On bread and water, and let the cardinals get wet: the historical keys to the conclaves

BarcelonaThe white smoke that ends up spreading over the Piazza Sant Pere in the Vatican is the result of a meticulous process that culminates with the"Habemus papam". A smoke that, after the death of Pope Francis, will give way to the announcement of the next pontiff once the conclave has found a candidate. This is a procedure with an eight-century tradition after processes that in some cases were chaotic. When did it emerge and why? Is it true that they were left to their own devices until a pope was elected? How have conclaves evolved?

In 1274, the conclave election system was approved. This is actually a Latin word meaning "with a key," referring to the absolute closure until the cardinals elect a pontiff. According to Diego Sola, professor of modern history at the UB and author of the book "Conclaves" in the ARA (Argentine University of Barcelona). History of the Popes (Fragmenta, 2022), the papal election in 1268 upon the death of Clement IV "was the final straw": "Until then, the meetings of the College of Cardinals to elect a new pontiff were not so codified, the participants in the meeting came and went without much thought. That election held in Viterbo lasted two years and nine months. When Gregory X was elected pope, he systematized the elective method at the Council of Lyon to avoid such long periods without a pontiff that caused "misgovernment of the Church." Father Valentin Miserachs, chapel master of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome – where Pope Francis will be buried – recalls what is said about this episode, halfway between popular legend and history: "The roof was uncovered so that they would get wet [if it rained]. Se non è vero è bien trovato. And they put them on bread and water," he says.

The professor of modern history at the UAB, Ignasi Fernández Terricabras, points out that, three decades earlier, In 1241, the system of conclave isolation was born in Rome to force the cardinals into a quick election, which was systematized in 1274. "Some Roman senators had the idea of closing it, and food was restricted to bread and water," he comments. But from Saint Peter, the first bishop of Rome, to Francis, everything changes: Fernández Terricabras maintains that in 1059 the cardinals were the ones who elect the pope for the first time and at that time the faithful population—especially "the most distinguished part"—had to give their assent, which is how it had traditionally worked.

To avoid interference, in 1130 the election was reserved for the cardinals, a practice that has endured, and the two-thirds majority has been in effect since 1179. Previously, "there had been a simple majority and it generated strong opposition, many antipopes—rival candidates who proclaimed themselves popes—and." In fact, John Paul II foresaw in the apostolic constitution that sets out the procedure for the conclave that if there is no agreement after 34 votes, a simple majority would suffice, but Benedict XVI did away with this to ensure that the vote would be between the two candidates with the most support, always preserving the two-thirds majority.

A peculiar procedure

The setting for conclaves hasn't always been the Sistine Chapel over the past five centuries, although it has remained the same. Wars have occasionally altered plans, such as the 1800 conclave chosen by Pius VII, held in the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. The election process also has a long history of voting on slips of paper to elect the pope, placed in a sack, and with the use of black smoke if there's no agreement, or white smoke if there is, to announce the news in Piazza Sant Pere. "To ensure the vote is anonymous, some even disguise the lettering or use it in capital letters," explains Vicenç Lozano, a former Vatican correspondent.. A smoke that, according to Miserachs, was not always clear: "Now, when the white smoke comes out you can see it very well, but before it was grey, it was not clear if it was white or black."

However, the election system in the conclave has not always been the ballot with the written vote: Fernández Terricabras recalls two other methods that were abandoned in the 17th century "to guarantee anonymous voting," but which until then had worked: the acclamation system, in which "some of them reached the cardinal" name and two-thirds was elected pope" and which had given rise to "tumultuous situations," and the system of delegates, in which "if the conclave was prolonged too much, the cardinals elected a group of three or five members to elect the pope."

Has there been alternation?

Throughout history, there have been successive papacies of different persuasions. But has there been an alternation of factions within the Church? According to Ignasi Moreta, professor and author of You shall not take the name of God in vain, there is not often alternation: "After John XXIII came Paul VI, a continuist. Then, John Paul I [a continuist]. But then there was an involution with John Paul II and then Ratzinger, a continuist [with respect to John Paul II]. It is not true that two factions alternate; very often there are continuist popes."

According to Father Ignasi Fossas, a monk from Montserrat and abbot president of the Sublacense Cassinese Congregation of the Order of Saint Benedict, "the popes have been very different: only if we think of the 20th century, there is a part of continuity in all the popes and at the same time each one does his own thing." For this reason, he finds it interesting to "revisit the hermeneutics of continuity of Benedict XVI" to explain that each pontiff has "his own stamp and continuity."

In this sense, "families are a topic as old as the Church itself; the difference between Saint Peter and Saint Paul already existed at the beginning," says nun Margarita Bofarull, who is one of the women that Pope Francis placed in the Curia for the first time as a member of the Governing Council of the Pontifical Academy for.

Different conclaves

The conclaves of the 20th century have been swift compared to chaotic episodes of the past. Historian Diego Sola emphasizes that "being elected in three ballots, as happened to Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli as Pius XII in the 1939 conclave, is a very swift election." He was a pope marked by the maneuvers of Adolf Hitler and the Second World War, and who is accused by historians of "looking the other way" when it came to the Holocaust, according to Lozano, although "he also saved Jewish families in Rome," and for his opposition to the Republic in Spain. Benedict XVI also benefited from the swift election in 2005, when he only needed four votes.

But there have also been slower ones, such as that of Pius XI in 1922, after 14 ballots in a five-day conclave instead of two as in previous years; or even John XXIII, who was not elected until the eleventh ballot in a four-day conclave. A pope who was a protagonist of the new era of the Church because he promoted the renewing Second Vatican Council and the aggiornamento, that is, the institution's updating.

There is also a peculiar year, in 1978: the conclave of August 25 and 26 allowed the arrival of John Paul I with only four votes, says Sola, but the pope died only thirty-three days later and the second conclave had to be held between the 14th and 14th Wojtyla was elected John Paul II after eight votes. Regarding the death of John Paul I, Lozano records in his book Intrigue and power in the Vatican (Pórtico, 2021), a witness of the first doctor who saw the body of the pontiff and provides some clues about the alleged murder, which would have occurred due to the discomfort caused to the curia by his reformism.

But beyond the duration, what were the surprising choices? "The surprise happened with John Paul II, with John Paul I, with Francis... What they got most right was Cardinal Ratzinger," recalls Father Josep Miquel Bausset, a monk from Montserrat. The archbishop of Tarragona, Juan Planellas, agrees, emphasizing that "Benedict XVI's was a conclave that everyone said it would be him, he left on the second day, it was quite a foregone conclusion, because he had been in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with John Paul II, he presided over his funeral and many said so." However, a certain amount of tension wasn't avoided either: "They wanted to make Cardinal Martini [of Milan] pope when the Benet conclave took place, and he already said they could vote for Bergoglio, but everyone looked to him. In the end, he voted for Ratzinger," explains journalist and priest Francesc Romeu. In fact, he recounts how, in his journalistic coverage of conclaves, he has noticed that "you always find out what happened in the previous conclave," since the cardinal's rigorous duty to maintain secrecy is blurred if it involves talking about the previous papal election. A dynamic that has continued even though the trend of electing Italian pontiffs, already broken with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and not even European ones, with Francis, has been broken.

The right to veto

"Beyond the four walls of the Sistine Chapel, the pressures of lobbyists from outside cannot be ignored," Lozano asserts, because "normally, the election of a pope has never been done without pressure from external forces." In this sense, the conclaves have also faced another element that had nothing to do with the Holy Spirit who must inspire the cardinals to elect the head of the Church, but rather with the equally common power struggles and global geopolitics. For seven centuries, several states even had a regulated instrument for exerting pressure: the right of veto of Christian powers, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Spain, or France, to block certain papal candidates. "In election procedures, Western powers could veto a pope. When Pius X was elected, the Austro-Hungarian Empire vetoed Cardinal Rampolla," recalls priest Armand Puig.

How was it exercised? "Through a trusted cardinal of the imperial house, who had a list of ineligible names," says Sola, who maintains that Austria exercised power in that case because Rampolla, "the favorite of a part of the cardinals, under the pontificate of Leo XIII displayed a very anti-Austrian foreign policy." In 1903, Pius X was the last to benefit after the veto, but the historian comments that "upon being chosen, and somewhat ashamed of how the discussion within the conclave had unfolded, he repealed the Austrian right of veto."

From the hermit pope to Borgia and the schisms

The internal struggle between families and factions in the conclaves had one of its most surprising outcomes in 1294, when it ended with a recluse of the same name: Celestine V. The elderly octogenarian, who wasn't even a cardinal, resigned shortly afterward because he had neither the ability nor the desire to enter into power games. He was elected on July 5, 1294, and resigned on December 13. A diametrically opposite case, however, is the conclave that elected the first Catalan-speaking pope, of the Valencian Borgia lineage: Alfonso de Borgia, who would eventually give way four decades later to his nephew Rodrigo de Borgia.

The journalist Priest Romeo recalls that "Pope Borgia [Calixtus III] became Pope by buying land in Italy," in a game of interests in which the Valencian, with origins in the high nobility, managed to forge the appropriate alliances to sustain the papal rule. Likewise, Father Miserachs points out that "during the Renaissance there was strife between noble families" and that the case of the Borgias is an example of this dynamic: "They imposed themselves through politics." In fact, until 1870 the popes ruled the Papal States, and had their own army.

These games of interests, beyond the vetoes, even led to a Western Schism between 1378 and 1417, with a strong struggle with France. Puig recalls that "the conclave suffered pressure from the Roman population to return to Rome [the papacy, after the last one was French]" and that there were "manoeuvres" by the French king, which resulted in there being one pope in Avignon and another in Rome during that period. The Council of Constance closed this chapter with a single pope again, but there have been other schisms following papal elections that have promoted councils: the most recent, that of the Neo-Catholics after the First Vatican Council and that of the Lefebvrists after the Second Vatican Council.