“Thus Would We Elect Pope Ratzinger”
by Lucio Brunelli
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3. Monday evening, dinner is at 8:30. “The isolation is truly total. Television, radio and journals are inaccessible. Telephones and cell phones are blocked. But one can speak. People converse around the tables, exchanging impressions on the first vote. Other discussions, with maximum discretion, take place after dinner in the chambers. Small groups, 2-3 persons, there are no big gatherings. As in all hotels, smoking is prohibited. The Portuguese cardinal, Jose Policarpo da Crux, famed inveterate smoker, cannot resist and escapes out into the open to light himself a good cigar.”
In these few hours, with great secrecy, various strategies for the following morning are taking shape. Ratzinger’s supporters are concentrating on the vast bloc of uncertains. The friends of Cardinal Ruini make it known that their little group (6) will reverse itself in Ratzinger’s favor. On the opposing front, those who contest the Ratzinger’s election are coalescing around Bergoglio. The cardinals that voted for Martini convince themselves to bet on the archbishop of Buenos Aires. He would be the first Latin American pope, and surely at least a part of the 20 cardinals from Latin America support him. A part. It is known to all, in fact, that at least two cardinals from the same continent are strongly with Ratzinger: the Columbian Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, Vatican minister for the family, staunch adversary of liberation theology, and the Chilean Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez, prefect emeritus off the Congregation for the Divine Cult, formerly responsible for the Chilean edition of the journal Communio, Ratzinger’s theological child.
For his spiritual virtues, Bergoglio is highly regarded in both moderate and traditional circles. All are aware however that it is almost impossible for the Argentine Jesuit to become Wojtyla’s successor. Nor is it certain that he would accept election. “I watch him while he goes to place his ballot in the urn, on the altar of the Sistine Chapel: his eyes are fixed on the image of Jesus who judges the souls at the end of days. The suffering countenance, as if imploring: God don’t do this to me.”
The realistic objective of the minority party that intends to support Bergoglio is to create a stalled situation, which would lead to the withdrawal of Ratzinger’s candidacy. In concrete terms, this means breaking down the wall of 39 supporters, in order to prevent him from reaching 77 votes. Then the game would start anew.
Tuesday April 19th, the wakeup call sounds at 6:30 in the rooms of the Hotel Conclave. At 7:30, celebration of Mass in the Casa Santa Marta. The appointment in the Sistine Chapel is at 9, with the recitation of praise. “The majority of the cardinals has used the minibus service for transportation. But some preferred a scenic and healthy walk. Among these, the German cardinal, Walter Kasper.”
The votes begin at 9:30, according to the same ritual of the previous evening. These are the preferences recorded by our source
| Ratzinger | 65 |
| Bergoglio | 35 |
| Martini | 0 |
| Ruini | 0 |
| Sodano | 4 |
| Tettamanzi | 2 |
As foreseen, Ratzinger rises still, but remains 12 votes short. He has earned 18 votes since the first round; in part from the arrival of Ruini’s supporters (6), in part from the formerly undecided (12). Bergoglio is 30 short of his rival, but has added 25 votes to his count. He has picked up Martini’s supporters (9) and a discrete number of cardinals who had dispersed their votes the previous evening. The Argentine Jesuit is within sight of the 39 votes that would theoretically allow an organized minority to block any candidate.
At eleven, they proceed to the second vote of the morning. And the hopes of the minority seem on the point of becoming reality.
Our source has left out the Cardinals without any chance, and instead records the name of Dario Castrillon Hoyos, a Columbian of the Roman Curia, because he was one of names circulated as electable, on the eve of the conclave. And he notes the disappearance of the two votes that had previously gone to the Milanese cardinal, Dionigi Tettamanzi. But everyone’s attention is focused on the two real candidates.
| Ratzinger | 72 |
| Bergoglio | 40 |
| Castrillon | 1 |
| Tettamanzi | 0 |
Ratzinger grows again, from 65 to 72. He lacks just 5 votes to become the 264th successor of the apostle Peter. But Bergoglio has grown as well, from 35 to 40. It is a small jump, but enough to render Ratzinger’s election mathematically impossible. If the supporters of the archbishop of Buenos Aires decided to hold out to the end, the German cardinal would be able to reach at most 75 votes.
The voting cardinals are aware that this is the crucial moment of the conclave. Its destiny will be decided in the informal discussions of the next few hours, before the next vote in the afternoon. “Already in the Sistine Chapel, before going to Santa Marta for lunch, the first contacts are made. The cardinals who seek Cardinal Ratzinger’s election are the most preoccupied. The most active is Cardinal Lopez Trujillo”. Trujillo is seen by many approaching the Latin American cardinals; he seeks to convince them that there are no real alternatives to Razinger.
On the other front, a cautious optimism arises over the possibility of blocking the course of the Bavarian cardinal. “Tomorrow, great new things”, proclaims Cardinal Martini with a smile to one of his colleagues. Asked for an explanation, Martini confides that he foresees a change in candidates the morning of the next day, as the two votes of the coming afternoon will come to nothing. The archbishop emeritus of Milan even offers possible new candidates. A few accounts have him accosting the Portuguese cardinal, Jose Saraiva Martins (“the bridge between Europe and Latin America”, as some newspapers have defined him on the eve of the conclave): the two know one another from the Seventies, when they were both rectors of pontifical universities in Rome.
Such was the atmosphere at lunchtime on Tuesday April 19th in the sealed residence of the conclave. “No possible outcome is discounted”. But the success of the plans of the minority hinges upon the solidity of the bloc formed around Bergoglio’s candidacy. However, a crack is appearing. When the 115 voters return to the Sistine Chapel at four in the afternoon, the result of the conclave has already been decided.
This is the result of the last and decisive vote. Our source has noted the oddity of the votes acquired by Cardinal Bernard Law, former archbishop of Boston, shaken by the scandal of the pedophile priests, and Giacomo Biffi, pugnacious archbishop emeritus of Bologna. The other curiosity is the vote given to the young cardinal from Vienna, Christoph Schonborn, a figure tied to Ratzinger by an old friendship. But here are the definitive numbers for the election of Ratzinger
| Ratzinger | 84 |
| Bergoglio | 26 |
| Schonborn | 1 |
| Biffi | 1 |
| Law | 1 |
Ratzinger added another 12 votes to the 72 obtained in the third round. Bergolgio lost 14 of them and the math tells us that they went to the German cardinal. We don’t know who these bishops were or what were their motivations for withdrawing their votes from the Argentine cardinal and offering them to Ratzinger in the fourth round of voting. Perhaps they simply felt it inopportune to bet on a prolonged stall, with the risk of a grave division, in lack of a real alternative to Ratzinger. “This conclave tells us that the Church is not yet ready for a Latin American pope”, the Belgian cardinal, Danneels, will comment later. The last impressions noted in the diary are these: “When, at 5:30, Ratzinger surpassed the quorum of 77 votes, there was a moment of silence in the Sistine Chapel, followed by a long, cordial applause.”
The information transcribed by our source, and confirmed by other participants in the conclave tells us that this was not a unanimous election: 84 votes, a margin of just 7. His immediate predecessors, Wojtyla and Luciani, according to a reconstruction by Senator Guilio Andreotti, obtained respectively 99 and 98 votes out of slightly fewer participants (111).
This conclave was in any case one of the most rapid in contemporary history. In the 20th century, only Pius XII, elected in 1939, required fewer with just three rounds of voting. Five were required to elect Paul VI (1963); eight for John Paul II (1978); eleven for John XXIII (1958).
As far as the motives that caused the majority of the cardinals to choose Ratzinger, they were already declared by numerous participants. The undisputed moral and intellectual authority of his character; the continuity with the papacy of Wojtyla, in the form of a sobriety of style and doctrine; the guarantee (given his age) of a shorter pontificate than the preceding one; the convincing way in which Ratzinger managed the Sacred College. A merit that a large majority of the cardinals recognized. Even if, our source noted the perplexity of a few cardinals at the potential conflict of interest of a dean of the College who was a likely future pope. “To prevent a similar situation, a few cardinals propose that, in the future, the charge of dean by given to a cardinal over eighty years old, and thus excluded from the conclave.”
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