe my ears. Doubt! Is that what we are short of in the modern world? Doubt?’

There was a slight noise from the body of the chapel – a murmuring, a general intake of breath, a shifting of positions in seats. Lomeli could hear his own pulse in his eardrums.

‘I implore you even at this late hour to listen to what St Paul actually says: that we need unity in our faith and in our knowledge of Christ in order not to be children “tossed one way and another and carried along by every wind of doctrine”.

‘This is a boat in a storm he is talking about, my brothers. This is the Barque of St Peter, our Holy Catholic Church, which, as never before in its history, is “at the mercy of all the tricks men play and their cleverness in practising deceit”. The winds and the waves our ship is battling go by many different names – atheism, nationalism, agnosticism, Marxism, liberalism, individualism, feminism, capitalism – but every one of these “isms” seeks to divert us from our true course.

‘Your task, cardinal-electors, is to choose a new captain who will ignore the doubters among us and hold the rudder fast. Every day, some new “ism” arises. But not all ideas are of equal value. Not every opinion can be given due weight. Once we succumb to “the dictatorship of relativism”, as it has been properly called, and attempt to survive by accommodating ourselves to every passing sect and fad of modernism, our ship is lost. We do not need a Church that will move with the world but a Church that will move the world.

‘Let us pray to God that the Holy Spirit enters these deliberations and directs you to a pastor who will put an end to the drifting of recent times – a pastor who will guide us once again to knowledge of Christ, to His love and to true joy. Amen.’

Scavizzi let go of the microphone. An explosion of amplification rang around the chapel. He gave a wobbly bow to the altar, then took Mandorff’s arm. Leaning heavily on the archbishop, he limped slowly down the aisle, watched in complete silence by every pair of eyes in the chapel. The old man looked at no one, not even at Tedesco, who was seated in the front row almost opposite Lomeli. Now Lomeli knew why the Patriarch of Venice had been in such a good humour. He had known what was coming. It was possible even that he had written it.

Scavizzi and Mandorff passed out of sight behind the screen. In the stunned hush it was easy to hear their footsteps on the marble floor of the vestibule, the Sistine’s doors opening and closing, and a key turning in the lock.

Conclave. From the Latin, con clavis: ‘with a key’. Since the thirteenth century, this was how the Church had ensured its cardinals would come to a decision. They would not be released from the chapel, except for meals and to sleep, until they had chosen a Pope.

Finally, the cardinal-electors were alone.

Lomeli rose and walked to the microphone. He moved slowly, trying to think how best to contain the damage that had just been done. The personal nature of the attack had stung him, naturally. But that concerned him less than the wider threat it posed to his mission, which was above all to maintain the unity of the Church. He sensed the need to slow things down, to let the shock of what had happened dissipate, to give the argument for tolerance a chance to percolate back to the surface of the cardinals’ minds.

He faced the Conclave just as the great bell of St Peter’s began tolling five o’clock. He glanced up at the windows. The sky was dark. He waited until the reverberations of the last strike had died away.

‘Cardinal brothers, after that stimulating meditation. . .’ he paused, and there was some sympathetic laughter, ‘we can now proceed to the first ballot. However, according to the Apostolic Constitution, voting may be delayed if a member of the Conclave has any objections. Does anyone wish to postpone the voting until tomorrow? I appreciate it has been an exceptionally long day, and we may wish to reflect further on what we have just heard.’

There was a pause, and then Krasinski used his stick to push himself up on to his feet. ‘The eyes of the world are on the Sistine chimney, cardinal brothers. In my view it would look odd, to say the least, if we stopped for the night. I believe we should vote.’

He lowered himself carefully back into his seat. Lomeli glanced at Bellini. His face remained impassive. Nobody else spoke.

‘Very well,’ said Lomeli. ‘We shall vote.’ He returned to his place and collected his rule book and ballot paper, then went back to the microphone. ‘Dear brothers, you will find in front of you one of these.’ He held up the ballot paper, and waited while the cardinals opened their red leather folders. ‘You can see that it has “I elect as Supreme Pontiff” written in Latin in the top half, and the bottom half is blank: that is where you should write the name of your chosen candidate. Please make sure no one can see your vote, and be sure to put down one name only, otherwise your ballot will be null and void. And please write legibly, and in a way that ensures your handwriting cannot be identified.

‘Now, if you would all turn to Chapter Five, paragraph sixty-six of the Apostolic Constitution, you will see the procedure that has to be followed.’

When they had opened their rule books, he read the paragraph aloud, just to make sure they all understood:

‘“Each cardinal-elector, in order of precedence, having completed and folded his ballot, holds it up so that it can be seen and carries it to the altar, at which the scrutineers stand and upon which there is placed a receptacle, covered by a plate, for receiving the ballots. Having reached the altar, the cardinal-elector says aloud the words of the following oath: I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected. He then places the ballot on the plate, with which he drops it into the receptacle. Having done this, he bows to the altar and returns to his place.”

‘Is that clear to everyone? Very good. Scrutineers, would you take your positions, please?’

The three men who would count the ballots had been chosen by lot the previous week. They were the Archbishop of Vilnius, Cardinal Lukša; the Prefect for the Congregation of Clergy, Cardinal Mercurio; and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Newby. They rose from their places in different parts of the chapel and made their way to the altar. Lomeli went back to his chair and picked up the pen that had been provided by the College. He shielded his ballot paper with his arm, like a candidate in an examination who doesn’t want his answer to be seen by his neighbour, and wrote in capital letters: BELLINI. He folded it, stood, held it aloft and walked to the altar.

‘I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.’

On the altar was a large ornate urn, bigger than a normal altar vessel, covered by a plain silver chalice, which served as its lid. Watched intently by the scrutineers, he put his ballot paper on the chalice, lifted it with both hands and tipped his vote into the urn. Replacing the chalice, he bowed to the altar and resumed his seat.

The three patriarchs of the Eastern Churches were the next to go up, followed by Bellini. He recited the oath with a sigh in his voice, and when he returned to his place he put his hand to his brow and appeared to sink into deep thought. Lomeli, too tense for prayer or meditation, once again observed the cardinals as they passed him. Tedesco seemed uncharacteristically nervous. He fumbled the tipping of his ballot into the urn so that it fell briefly on to the altar and he had to retrieve it and then drop it in by hand. Lomeli wondered if he had voted for himself – certainly Tremblay might have done so: there was nothing in the rules to say one couldn’t. The oath was simply to vote for the person one thought should be elected. The Canadian approached the altar with reverentially downcast eyes, then raised them to The Last Judgement, apparently transported, and made an exaggerated sign of the cross. Another man who had faith in his own abilities was Adeyemi, who swore the oath with his trademark boom. He had made his name as Archbishop of Lagos when the Holy Father had first toured Africa: he had organised a Mass attended by a congregation of more than four million. The Pope had joked in his homily that Joshua Adeyemi was the only man in the Church who could have conducted the service without the need for amplification.

And then there was Benítez, of whom Lomeli had lost track since the previous night. One could at least be certain that he would not be voting for himself. The choir dress that had been found for him was too long. His rochet hung almost to the ground and he nearly tripped over it as he reached the altar. When he had finished voting and turned to go back to his seat, he gave Lomeli a wry glance. Lomeli nodded and smiled encouragement in return. The Filipino had an attractive quality, he thought, not easy to define: an inner grace. Now that he was becoming better known, he might go far.

The voting went on for more than an hour. When it began, there had been a few whispered conversations. But by the time the scrutineers had cast their own ballots, and the last man to vote – Bill Rudgard, the Junior Cardinal-Deacon – had returned to his seat, the silence seemed to have become endless and absolute, like the infinity of space. God has entered the room, thought Lomeli. We are sequestered under lock and key at the point where time and eternity meet.

Cardinal Lukša lifted the urn and displayed it to the Conclave, as if he were about to bless the sacrament. He shook it several times to mix up the ballots. Then he offered it to Cardinal Newby, who, without unfolding the voting papers, extracted them one by one, counting them out loud, and transferred them to a second urn standing on the altar.

At the end, the Englishman announced, in his thickly accented Italian, ‘One hundred and eighteen votes have been cast.’

He and Cardinal Mercurio went into the Room of Tears, the sacristy to the left of the altar where the three different sizes of papal vestments were hanging, and emerged almost at once carrying between them a small table, which they set up in front of the altar. Cardinal Lukša covered it with a white cloth and placed the urn containing the votes in the centre. Newby and Mercurio returned to the sacristy and fetched three chairs. Newby unclipped the microphone from its stand and carried it over to the table.

‘My brothers,’ he said, ‘we shall proceed to count the first ballot.’

And now, at last, emerging from its trance, the Conclave stirred. In the folder in front of them, every elector had been issued with a list, arranged alphabetically, of the cardinals eligible to vote. Lomeli was glad to see it had been reprinted overnight to include Benítez. He picked up his pen.

Lukša extracted the first ballot paper from the urn, unfolded it, and made a note of the name. He passed it to Mercurio, who studied it in turn and also recorded it. Then Mercurio handed it to Newby, who used a silver needle to pierce the vote through the word ‘elect’ and thread it on to a length of red silk cord. He leaned into the microphone. He had the easy, confident voice of a public-school-and-Oxford man. ‘The first vote is cast for Cardinal Tedesco.’

Each time a vote was announced, Lomeli put a tick against the candidate’s name. At first it was impossible to get a sense of who was ahead. Thirty-four cardinals – more than a quarter of the Conclave – received at least one vote: it was said afterwards to be a record. Men voted for themselves, or for a friend, or a fellow countryman. Quite early on, Lomeli heard his own name read out, and awarded himself a tick on his list. He was touched that someone should have considered him worthy of the supreme honour; he wondered who it was. But when it happened several times more, he began to feel alarmed. In such a crowded field, anything more than half a dozen votes would be enough, at least in theory, to put one in contention.

He kept his head down, concentrating on his tally. Even so, he was aware of cardinals occasionally staring at him across the aisle. The race was slow and close, the distribution of support bizarrely random, so that one of the front-runners might get two or three votes in a row, and then receive none of the succeeding twenty. Still, after about eighty or so ballots had been read out, it was clear which cardinals had the potential strength to emerge as Pope, and as predicted they were Tedesco, Bellini, Tremblay and Adeyemi. When a hundred votes had been counted, there was still nothing between them. But then at the end, something strange happened. Bellini’s vote stalled, and the final few names read out must have felt like hammer blows to him: Tedesco, Lomeli, Adeyemi, Adeyemi, Tremblay, and last of all – amazingly – Benítez.

As the scrutineers conferred and checked the totals, whispered conversations broke out all around the chapel. Lomeli ran his pen down his list, adding up the votes. He scribbled the figures beside each name:

Tedesco 22

Adeyemi 19

Bellini 18

Tremblay 16

Lomeli 5

Others 38

The size of his own vote dismayed him. Assuming he had drawn away support from Bellini, he might well have cost him first place, and with it the sense of inevitability that might have carried him to victory. Indeed, the more he studied the figures, the more disappointing for Bellini they looked. Hadn’t Sabbadin, his campaign manager, predicted at dinner that he was certain to be in the lead after the first ballot, with up to twenty-five votes, and that Tedesco would receive no more than fifteen? Yet Bellini had come in third, behind Adeyemi – no one had envisaged that – and even Tremblay was only two votes behind him. One thing was certain, Lomeli concluded: no candidate was anywhere near the seventy-nine votes it would take to win the election.

He was only half listening as Newby read out the official results: they merely confirmed what he had already worked out for himself. Instead he was flicking through the Apostolic Constitution to paragraph seventy-four. No modern Conclave had lasted beyond three days, but that didn’t mean it might not happen. Under the rules they were obliged to keep on balloting until they found a candidate who could command a two-thirds majority, if necessary for as many as thirty ballots, extending over twelve days. Only at the end of that time would they be permitted to use a different system, whereby a simple majority would be sufficient to elect a new Pope.

Twelve days – an appalling prospect!

Newby had finished giving the results. He held up the red silk cord on which all the ballot papers were threaded. He knotted the two ends together and looked towards the dean.

Lomeli rose from his place and took the microphone. From the altar step he could see Tedesco studying the voting figures, Bellini staring into nothing, Adeyemi and Tremblay talking quietly to the men sitting next to them.

‘My brother cardinals, that concludes the first ballot. No candidate having achieved the necessary majority, we shall now adjourn for the evening and resume voting in the morning. Will you please remain in your places until the officials are allowed back into the chapel. And may I remind Your Eminences that you are forbidden to take any written record of the voting out of the Sistine. Your notes will be collected from you, and burnt along with the ballot papers. There will be buses outside to take you back to the Casa Santa Marta. I would ask you humbly not to discuss this afternoon’s vote in the hearing of the drivers. Thank you for your patience. I now invite the Junior Cardinal-Deacon to ask for us to be released.’

Rudgard stood and walked to the back of the chapel. They could hear him knocking on the doors and calling for them to be opened – ‘Aprite le porte! Aprite le porte!’ – like a prisoner summoning his guard. A few moments later he returned accompanied by Archbishop Mandorff, Monsignor O’Malley and the other masters of ceremonies. The priests were carrying paper sacks and went up and down the rows of desks collecting the voting tallies. Some of the cardinals were reluctant to hand them over, and had to be persuaded to put them in the sacks. Others hung on to them for a last few seconds. No doubt they were trying to memorise the figures, Lomeli thought. Or perhaps they were simply savouring the only record there would ever be of the day they received a vote to be Pope.

Most of the cardinals did not go downstairs to the buses immediately but gathered in the vestibule to watch the ballot papers and notes being burnt. It was something after all even for a Prince of the Church to be able to say that he had witnessed such a spectacle.

Even now, the process of checking the votes had still not quite ended. Three cardinals, known as revisers, also chosen by ballot before the Conclave, were required to recount the tallies. The rules were centuries old and indicated how little the Fathers of the Church had trusted one another: it would require a conspiracy of at least six men to rig the election. When the revising was done, O’Malley squatted on his haunches, opened the round stove and stuffed it with the paper sacks and the threaded ballot papers. He struck a match, lit a firelighter and placed it carefully inside. Lomeli found it odd to see him doing something so practical. There was a soft wumph of combustion, and within seconds the material was ablaze. O’Malley closed the iron door. The second stove, the square one, contained a mixture of potassium perchlorate, anthracene and sulphur in a cartridge that ignited when a switch was pressed. At 7.42 p.m., the temporary metal chimney jutting above the roof of the Sistine, picked out in the November darkness by a searchlight, began to gush jet-black smoke.

As the members of the Conclave filed out of the chapel, Lomeli drew O’Malley aside. They stood in a corner of the vestibule. Lomeli had his back to the stoves. ‘Did you speak to Morales?’

‘Only on the telephone, Your Eminence.’

‘And?’

O’Malley put his finger to his lips and glanced over Lomeli’s shoulder. Tremblay was passing, sharing a joke with a group of cardinals from the United States. His bland face was cheerful. After the North Americans had strolled out into the Sala Regia, O’Malley said, ‘Monsignor Morales was emphatic that he knows of no reason why Cardinal Tremblay should not be Pope.’

Lomeli nodded slowly. He had not expected much else. ‘Thank you at least for asking him.’

A sly look came into O’Malley’s eyes. ‘However, will you forgive me, Your Eminence, if I say that I did not entirely believe the good monsignor?’

Lomeli stared at him. When there wasn’t a Conclave, the Irishman was Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops. He had access to the files on five thousand senior clerics. He was said to have a nose for discovering secrets. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because when I tried to press him regarding the meeting between the Holy Father and Cardinal Tremblay, he went out of his way to assure me it was entirely routine. My Spanish isn’t perfect, but I have to say he was so emphatic, he rather aroused my suspicions. So I implied – I didn’t specifically state it as a fact, I hope – let us say I hinted in my inadequate Spanish that you might have seen a document that contradicted that. And he said you were not to worry about the document: “El informe ha sido retirada.”’

‘El informe? A report? He said there was a report?’

‘“The report has been withdrawn” – those were his exact words.’

‘A report on what? Withdrawn when?’

‘That I don’t know, Eminence.’

Lomeli was silent, considering this. He rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day, and he was hungry. Was he to be worried that a report had been compiled, or reassured that it might no longer exist? And did it matter much in any case, given that Tremblay was only in fourth place? Suddenly he threw up his hands: he couldn’t deal with it now, not while he was sequestered in the Conclave. ‘It’s probably nothing. Let’s leave it there. I know I can rely on your discretion.’

The two prelates walked across the Sala Regia. A security man watched them from beneath a fresco of the Battle of Lepanto. He turned his body away slightly, and whispered something, into either his sleeve or his lapel. Lomeli wondered what it was they were always talking about in such urgent tones. He said, ‘Is anything happening in the outside world that I ought to be aware of?’

‘Not really. The main story in the international media is the Conclave.’

‘No leaks, I trust?’

‘None. The reporters interview one another.’ They began to descend the stairs. There were a great many steps – thirty or forty – lit on either side by electric lamps shaped like candles; some of the older cardinals found their steepness a challenge. ‘I should add there is great interest in Cardinal Benítez. We have put out a biographical note, as you requested. I have also included a background note for you, in confidence. He really has enjoyed the most remarkable series of promotions of any bishop in the Church.’ O’Malley pulled an envelope from beneath his vestments and handed it to Lomeli. ‘La Repubblica believes his dramatic arrival is all part of the late Holy Father’s secret plan.’

Lomeli laughed. ‘I would be delighted if there was a plan – secret or otherwise! But I sense that the only one with a plan for this Conclave is God, and so far He seems to be determined to keep it to Himself.’