The first day of the papal conclave featured an initial round of voting by the cardinal electors. It ended, unsurprisingly, with black smoke issuing from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel. (The shortest conclave ever was in 1939, when Pope Pius XII was elected early on the second day of the conclave on the third ballot.)
My day began with a visit to the Centro Pro Unione, an ecumenical center and library in central Rome near Piazza Navona, with two ecumenical friends.
Ecumenical Conversations
I first met the director of the Centro Pro Unione, Fr. James (Jim) Loughran, S.A., when he was director of the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute in Graymoor, New York. I was a member of a 2006 consultation meeting there to examine why plans for a “Second Conference on Faith and Order in North America” were abandoned. We also sought to envision possibilities for moving the aims of the abandoned conference forward in other ways.
The conference, which was to be held in 2007, would have marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark 1957 North American Conference on Faith and Order in Oberlin, Ohio.
Fr. Jim was also previously editor of the periodical Ecumenical Trends, to which I contributed articles.
Teresa Rossi, Centro Pro Unione’s associate director, was a member of the Catholic delegation to Phase II of the international ecumenical dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the Catholic Church. I was a member of the Baptist delegation for that dialogue, which met from 2006 to 2010.
A key aspect of these dialogues is forming ecumenical friendships between conversation partners that continue beyond working sessions. These friendships are both expressions of the Christian unity toward which we are working and a means of facilitating the reception of the dialogue results among the churches we represent.
It was good to have the opportunity to renew friendships with these two ecumenical friends while in Rome to cover the conclave.
Fr. James (Jim) Loughran, S.A.
I asked Fr. Jim to offer Good Faith Media readers a brief “elevator conversation” summary of how the Centro Pro Unione came into being and what it seeks to accomplish.
He explained, “The Centro Pro Unione is a ministry of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, an American congregation of Franciscans based in Graymoor, New York.” (The initials “S.A.” that follow Fr. Jim’s name indicate the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, also known as the Society of the Atonement, is the religious order to which he belongs.)
He said it was “established in 1967, right after the Second Vatican Council. It was here that the non-Catholic observers to the Second Vatican Council met every week during the sessions of the council. So it’s a historically ecumenical location.”
He also told me that the floor above the space that the center now occupies in the building was where the ecumenical observers had their lodgings during the years of the council (1962-1965).
Fr. Jim continued, “We have a vast library of over 30,000 volumes dedicated to the ecumenical movement, so we are a research center. We’re also an education-formation institution for ecumenism. We offer lectures and a summer course in ecumenism in June and July every year. We reach out to other organizations in Rome, both Catholic and other church organizations that are here, for the sake of dialogue with the Catholic church.”
Teresa had been involved in a formal expression of the dialogue that the center seeks to encourage, through the Baptist-Catholic dialogue in which we both participated. I asked her to reflect on what participating in that dialogue meant to her personally.
Teresa Rossi
“I think that what I have experienced in those years of Catholic-Baptist dialogue in which I have been involved,” Teresa said, “is a sense of what is really the goal of ecumenism: restoring communion among Christians by overcoming the historical distance of divisions, overcoming the theological distance of different doctrinal positions, and overcoming the affective distance—destroying prejudices, stereotypes, and building new fraternity and a new sense of unity. I have experienced all three of these aspects in my involvement with my Baptist friends and colleagues.”
She added, “I have also experienced a very interesting theological exercise of really thinking in a new way. Pope Paul VI wrote in his encyclical on ecumenism, Ecclesiam Suam, that we have to think outside of our normal line of thinking to become teachers and wise people. I experienced that as we were drafting our final report—the way in which we were trying to really emphasize what unites us, which we put in bold [type] in our editing of the [final] report. But also, we, at least in my opinion, created some new words to express some new concepts. So using new words carries new memories, and this is what I think we were hoping to give to the next generation—new words of unity and new memories for the future.”
Since we were having this conversation in the context of the conclave to elect a new pope, I asked Fr. Jim if he might share his perspective on why the office of the papacy might be significant even for non-Catholic Christians.
He said, “The Bishop of Rome, the Pope, has a ministry—from the beginning, we Catholics understand—to work for the unity of the church, to be a kind of preacher…for the unity of the church. This is becoming more and more appreciated by non-Catholic Christians, our brothers and sisters in other churches who do see a significant role for a church leader to be someone who can convoke a gathering of Christians, who can be…at least symbolically a presence for the unity of the church.”
Conclave Day One
After my morning conversation with these ecumenical friends, I made the mile-long walk to Vatican City to resume coverage of the conclave. There was no press briefing on Wednesday, as the cardinals had concluded their daily congregation on Tuesday, and there were no new developments to report.
Most of the press pool worked in the Holy See Press Office briefing room while watching video monitors showing the Vatican’s live video feed of the cardinal’s activities before being sealed off from contact with the outside world. (The word “conclave” is from a Latin word spelled the same way, which literally means “with key.”)
At 4:00 p.m. (9:00 a.m. CST), we saw the cardinals assemble for prayer in the Pauline Chapel, near the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican complex. They then processed to the Sistine Chapel while chanting in Latin the “Litany of the Saints.”
Once they were all there, one by one in order of seniority, the cardinals swore their oath of secrecy with a hand placed on the Gospel book. The oath they swore in Latin is translated into English, “And I, [forename] Cardinal [surname], do so promise, pledge, and swear. So help me God and these Holy Gospels which I touch with my hand.”
When all cardinal electors had sworn their oath, the master of ceremonies declared, “Extra omnes!” (“Everybody out!”). I overheard one journalist suggest that the tone of voice communicated, “Get the [expletive] out!”
The doors were shut and locked at 5:46 p.m. (10:46 a.m. CST), and our waiting began.
A single round of voting was scheduled for the evening. Gerard O’Connell, Vatican correspondent for America Magazine and author of the definitive history of the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis, said in a video clip that the first vote on the morning after the evening initial vote is crucial. This is because the cardinals have had the night in between to reflect on the pattern of the one vote on the first day and to think about whether they might vote differently in light of it.
For example, they may recognize that their first preference didn’t generate enough votes to be viable in subsequent rounds. Therefore, they may need to shift their support to someone who is likely to gain additional support and who might represent what they want in the future pope. For that reason, he said there’s wisdom in having only one round of voting on the first day.
After dinner, many of us in the press pool returned to the square to wait for the first issue of smoke from the chimney. Vatican Media estimated approximately 45,000 were packed into St. Peter’s Square, extending into the central street that leads to the square.
We had been told that an approximate time for seeing the smoke after the first ballot might be 7:00-8:00 p.m. (12:00-1:00 p.m. CST). In 2013, it occurred at 7:40 p.m. This time, it wasn’t until 9:00 p.m. (2:00 p.m. CST) that black smoke billowed from the chimney.
One reason for the delay may have been that more cardinals were voting than were eligible in the 2013 conclave. Electors cast their ballots into an urn one at a time, and then they are carefully counted and the results announced.
I completed this dispatch on Thursday morning, after the cardinals resumed voting at 9:00 a.m. (3:00 a.m. CST). This time, the press pool primarily worked inside the briefing room while glancing now and then at the “chimney cam” feed on video monitors.
At about 11:50 a.m. (4:50 a.m. CST), we again had black smoke.
The cardinals completed two rounds of voting in less time than the single round on the first evening. The waiting continues!
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Professor of Historical Theology at Gardner-Webb University. Harmon is serving as a GFM correspondent for the papal conclave in Rome.
