CHAPTER SEVEN

Election and First Days (October–December 1958)

Pope Pius XII had reigned for nineteen and a half years, though in the past several years he was slowed by failing health. It had been a momentous period in the history of the world and in the life of the Church. Among his many actions and achievements, Pius declared the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the definition of papal infallibility put forth at the First Vatican Council in 1870 (the first and only time such a doctrine has been so defined) and canonized thirty-three new saints of the Church, including his predecessor, Pope Pius X.

“Pius’ program represented a judicious synthesis of conservation and liberalism,” according to Frank J. Coppa in The Modern Papacy Since 1789.

 

Although criticized as austere and authoritarian, Pius continued the papal commitment to social justice, writing in the first year of his pontificate [addressing his instruction to American bishops] that “the goods created by God for all men should in the same way reach all, justice guiding and charity helping.”

 

In international affairs, the experienced pope-diplomat won some and lost some, clashing, for example, with the dictator of Argentina, President Juan Perón, on the issue of Church control of education in that country. The controversy over the pope’s role in World War II—his portrayal as aloof from the reality of the mass extinction of the Jews of Europe—remains problematic, awaiting the opening of Vatican archives to resolve the historical and moral questions that have been raised about his policies toward the persecuted and the persecutors.

On December 8, 1945, Pius XII had promulgated a new constitution to govern the conclave, titled Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis (During Vacancies of the Apostolic See). Popes through the ages, as chief legislators of the Church, have often taken an active role in setting the rules and procedures that choose their successors. Even with periodic adjustments and innovations, the rules of the conclave then and now are largely the same as they have been for nearly ten centuries.

The document retained most of the regulations of Saint Pius X’s similarly titled Vacante Sede Apostolica (On the Vacancy of the Apostolic See) of December 25, 1904, which dealt comprehensively with the election of the Roman pontiff and the role of the cardinals during the vacancy and in the electoral process. In title II, chapter I of the document, “The electors of the Roman Pontiff,” the pope outlined the role of cardinals in selecting a new pontiff. Only they could cast votes. By the provisions of this constitution, even if the pope were to die while a council is being held in Rome or in any other place, the election was to be conducted by the cardinals alone and under no circumstance by the council, which would be suspended until the new pope decided to reopen it or not. A cardinal who had been excommunicated, suspended, interdicted, or subjected to any other ecclesiastical sanction was not excluded from the election. The censures were thus suspended, but only for the election.

Once a cardinal had been “created and published,” he had the right to participate in the election even though he had not yet been invested with the traditional red hat of his rank. Cardinals who had been canonically deposed and those who, with papal consent, had renounced their dignity were not allowed to take part in the conclave. If a cardinal had not at least been ordained a deacon, he could not participate in the election unless he had a special privilege granted by the Roman pontiff.

After the death of the pope, cardinals were to await their absent colleagues, after which time they were ordered to enter the conclave and proceed to the election. Adjustments made by Pius XI in the motu proprio (a personal papal statement), Cum proxime (Concerning New Rules for the Election of the Pope) of March 1, 1922, ordered that the conclave should begin fifteen days after the death of the Roman pontiff. He also empowered the College of Cardinals to extend this period to eighteen days if they considered it necessary.

If a cardinal arrived after the beginning of the conclave but before a pope had been elected, he must be admitted into the conclave immediately. Unless legitimately impeded, as were Cardinals József Mindszenty and Alojzije Stepinac in 1958, all cardinals were obliged to participate in the election. If a cardinal refused to enter the conclave or left it after having entered, he would lose his vote and not be readmitted unless he was forced to leave because of sickness. All cardinals, if not impeded by sickness, were required to assemble for the ballot when the bell had sounded three times, and if a cardinal refused, he faced excommunication.

The most notable innovation introduced by Pius’s constitution was the rule establishing that a cardinal could not be validly elected pope unless he obtained one vote over the traditional two-thirds majority. This new amendment precluded the possibility that this minimum could be obtained by the vote of the cardinal who received the necessary number of votes. This was the first time since Alexander III’s 1179 constitution, Licet de vitanda discordia (which was a canon of the Third Lateran Council), that to be elected pope it was necessary to obtain more than two-thirds of the votes.

Pius XII had also created an unprecedented number of cardinals at two consistories: thirty-two on February 18, 1946, and twenty-four on January 12, 1953, including Roncalli, and a powerhouse “class” of new princes. The maximum for membership in the Sacred College of Cardinals had been set at seventy by Sixtus V in 1587 and confirmed in the Code of Canon Law of 1917. John XXIII would later increase the total number of cardinals, as would his successor, Paul VI. Today the canonical maximum is 120 eligible cardinal electors (with many more who survive past the age of eighty, when they become ineligible to vote in a conclave).

Reflecting the growing internationalism of the college, only seventeen of the fifty-one electors at the conclave were Italian, the lowest percentage (one-third) within a conclave since 1455, which resulted in the election of Callistus III as a compromise candidate. The next highest national representation was from France, with six cardinal electors. The United States boasted only two cardinals, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York and Cardinal James Francis McIntyre of Los Angeles (a Spellman protégé), since Cardinal Edward Mooney of Detroit had died in Rome on the day of the conclave opening. Cardinal Celso Costantini, an Italian curial apparatchik, had died two weeks previously, and Cardinals József Mindszenty of Hungary and Alojzije Stepinac of Yugoslavia were not able to participate because they were stuck behind the Iron Curtain.

This was also the smallest number of electors since the election of Pope Pius VII in March 1800, by thirty-five cardinals gathered in a fourteen-week conclave in Venice under the protection of the emperor of Austria. At the time, Napoleon occupied Rome. In fact, the late Pius VI died in French custody in Valence, precipitating a political crisis within the Church.

Once before in the twentieth century, in 1903, a patriarch of Venice had been elected pope: Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, age sixty-eight. In 1978, another patriarch of Venice would be elected as Roman pontiff: the sixty-five-year-old Albino Luciani, who would reign for only thirty-three days in what came to be known as “the year of three popes.”

After the 1903 conclave, in a prescription that presaged the historic papal election of 1958, the French Cardinal François-Desiré Matthieu stated, “We wanted a pope who had never engaged in politics, whose name would signify peace and concord, who had grown old in the care of souls, who would concern himself with government of the Church in detail, who would be above all a father and shepherd.”

Roncalli was far removed from the papabili, the favored candidates for the papacy, but he had few, if any, real enemies. The slate of candidates was so unsettled that one Roman newspaper prepared biographies of more than twenty potential popes but did not include one for Roncalli.

 

On Saturday, October 25, 1958, at 6:08 P.M., the bell in the Court of Saint Damasus tolled three times, announcing that it was time to close the doors and seal the windows of the conclave for the election of the successor of Saint Peter. A few months earlier, the heads of the three orders of cardinals—cardinal bishops, Eugene Tisserant, dean of the College of Cardinals; cardinal priests, Josef-Ernest van Roey, archpriest; and cardinal deacons, Nicola Canali, archdeacon—along with the camerlengo, Aloisi Masella, had witnessed the barring of the two inside entrances of the area in the Court of Saint Damasus and the Borgia Court. Enrico Dante, as master of ceremonies, announced, “Extra omnes” [“Exit, all”], marking the official beginning of the conclave.

After the ceremonies ended, the cardinals retired to their cells. Cardinal Roncalli drew the cell set up for him in the offices of the Noble Guard. The sign, “Il Commandente,” was still visible above the door. His seat in the Sistine Chapel, where the scrutinies would be held, was on the right of the main door, between Cardinal Valerio Valeri and Cardinal Gaetano Cigognani.

The next day, after Mass in the Pauline Chapel, the cardinals cast two votes in the morning and two in the afternoon. On the first scrutiny, or ballot, the relative positions of the candidates and the factions were revealed:

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli    20

Gregory Peter XV Agagianian    18

Valerio Valeri    4

Giacomo Lercaro    4

Ernesto Ruffini    3

Giovanni Battista Montini    2

So, Roncalli won a plurality on the first scrutiny. It seemed that the cardinals might consider his age a benefit because he would probably not live long enough as pope to do any harm to the Church.

The second ballot was identical to the first. Outside, the world awaited the signal of the white smoke from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, signaling the election of a new pope. After the first scrutiny, the smoke initially appeared white, before Vatican attendants added wet straw to the fire to make the smoke appear blacker on the horizon.

Two more full days of voting continued, with no one achieving the two-thirds needed for election. Roncalli lost support at one point, dropping as low as fifteen votes, behind Agagianian. The aged cardinal electors were reportedly tired and cranky. Then, key supporters lined up behind Roncalli as the balloting continued, including the curial lion, Alfredo Ottaviani, along with the Frenchman Tisserant, who had known the Bergamese cleric well and come to respect him tremendously in the postwar years.

The eleventh scrutiny was conclusive:

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli    38

Gregory Peter XV Agagianian    10

Giacomo Lercaro    2

Valerio Valeri    1

At 4:50 P.M. on October 28, 1958, Angelo Roncalli was elected pope. For the first time, the patriarch of Venice had contravened the tradition that no major papabile ever recovers from a loss of support during the balloting. He had, instead, picked up just enough votes to achieve the throne.

The cardinals lowered the canopies above their seats in the Sistine Chapel: all but one, that of the newly elected pontiff. Cardinal James McGuigan of Toronto reached to his left and performed the courtesy for the late Cardinal Mooney of Detroit, whose body would be carried back from Rome to the United States within a few days.

Tisserant, the dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, performed his ritual duty. He approached Roncalli to ask him the question required by canon law and the constitution governing conclaves: “Do you accept the election, canonically made, of yourself as pontiff?” In response, Roncalli drew from his pocket the Latin text over which he had worked through the long hours of the previous night and during the lunch hour in his cell:

 

At the sound of your voice, “I am made to tremble, and I fear.” For what I know well of my poverty and insignificance is enough to bring me to confusion.

But seeing the votes of my brothers, the most eminent cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, the sign of the will of God, I accept the election made by them. I bow my head and my back to the chalice of bitterness and to the yoke of the cross.

On the solemn feast of Christ the King, all of us have sung: “The Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king. He will save us.”

 

Usually the simple word, Accepto, is uttered at this time. Thus the new pope signaled that something different was going on here, as he did in response to Cardinal Tisserant’s ritual question, “Quomondo vis vocari?” (How do you wish to be called?). His lengthy explanation of his choice of “John” caused even more whispering comments from among the fifty cardinals who had just elected him.

When elected pope, a man gives up his family and baptismal name when he chooses a pontifical name. Angelo Roncalli had explained to the cardinal electors immediately upon accepting his election why he chose the name John:

 

Vocabor Johannes (I wish to be called John). This name is sweet to us because it is the name of our father. It is sweet to us because it is the name of the humble parish church in which we were baptized; it is the name of innumerable cathedrals scattered throughout the world and first of all the sacred Lateran Basilica, our cathedral.

It is the name which has been born by more popes in the long list of Roman pontiffs. In fact there are 22 supreme pontiffs with the name of John of undoubted legitimacy. Practically all have had a short pontificate. We have preferred to cover the littleness of our name behind this magnificent succession of Roman pontiffs.

But we love the name of John, so dear to us and to the whole Church, especially because of the two who have born it, the two men, that is, who were closest to Christ the Lord, the Divine Redeemer of the whole world and founder of the Church.

John the Baptist, the forerunner of our Lord, was not the light himself, but a witness to the light, an invincible witness to truth, justice, and freedom, in his preaching, in his baptism of penitence, and in the blood which he shed.

And the other John, the disciple and evangelist, beloved by Christ and his dearest mother, who at the Last Supper leaned on the breast of the Lord and drew from thence that charity of which he was a living and apostolic flame until the end of his ripe old age.

May John the Evangelist who, as he himself relates, took to himself Mary the Mother of Christ and our mother, support together with her this exhortation, which is meant for the life and joy of the Catholic and apostolic Church, and also the peace and prosperity of all nations.

My little children, love one another; love one another because this is the great commandment of the Lord.

 

Immediately afterward, the master of ceremonies drew up the act of acceptance, with the secretary of the conclave signing as witness. Then John XXIII, as he was now styled, proceeded to the sacristy of the Sistine Chapel to don the papal vestments. As he did so, he took his red zucchetto, or skullcap, and placed it on the head of the secretary of the conclave, Albert di Jorio, as a sign that he would be made a cardinal in the first consistory of the new reign. This revived an age-old custom that had lapsed since Pius X had done the same for Raffaele Merry del Val back in 1903.

The robing of the new pope involved many new vestments, namely, the white cassock with stockings of the same color, the red shoes with a cross of gold on top, the rochet (the knee-length lace vestment similar to a surplice), red mozzetta, red stole, and white zucchetto.

John’s conclavist, his designated assistant during the conclave, Monsignor Loris Capovilla, his priest-secretary in Venice, was called into the sacristy, still ignorant of the election. It was traditional for the conclavist of the newly elected pope to assist him in vesting.

Famously, the papal tailor, Annibale Giammarelli, provided three complete sets of vestments to ensure that one would fit the new pope, no matter who might be elected. The first set John tried on could not even be buttoned over his 200-pound girth. The second was a little better, and it was in these robes that he spent the balance of the first day of his pontificate. The following day, Capovilla telephoned the clothier to complain about the bad fit. Giammarelli asked whether John had tried all three outfits and was told there had been time for only two robings. “Try the third,” he said. When they did, they found the third set fit John perfectly, for Giammarelli had anticipated even before the conclave that John could very well be the next pope and had prepared one set of vestments for him.

After accepting the obeisance of his brother cardinals, John proceeded to the balcony above the piazza to deliver his first blessing as Roman pontiff urbi et orbi (on “the city and the world”). The moment was captured on television for the first time in history, and it is estimated that an astonishing billion people saw or heard the announcement of the newest supreme pontiff’s election.

His pontificate of 1,680 days began with a bang: on November 2, a mere five days after his election and just two days before he would be crowned with the triple tiara, Pope John XXIII floated the idea of convoking the first ecumenical council of the Church in ninety years with Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini. Further, he decided to create twenty-three new cardinals in a consistory to be held on December 15, breaking the limit of seventy established in 1587 by Pope Sixtus V.

The College of Cardinals, which would swell to a membership of some 200 in the second decade of the twenty-first century (though a new maximum of only 120 under the age of eighty would be eligible to vote in conclave), would never be the same again. Nor would the papacy itself, thanks to this new old pope.