Conclave

Acknowledgements

At the outset of my research I asked the Vatican for permission to visit the locations used during a Conclave that are permanently closed to the public. I am grateful to Monsignor Guillermo Karcher of the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff for arranging my visit, and to Signora Gabrielle Lalatta for her expert guidance. I also interviewed a number of prominent Catholics, including a cardinal who participated in a Conclave; however, our conversations were off the record, and therefore I can only thank them generally rather than specifically. I hope they are not too appalled by the result.

I have drawn on the work of many reporters and authors. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the following: John L. Allen, All the Pope’s Men; Conclave; John Cornwell, A Thief in the Night: The Death of Pope John Paul I; The Pope in Winter: The Dark Face of John Paul II’s Papacy; Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: Pope of the Century; The Year of Three Popes; Richard Holloway, Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt; Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope; Pope John XXIII, Journal of a Soul; Sally Ninham, Ten African Cardinals; Gianluigi Nuzzi, Merchants in the Temple: Inside Pope Francis’s Secret Battle Against Corruption in the Vatican; Ratzinger Was Afraid: The secret documents, the money and the scandals that overwhelmed the Pope; Gerald O’Collins SJ, On the Left Bank of the Tiber; Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, An English Spring; John-Peter Pham, Heirs of the Fisherman: Behind the Scenes of Papal Death and Succession; Marco Politi, Pope Francis Among the Wolves: The Inside Story of a Revolution; John Thavis, The Vatican Diaries.

I also wish to thank, once again, my editors in London and New York, Jocasta Hamilton and Sonny Mehta, for their consistently wise advice and enthusiasm; Joy Terekiev and Cristiana Moroni of Mondadori in Milan, who helped facilitate my visit to the Vatican; and, as ever, my German translator, Wolfgang Müller, who exercised his usual sharp eye for errors.

Finally, my love and gratitude to my family – my children Holly, Charlie (to whom this book is dedicated), Matilda and Sam, and above all to my wife Gill: first reader, as always. Semper fidelis.