HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM: Popetastic conclavular 2013 ends with a surprise win for Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A surprise pick: Jorge Mario Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis

Okay, so I was wrong.

Wrong about Marc Ouellet winning the big prize, then, having doubts earlier today, about Angelo Scola taking it. But I was right about the white smoke coming today -- even though a conclave with no clear frontrunner could have been expected to go longer -- and when it did, after just five ballots, I really did think it was Scola, whose election, as experts like John Allen were saying, would have been a vote for continuity, as he's an orthodox thinker in the mold of Ratzinger/Benedict (if more personable), and so a fairly safe pick at a time of crisis and uncertainty throughout the Church.

But if not Ouellet or Scola, then maybe one of other leading non-Europeans like Peter Turkson or Odilo Scherer, or maybe even an American, Sean O'Malley.

And so when Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the senior cardinal deacon, appeared on the balcony at St. Peter's to say (in Latin) those famous two words -- habemus papam -- and announce the name of the new pope, and I heard the name Bergoglio, I was surprised, to say the least. Who? What? Bergoglio? That guy? Really?

Yes, that guy.

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Crisis in the Conclave: First day of 2013 Popetacular reaches popeless conclusion

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Black smoke = the absence of God, or failure, or something

So here we are. A few hours into the papal election and still no pope. What are these guys waiting for? Isn't their "God" telling them what to do?

Actually, we're only one vote into the conclave. The 115 cardinals (all cardinals under the age of 80) entered the Sistine Chapel at 4:30 pm Vatican time and conducted a single vote that, not surprisingly, failed to produce the necessary two-thirds majority for any one candidate.

And so the smoke was black. (Check out this interesting piece on the mysteries of the smoke.)

There will now be four votes daily -- two in the morning and two in the afternoon, with ballots burned afterwards, black and finally white -- until there's a winner.

Apparently there's no campaigning in the Sistine Chapel itself, with the politicking taking place during dinner and other breaks. So what happened today is that the cardinals stated their initial preferences. It may be that the first vote today determined the obvious frontrunners, as it did last time when Ratzinger emerged as the likely pick, or it may just be that the cardinals are divided behind a number of choices. Either way, today's vote no doubt set the table for the quiet discussions and deliberations to come, and that the situation will be much clearer by the morning.

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Where to relax in Rome

By Mustang Bobby

After a tough day at the Vatican, there's just one place to go to relax:

A day ahead of the papal conclave, faces at the scandal-struck Vatican were even redder than usual after it emerged that the Holy See had purchased a €23 million (£21 million) share of a Rome apartment block that houses Europe's biggest gay sauna.

The senior Vatican figure sweating the most due to the unlikely proximity of the gay Europa Multiclub is probably Cardinal Ivan Dias, the head of the Congregation for Evangelisation of Peoples, who is due to participate in tomorrow's election at the Sistine Chapel.

This 76-year-old "prince of the church" enjoys a 12-room apartment on the first-floor of the imposing palazzo, at 2 Via Carducci, just yards from the ground floor entrance to the steamy flesh pot. There are 18 other Vatican apartments in the block, many of which house priests.

The surprise isn't that the Vatican owns a gay bathhouse; it's that they haven't franchised it yet.

Via JMG.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Crisis in the Conclave: The Picking of a Pope, 2013

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Canada's Marc Ouellet: Will this man be pope?

I was really into it the last time, back in the spring of 2005. Those were early blogging days for me. I'd started The Reaction on March 29 of that year, without all that much of a clue as to what I wanted to write about, and I was just finding my way around the blogosphere, and finding my voice. There were other things going on, of course, and my focus was generally on U.S. politics, but there was simply no denying the allure of the papal election.

I dove right in, reading everything I could, taking it all in, obsessing over the odds at Irish betting sites, learning about the various papabili, the leading contenders to the throne of the Bishop of Rome, names like Martini and Tettamanzi and Arinze and Hummes and Danneels, and, of course, Ratzinger, all while submerging myself in the inner workings of the Vatican and the politics of the conclave.

Yes, I was fascinated by the whole thing, even though I'm not a Catholic and actually find most of the "teachings" of the Church utterly repellent, not to mention most of Christianity complete bullshit, and I wrote a lot about the election that would produce Pope Benedict XVI. For example, picking four out of so many:

-- Cardinals in the home stretch...;
-- Smoke, mirrors, and bells: The Conclave begins;
-- The Conclave: Day Two; and
-- Habemus papam: How did Ratzinger win?

And now here we are again, sooner that we thought at the time but, then again, no one really expected Ratzinger to be pope for long, given his advanced age, even if resignation was largely unthinkable (and historically... well, you have to go back 600 years, to Pope Gregory XII in 1415, who was forced out, and so really back to Pope Celestine V in 1294, but he never really wanted to be pope anyway, and he was actually chosen in the last non-conclave papal election, so we're really in new territory now with Benedict. 

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Off to a rough start in the Vatican

By Mustang Bobby

 
 The process for picking the next head of the Catholic Church is not exactly beginning well: 

The first day of discussion was rocked by revelations of scandal, with Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien admitting that he had engaged in sexual misconduct not befitting a priest, archbishop or cardinal.

I know I'm just a simple Quaker, but I thought that one of the rules of being a priest, archbishop, or cardinal was that there was no room for sexual conduct, let alone misconduct. Isn't sex of any kind on the permanent given-up-for-Lent list? (h/t Hawkeye Pierce) The only punishment for Cardinal O'Brien is that he can't come to Rome to pick the next guy; he gets to stay home and presumably spend the rest of his days updating his profile on Manhunt ("Semi-retired and now available on Sundays. Can't host.")

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