A pink smoke, an earthquake, and the Fantapapa: the most curious images of the conclave

BarcelonaThe speculation is over. After weeks of uncertainty, the Catholic Church now has a new pontiff. Expectations for this conclave—the most universal and least European to date—have been enormous, as the election of the new pope was supposed to determine the path the institution would take after Francis's transformations had enraged the most conservative and disappointed the most progressive. Beyond the solemn liturgical scenes, the ritual also produced more curious scenes. We highlight a few:

An earthquake shakes Rome

Although it went largely unnoticed, an earthquake shook Rome on Thursday as the Italian capital was in the midst of the Vatican conclave. The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology reported a magnitude 2.9 quake in the San Cesareo neighborhood, in the south of the city, at 3:42 a.m.

Fantapapa, the game to guess the new pope

Betting houses haven't missed the opportunity to make money from the election of the new pope. But in Italy, companies don't accept bets on the papal candidates, so they've devised a game: Fantapapa. Inspired by the fantasy leagues frequented by soccer fans, users can create a team of eleven papal candidates and earn points if any of their cardinals win. headlines The media is prominently mentioned. If one of the members of the papal candidate team is ultimately elected pontiff, they earn additional points, with a bonus for correctly guessing the name they adopt as pope.

San Pedro without internet

The secrecy of the ceremony doesn't only affect the cardinals. All personnel associated with the organization must swear in writing to maintain absolute secrecy forever regarding everything that occurs at the meeting, under threat of excommunication. Applied to modern times, discretion implies banning cell phones and deactivating their signals. That's why the Vatican used signal jammers around the Sistine Chapel to avoid having to monitor the cardinals.

The Seagulls

The live broadcast of the conclave, which combines moments of uncertainty with tedium and a lack of information, has brought a new protagonist to the fore: the seagulls. We have discovered that Barcelona is not the only Mediterranean city suffering the headaches of this plague.During the hours of anticipation in front of the Sistine Chapel, whether the smoke was black or white, the only thing that could be seen next to the chimney were those birds.

The conclave of memes and networks

Unlike the last conclave in 2013, the election of the new pope has also penetrated the digital dimension and has become fodder for memes and irreverent messages. Starting with the President of the United States himself, Donald Trump, who opened Pandora's box by sharing an image of himself created using artificial intelligence in which he appeared dressed as a pontiff with the message: "I think he would make a great pope. No one would do it better than me." Even the cardinals themselves have weighed in via social media. In fact, several ecclesiastics have used the digital loudspeaker to express their opinions. For example, the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, responded to Trump saying that he looked "ridiculous" dressed as a pope, and the Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Fernando Chomali, went on to say: Share a video washing your habit to arrive "at the conclave impeccably"But the majority of posts were about the papal candidates. Many users, for example, have taken the opportunity to create jokes using AI-generated images.

The pink smoke

Neither white nor black. Representatives of the Worldwide Organization for the Ordination of Women (WOC) gathered outside St. Peter's in the Vatican to protest the absence of women in the process of choosing Rosa's gift. "The conclave," the organization stated in a statement.

"Whoever enters as a pope, leaves as a cardinal"

The anticipation surrounding the election of the new pope and the secrecy surrounding the rite have also meant that, since Francis's death, news programs have been filled with more or less well-founded speculation about who was most likely to become the new pontiff. The idea most repeated by commentators and analysts has been the Italian saying—also applicable outside of religious contexts—that "Whoever enters as a pope, leaves as a cardinal," which means that a person who goes somewhere with the prospect of emerging victorious is likely to be disappointed.

The 'special' wardrobe of some cardinals

Among the red and white tide that formed the cardinals' habits, there were those who broke with the chromatic discipline: these were the cardinals of the Eastern Church, who wore some components of their attire in black. One of them is the Indian Baselios Cleemis, the first bishop of the Malankara Church, who doesn't wear the red cap like all the others, but a black one. Another is the Ukrainian Cardinal Mikola Bichok, prelate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Melbourne, Australia.