Chapter Four

THE CONCLAVE

The magic of elections is that they happen when they happen, not before. No matter what the “polling” suggests, however formal or informal it may be, no one knows with certainty what the outcome will be until the votes are counted. Every election is in some sense a drama whose ending is unscripted, and this was also the case in the conclave of 2005. After the fact, it’s tempting to regard the election of Joseph Ratzinger as so obvious that the event itself seems a mere formality, but that was not what it felt like at the time. While Ratzinger entered the conclave with obvious momentum, the result could have gone in other directions, and it took the intersection of intangible factors and determined support to make him pope.

By their own choice, the 115 cardinals who would elect the next pope began their lock-down early, moving into the Casa Santa Marta, the $20 million hotel on Vatican grounds where they would stay during the conclave on Sunday night, ahead of the Mass pro eligendo papa the following morning. Several cardinals said they felt the need for a “jump start,” since the behind-the-scenes conversations up to that point had been scattered, and not everyone had been involved.

It wasn’t just the broader public that was curious about how things would shake out. Of the 115 cardinal-electors, only two, Ratzinger and Cardinal William Baum from the United States, had ever been through this process before. (The other under-eighty cardinal who took part in the two conclaves of 1978, Cardinal Jaime Sin of the Philippines, was too ill to attend.) Even those who went in with a strong idea of what they would like to happen, therefore, also carried a sense of the unknown, wondering if things would unfold as they hoped.

Cardinals with a background in religious life compared the conclave to a chapter meeting for the election of superiors in a religious order, in the sense that you just don’t know what’s going to happen until things get under way.

“People might have various ideas about who the candidates should be,” Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier of Durban, South Africa, a Franciscan, said. “But until you get in the room and see whose name starts to attract a consensus, you really don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”

It was with this atmosphere of adventure that the cardinals filed into the Sistine Chapel on the afternoon of April 18.

THE PROCESSION

In exact fulfillment of the Ordo Rituum Conclavis, the liturgical book prepared by the Papal Master of Ceremonies, Archbishop Piero Marini, in accord with the specifications of John Paul’s Universi Dominici Gregis , the 115 cardinals began their procession from the Hall of Blessings through the Sala Regia and into the Sistine Chapel at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, April 18, the date they had set for the start of the conclave twelve days earlier. (The ritual actually calls for them to begin in the Pauline Chapel, at the opposite end of the Sala Regia, but that chapel is undergoing restoration and was unavailable.)

The cardinals were led by a cross-bearer and a cleric carrying aloft a book of the Gospels, along with members of the Sistine Chapel Choir who intoned the Litany of Saints. They were also joined by the man who would give them their final meditation before getting down to business, Cardinal Tomáš Spidlík Š of Czechoslovakia, an over-eighty cardinal known as a passionate advocate of unity between Eastern and Western Christianity. Marini was present, along with a handful of aides. The cardinals themselves walked in reverse order of seniority, with the cardinal-deacons first, then the cardinal-priests, and finally the cardinal-bishops, with Ratzinger as the dean of the College in the final position. As the cardinals arrived in the Sistine Chapel, they took their assigned seats, again determined on the basis of seniority, and awaited Ratzinger’s arrival to sing the Veni, Creator Spiritus, or “Come, Creator Spirit,” invoking the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the deliberations before them.

Two days before, a group of journalists had been invited up to the Sistine Chapel to get a sense of the arrangements in the space where the cardinals were now gathered. Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls had described the blocking devices in place in the chapel to impede attempts to communicate or eavesdrop, and jokingly challenged journalists to try their cell phones. Apparently the devices had not yet been switched on, because I was able to call my wife’s number from a few feet away from the spot where Cardinal Ennio Antonelli of Florence was now sitting.

Following the hymn, the cardinals took a collective oath. It reads:

We, the cardinal electors, collectively and individually, present in this election of the Supreme Pontiff, promise, pledge and swear to observe faithfully and scrupulously all the prescriptions contained in the Apostolic Constitution of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, Universi Dominici Gregis, published on February 22, 1996.

We likewise promise, pledge and swear that whichever of us by divine disposition is elected Roman Pontiff will commit himself faithfully to carrying out the munus Petrinum as Pastor of the Universal Church and will not fail to affirm and defend strenuously the spiritual and temporal rights and liberty of the Holy See.

Above all, we promise and swear to observe with greatest fidelity and with all persons, clerical or lay, secrecy regarding everything that in any way relates to the election of the Roman Pontiff and regarding what occurs in the place of election, directly or indirectly relating to the results of the voting; we promise not to break this secret in any way, either during or after the election of the new Pontiff, unless explicit authorization is granted by the same Pontiff; and never to lend support or favor to any interference, opposition or other form of intervention, whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree or any group of people or individuals might wish to intervene in the election of the Roman Pontiff.

In a remarkable departure from previous practice, Vatican Television carried both the procession and the oath-swearing live, so it was broadcast live around the world, offering the public for the first time a glimpse into this centuries-old ritual. Following this collective oath, each cardinal then proceeded to the Book of Gospels, which had been placed in the center of the chapel, and added his individual guarantee:

And I N, Cardinal N, do so promise, pledge and swear, so help me God and these Holy Gospels which I now touch with my hand.

When the last cardinal had finished, Marini uttered the famous words Extra Omnes, or “everyone out,” which meant that everyone except he, Spidlík, Š and the cardinal-electors had to exit. (Marini’s dramatic flair left something to be desired, and I ended up inadvertently talking over his pronouncement on CNN.)

After Spidlík Š finished his meditation, he and Marini were also obligated to leave, and the door of the Sistine Chapel was locked. (As a bit of trivia, the door is locked from the outside and the key is held by the colonel of the Swiss Guard, so that when the cardinals wished to exit they had to knock.) At that stage, the rules of procedure called for Ratzinger to ask if anyone had any remaining questions about the requirements of Universi Dominic Gregis, and if they had, a discussion would have followed. In the event, there were no matters of importance raised, and so the cardinals proceeded directly to a first ballot.

The election of the 265th pope in the 2,005-year history of the Roman Catholic Church had begun.

INSIDE THE SISTINE CHAPEL

Sometimes people picture in their mind’s eye a highly charged political atmosphere inside the Sistine Chapel, with caucuses of cardinals hurriedly whispering in corners, desperately attempting to mobilize support for or against certain candidates. Indeed, I had this image myself before interviewing Cardinal Franz König in Vienna in 2002, two years before his death. König had been part of the conclaves of 1963 and the two of 1978, and I asked him about the “electricity” that I imagined must be palpable inside the Sistine Chapel during the election of a pope.

“Actually, if you could watch what happens inside, you’d be bored to tears,” König laughed.

The reality is that all the politics of a conclave happen around the margins, over dinners and coffees and in other informal settings. The goings-on inside the Sistine Chapel are, by way of contrast, entirely ceremonial. In each round of balloting, every one of the cardinals has to process to the altar beneath Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment and place his ballot on a paten, then deposit it in an urn (not a chalice as in previous conclaves; these urns were specially designed by Marini for the occasion). They vow that they have voted for the candidate whom before God they believe should be elected, and then return to their seat. The counting is an elaborate process involving three cardinals, and their work has to be checked by another three cardinals to ensure that it’s accurate. All told, one round of balloting can take an hour or more to complete, so that two ballots are, in effect, a morning’s or afternoon’s work.

During an interview on CNN following the election of Benedict XVI, Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore explained what some cardinals do to fill the time. “One cardinal told me, while he was listening to the votes being counted, he said three rosaries,” Keeler said. “And another said, well, I said two, and so, a third said, ‘Well, I prayed mine with greater piety, and it was just one.’ ”

That’s how the conclave works on the inside—there are long stretches of time spent in silence and in prayer, with no floor speeches, no dramatic moments when a kingmaker pops up and swings his support to another candidate, no concessions and no victory laps. The drama of a conclave resides in the political preparation that goes on around the edges. The counting of votes inside determines if that preparation pays off, or if the unexpected takes over from the prefabricated.

A POPE IN FOUR BALLOTS

Interviewing cardinals after a conclave is a bit like interviewing witnesses to an auto accident. While you can usually get agreement on the big picture, everyone remembers the details slightly differently. In part, this is due to the vagaries of human memory; in part, it’s due to the oaths of secrecy cardinals take. In light of that oath, each cardinal negotiates slightly differently what he feels at liberty to say, and many respond to questions with hints, or ambivalent circumlocutions that have to be interpreted to be understood. As a result, one has to be careful about purported “reconstructions” of the conclave, especially claims about the number of votes received by various candidates. I do not provide precise round-by-round totals in this section, and I am skeptical of all such accounts. My rule of thumb has been that I will treat as verified only those points confirmed for me by at least two cardinal-electors, so that the version of events provided here is as reliable as humanly possible.

The general picture of how things went inside the conclave of 2005 seems, by this stage, reasonably clear.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI on the fourth ballot, putting the conclave of 2005 in a tie for second place among the fastest conclaves of the last 102 years. Only the conclave of 1939, which elected Pius XII on the third ballot, was more rapid, and that election unfolded against the backdrop of the Second World War, when it seemed obvious to most cardinals that they should elect someone who could keep a steady hand on the Vatican’s diplomatic rudder. To some extent, therefore, the election of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the secretary of state under Pius XI and the former papal ambassador to Germany, was a foregone conclusion. (Some were surprised that it actually took three ballots, expecting an election by acclamation on the opening afternoon.) The first conclave of 1978 also produced a pope on the fourth ballot, Cardinal Albino Luciani, the patriarch of Venice. The swiftness of that result was due largely to the skillful preconclave organizing by Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, who swung his support to Luciani in order to block the candidacy of Cardinal Giuseppe Siri of Bologna, a strong conservative who might have backtracked on some of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

On Monday, April 18, at roughly 8:00 p.m. Rome time, the first evening of the conclave, smoke began to pour from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel. That chimney had been installed earlier in the week in preparation for the conclave; it does not regularly sit atop the chapel, as there is no routine need for a furnace. To facilitate the burning of the ballots, two devices had actually been placed inside the Sistine Chapel. One was a small cast-iron furnace in which the papers are burned, which has been in use since the conclave of 1939 (the dates are etched in a semi-circle around the top of the stove). The other device produced bursts of compressed air in order to send the smoke up the lengthy chimney and outside into the Roman air.

For a brief instant Monday night, as had been the case in virtually every conclave of recent memory, the smoke was an ambiguous gray, and some in the crowd began cheering, thinking the cardinals had shattered all precedent and elected a pope on the first ballot. Shortly, however, it became clear that the smoke was black, meaning that the result was negative. In a press briefing earlier in the week, the Vatican had announced that bells would go off when a pope was elected, so that the world would not have to rely exclusively on the smoke. In a minor glitch, however, the bells of St. Peter’s that ring at the top of every hour to mark the time went off at 8:00 p.m. just as the smoke was emerging, so some in the crowd mistakenly took this as meaning that the Church already had its pope. As it became clear that the smoke was black, however, the crowd dispersed and people began heading to one of the many fine trattorias in the neighborhood of the Vatican.

The black smoke reflected the fact that on the first ballot votes were scattered among a variety of candidates, though by all accounts the strongest showing belonged to Ratzinger. Several cardinals said that Ratzinger received something on the order of 40 votes of the 115 cast at this stage, placing him more than halfway toward the 77 he would need to become pope. Several cardinals said afterward that this first showing was important, because while there had been scattered expressions of support for Ratzinger from various quarters during the interregnum, and a few cardinals for years had been talking about Ratzinger as the pope, this was the first indication that Ratzinger’s candidacy was a serious push with a realistic prospect of success.

There were also votes for Martini, though apparently not as many as originally reported in some media outlets. Like Ratzinger, there’s no evidence to suggest that Martini wanted the job, and much to indicate that he did not. After retiring as archbishop of Milan in July 2002, Martini has spent most of his time in Jerusalem, returning to the biblical studies that were his passion earlier in his career. He had repeatedly indicated that this is how he wished to spend whatever time he had left. That desire, coupled with his questionable health, led many cardinals to disregard him as a contender.

“I don’t think we ever took Martini seriously, largely because of his health,” one European cardinal said after the voting ended.

In the immediate aftermath of the conclave, rumors swirled around Rome that Martini had run “neck and neck” with Ratzinger on the opening ballot, but then formally “withdrew” as a candidate, sending the reform forces into disarray. The implicit suggestion, at least in some reporting, was that Martini might have staged a serious challenge to Ratzinger had he stayed in the race. None of the cardinals with whom I spoke after the conclave ended, however, could confirm that Martini had ever taken himself out of the running, formally or informally. These cardinals said there was no declaration from Martini on the subject during the conclave.

“There’s no time for such statements,” one cardinal said. “I can tell you for sure that no one got up, even informally, and said, ‘I’ve got something to say.’ It just didn’t work like that.”

While it’s possible, therefore, that Martini may have mentioned something over dinner or over breakfast to a small group, none of the eight cardinals with whom I spoke afterward heard any such report. All eight said that even if such a statement had been made, it would not have affected their votes, which probably means that they weren’t planning to vote for Martini in any case. For the most part, the theory that Martini formally “withdrew” from the race appears to have been an ex post facto exercise among stunned progressives seeking some explanation for how the election of Ratzinger could have happened so quickly.

An American cardinal was blunt: “Martini wasn’t elected because he didn’t have the votes,” he said. “Simple as that.”

After that first ballot of Monday evening, the cardinals retired to the Casa Santa Marta, just back from the Paul VI audience hall, across from the entrance to the excavations underneath St. Peter’s Basilica. It features 108 guest suites, each with a living room and a bedroom, and 23 single rooms, all with private baths. The cardinals had a simple dinner, then retired. They regrouped at 7:30 a.m. for Mass in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta, a modern wood-and-glass design with enough room for slightly over 100 people, just enough space for the 115 electors and their aides. By 9:00 a.m., having walked the few hundred yards or taken a small minivan made available to them, the cardinals were back inside the Sistine Chapel, ready for the second and, if necessary, third round of voting.

On the second ballot, Ratzinger’s support increased, reaching if not slightly surpassing fifty votes. For many cardinals this was a critical sign, because it meant that the support for Ratzinger on the first ballot was not just a tribute, but a statement of the desires of a solid chunk of the College. His support was not declining. The rest of the votes were scattered across a variety of other names, but no one seemed to be emerging as a clear alternative to Ratzinger. Among the Latin Americans, the top vote-getter was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentinian. Despite that support, some cardinals candidly doubted that Bergoglio really had the steel and “fire in the belly” needed to lead the universal church. Moreover, for most of the non–Latin Americans, Bergoglio was something of an unknown quantity. A handful remembered his leadership in the 2001 Synod of Bishops, when Bergoglio replaced Cardinal Edward Egan of New York as the relator, or chairman, of the meeting after Egan went home to help New Yorkers cope with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In that setting, Bergoglio left a basically positive but indistinct impression.

While some analysts later described Bergoglio as the “progressive” candidate after Martini, he is hardly a darling of reform-minded liberals in Latin America, who remembered his battles as the Jesuit provincial in Argentina during the 1970s, when he insisted on a more traditional reading of Ignatian spirituality in opposition to Jesuits beginning to embrace liberation theology and the move toward social engagement. It was precisely this reputation that led some to regard Bergoglio as a potential compromise candidate between doctrinal conservatives and some moderates who felt the election of a Latin American would be positive symbolism for the Church. While Bergoglio was in effect the conclave’s second-place finisher, and one African cardinal described the voting as “something of a horse race” between Ratzinger and Bergoglio, other cardinals said they never really took seriously the idea that Bergoglio would be elected.

“Many were the names of Latin American cardinals mentioned in the press as papabili, but in the voting, they were nowhere to be seen,” Cardinal Francisco Errazuriz Ossa, archbishop of Santiago, Chile, later told the Associated Press. Indeed, Errazuriz, president of the Latin American bishops’ conference, CELAM, had been touted himself as a papal contender in some quarters.

By the third ballot, Ratzinger’s support crossed the magic fiftyeight-vote threshold, meaning that he now had sufficient support to command an absolute majority in the conclave. Though no one said so out loud, all the cardinals realized that under the 1996 rules promulgated by John Paul II in Universi Dominic Gregis, the conclave could decide after seven days of voting, or roughly thirty-four ballots, to switch to election by a simple majority, which meant that a candidate with that level of support, assuming it was stable, could simply ride out a few more ballots, even if he fell short of two-thirds of the vote, and then be elected. Given that Ratzinger’s support was not only holding but growing, after the third ballot most of the cardinals felt the handwriting was on the wall.

After the fact, several cardinals commented on how surprised they were that some of the names of potential papabile they had been hearing about for years, such as Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan, had made no showing whatsoever; one report said that Tettamanzi collected no more than two votes. While that number is unconfirmed, it’s clear that his candidacy never gathered any steam. Long-touted front-runners such as Sodano, Francis Arinze of Nigeria, Claudio Hummes of Brazil, Ruini, Kasper, and Dias were likewise nowhere to be seen in the results. As the cardinals broke for lunch, it seemed crystal clear that no serious challenger was going to emerge to Ratzinger, and the afternoon vote would be merely a formality.

Shortly before noon Rome time on April 19, smoke again began to billow out of the Sistine Chapel chimney, and after another period of initial confusion, it was clearly black. The world now knew that the cardinals had gone through three ballots without electing a pope; what they didn’t know was that inside, the deal was all but done. Already some commentators began talking about the possibility of a prolonged conclave, although others pointed out that in 1978, John Paul I was elected on the fourth ballot.

Observers were confused when, after the noontime smoke seemed to have tapered off, a new burst began to appear. In fact, the Sistine Chapel stove into which the ballots and notes taken by the cardinals had to be placed for burning has a limited capacity, and 230 ballots from two rounds of voting, plus dozens of sheets of other paper, simply didn’t all fit at once. There were thus two separate burnings, meaning two bursts of smoke. This would be the only time the world would see a double burst, however, because in the afternoon session it would require only one round of voting to produce a new pope.

As the cardinals returned from pranzo, the midday meal, and a brief rest, an atmosphere of expectation hung in the air. Most cardinals said afterward that they returned to the Sistine Chapel expecting to produce a pope on the first ballot of the afternoon session, and it was abundantly clear who that would be. Ratzinger clearly understood what was about to happen. When, just two hours later, he was asked by Cardinal Angelo Sodano by what name he would be known as pope, he was ready with his answer—Benedict XVI—as well as a fairly lengthy explanation of its significance.

Once the counting of the ballots began, the repeated intonation of “Ratzinger” left no doubt as to the outcome. Most cardinals were following the counting on their own tally sheets, so that when Ratzinger reached the magic number of 77, a brief gasp was heard in the chapel, followed by a strong round of applause. Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne later remarked that the new pope looked “a little forlorn” at the instant of his election; certainly no one understands better the enormity of the job than Ratzinger, who stood at John Paul’s right hand for twenty-four years. By the time the final tally was over, Ratzinger had collected almost 100 of the 115 votes, which is the standard dynamic on the last ballot in a conclave—when it becomes clear who is destined to win, most cardinals join the majority in order to give the new pope the broadest possible mandate and base of support.

Had the new pope been anyone but Ratzinger, it would have been Ratzinger’s duty as dean of the College of Cardinals to approach the man who had been elected and ask if he accepted election. In this case, however, the honor fell to the vice-dean, Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state. After the ballots were all counted and the result confirmed, Sodano approached Ratzinger and asked: “Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?” Ratzinger pronounced the fateful words “I accept,” and from that moment he was pope. Sodano then asked by what name he wished to be known, and Ratzinger was ready with his response: “Benedict XVI.”

At that moment, cardinals began lining up to the new pope to pay their respects. Benedict was then led off to the “room of tears,” where the famous Gamarelli family of tailors had three sets of papal vestments ready, one for a large pope, one for a small, one for a medium. Pope Benedict stepped comfortably into the vestments and prepared himself for what would come next.

Shortly before 5:50 p.m. Rome time, smoke once again began to billow from the Sistine Chapel chimney. Though the smoke again seemed a shade of gray, the timing clearly indicated that a pope had been elected; had the cardinals gone through two rounds of balloting, the smoke would not have appeared until sometime around 7:00 p.m. local time. Smoke at this hour could therefore only mean that they had reached a conclusion. Still, the promised bells did not begin to go off, and despite the repeated swells of cheering that came from the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, commentators held off making the call until official confirmation arrived. At 6:00 p.m., the hourly bells of St. Peter’s chimed once again, sending onlookers into new paroxysms of confusion, wondering if that meant the result was negative as it had been the night before.

Finally, at roughly 6:10 p.m., the massive bells of St. Peter’s began to toll again, this time to signal the election of a new pope, followed by the bells of most of Rome’s three hundred churches. For the next several minutes the city resounded with what American poet Edgar Allan Poe once called the “tintinnabulation that so musically wells / from the bells, bells, bells, bells.” It was a spectacularly aesthetic moment, but more important, it meant someone had been elected. Given the speed of the result, many people leapt to the conclusion that Joseph Ratzinger was the winner.

Shortly thereafter, that instinct was confirmed.

However foregone the result may seem now, it’s worth observing one final time that things could have turned out differently. Had Martini not been ill, for example, it’s possible that he could have mounted a serious run for the papacy. A bit like Ratzinger, many cardinals believe that Martini’s public image as an extremist (in his case, on the left) is undeserved, and in any event, no one doubts his intellectual or cultural preparation. This is a man, after all, who has published an exchange of correspondence with Italian novelist Umberto Eco, and many readers felt the cardinal’s literary style was the more impressive of the two. Or had there been a Latin American candidate of Ratzinger or Martini’s stature, he might have stolen the show. The fact that Bergoglio made a strong showing, despite the reservations that some cardinals harbored, reflects the hunger in some quarters to break the European grip on the leadership of the Church. Every election to some extent turns on circumstance, and in this case the potential impediments to a Ratzinger victory simply never fell into place.

“HABEMUS PAPAM”

At 6:43 p.m. Rome time, the senior cardinal deacon, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez of Chile, stepped onto the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. In a personal flourish that is not part of the official protocol, he greeted the “dear brothers and sisters” gathered in the square in several languages. Then he got down to business, intoning the fateful Latin formula Habemus Papam, meaning “We have a pope.”

Observers watching the scene closely noticed that Medina had a slight smile on his face from the moment he stepped out onto the balcony. Then, as he told the crowd the name of the new pope, he said, “Joseph, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church . . . Ratzinger.” He dragged out pronouncing the last name slightly longer than ritual required, obviously relishing the suspense.

It’s no conjecture to suggest that Medina was delighted with the outcome. Like so many members of the College of Cardinals, his roots with Ratzinger run deep. In the early 1970s, he and Ratzinger served together on the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith created under Pope Paul VI. At the time, Ratzinger and Medina shared concern that the reforms spawned by the Second Vatican Council were getting out of hand; in 1972, both men were among eight members of the commission who addressed a letter to the Pope urging him to be cautious about liturgical changes. When Medina became the Vatican’s top liturgical officer more than two decades later, from 1996 to 2002, he would aggressively pursue a “reform of the reform” along these lines. The friendship between the two theologians blossomed over the years, as their reservations about post–Vatican II trends brought them together. In his 1997 memoir Milestones, Ratzinger identifies himself with other former periti, or theological experts, at Vatican II who became disillusioned, including Henri de Lubac, Philippe Delhaye, M. J. le Guillou, and Medina Estevez. These bonds of brotherhood no doubt were on Medina’s mind as he presented his old friend, Joseph Ratzinger, to the world as Pope Benedict XVI.

Shortly after Medina’s announcement, the new pope stepped out onto the same balcony to receive the cheers from the crowd below. Before delivering the pro forma urbi et orbi blessing, Ratzinger followed the example of his immediate predecessor, Pope John Paul II, and made a few remarks to the crowd. It was the first sign, tiny though indicative, that he intended to follow the example of outreach and spontaneity of John Paul, rather than returning to a more iron-clad deference to Vatican protocol.

“Dear brothers and sisters,” the new pope said. “After the great Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the lord.” The tens of thousands of faithful in St. Peter’s Square roared their approval. In another small but revealing move, the new pope did not elect to return to the royal plural of past pontificates, but very naturally referred to himself in the first person singular. Then Ratzinger, not known as a man of impromptu gestures or great bursts of public emotion, clasped his hands and raised them over his head in a gesture of victory.

“The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers,” he said.

Some in the crowd began to chant “Benedetto! Benedetto! ,” using exactly the same intonation and rhythm they only recently used for “Giovanni Paolo!,” and applause echoed through the square. Longtime Romans and Vatican-watchers expressed surprise at the sight of the man who stepped out in the papal robes on this chilly Roman night, beaming and waving. This was not, many remarked, the image of Joseph Ratzinger acquired over the years in a thousand and one articles about the “Panzer-Kardinal” and “God’s rottweiler.”

Benedict XVI spent his first night as the 265th pontiff dining with his fellow cardinals at the Casa Santa Marta. With this act, the new pontificate was under way.

WHY RATZINGER WON

In attempting to explain Joseph Ratzinger’s election as Pope Benedict XVI, one is tempted toward one of two equally banal answers: that the Holy Spirit dictated the outcome, or that he got the most votes. The first is inarguable from a faith perspective, and the second flirts with being tautologous. Neither, however, is terribly informative about what went on behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel.

In summary form, what were the factors that swung this election to Joseph Ratzinger? Based on conversations with cardinal-electors after the conclave, the following points seem to have been most decisive.

The Best Man

First, he was an outstanding man in a College of Cardinals not long on truly outstanding men. Ratzinger is the sort of figure who, in any group of 115 distinguished international leaders, whether businesspeople or politicians or academics, would stand out. He has a remarkable range of intellectual interests, is fluent in a number of languages, has a ferocious work ethic, and is a superb listener and learner. While there are a number of other cardinals who are fine men with good academic backgrounds, solid track records as pastors and administrators, and who genuinely love their people and are loved by them, few have quite the same gravitas as Ratzinger. Carlo Maria Martini, Godfried Danneels, Francis George of Chicago, Walter Kasper, or Christoph Schönborn perhaps belong in the same category, but each for various reasons was considered unelectable, and never emerged as a serious candidate. From that point of view, the cardinals were deadly serious when they said they wanted to elect the best man for the job. One cardinal said after the conclave that if Ratzinger’s election had no other effect than convincing the world to read his theology, that alone would be worth it.

“Man for man, he was superior to the lot of us,” as one cardinal put it succinctly in a postconclave interview.

After the fact, most cardinals insisted that the “best man” factor was the primary, if not exclusive, factor that had driven their votes. Other considerations, they said, such as age, nationality, doctrinal positions, and career path gave way under a prayerful consideration of who would be the best individual to lead the Church. There’s no reason to doubt this, and given the foreseeable negative reaction to Benedict XVI in some quarters, powerful reason to believe that for at least some cardinals, electing him was an act of courage.

At the same time, it would be dishonest, and inaccurate, to leave the impression that more routine political considerations did not play a role in the outcome. One cardinal, for example, told me that he had considered voting for Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, based on his impressive theological background as a member of the Communio school inspired by Hans Urs von Balthasar and his track record at the Lateran University, but in the end did not do so because of his age, sixty-three. This cardinal felt that another long pontificate following John Paul’s almost twenty-seven-year reign would be unhealthy for the Church. An African cardinal made clear that all things being equal, he would have preferred a candidate from the global south, representing a local church where there would have been “bells, fireworks and dancing in the streets” in reaction to the pope’s election. Bergoglio’s strong showing suggests, at least in part, that a number of cardinals thought in these terms. Some no doubt voted for Ratzinger in the end to avoid a protracted division within the College of Cardinals, and that, too, is a political calculation.

In the end, most elections are not decided by a single factor, but by an intersection of circumstances and reflections that are generally unrepeatable. For example, the election of Karol Wojtyla in 1978 was the result of a deadlock among two front-runners, Benelli of Florence and Siri of Bologna, which led the cardinals to seek a “compromise” outsider. Many Vatican analysts assumed the pattern would repeat in 2005, so the hunt was on for “compromise” candidates who did not clearly belong to either the “conservative” or “liberal” camp. Just as generals are usually fighting the last war, Vaticanisti often handicap the last race. The lesson for future conclaves, then, is not to exclude the traditional criteria by which candidates are usually evaluated, but also not to forget that the cardinals will not necessarily feel bound by them, and that candidates of genuine substance should not be overlooked because conventional wisdom says they don’t fit the typical profile.

The Best Campaign

Second, despite not wanting the job, Ratzinger ran the best campaign. As described in chapter three, his performance during the interregnum was perfectly calibrated to remind his conservative base of support of what they admired about him, but to reassure cardinals of other temperaments that he was not the man of his public image, not a brooding and dictatorial figure. He appeared as a man of substance, generous and open, willing to work cooperatively, and capable of standing in front of massive worldwide audiences and doing the Church proud. No one could watch Joseph Ratzinger over those two weeks and not regard him as a potential pope.

The Best Campaign Staff

Third, and again despite not campaigning for the job, Ratzinger had the best campaign staff. For years, a core group of cardinals, composed of curial figures and admirers from other parts of the world, had been determined to see him elected. The new pope has talked about the future of Christianity in the West as a creative minority that has an outsized impact on the broader culture, and in miniature, that seems to have been the story of the 2005 conclave.

In June of 2004, for example, I interviewed one Latin American cardinal on background about the election of the next pope, and his blunt comment was: “I would like very much Ratzinger.” In the spring of 2003, I sat at a cafe in the Piazza of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome with a cardinal from another part of the world who was visiting the Vatican on business, and had a similar conversation. This cardinal’s unambiguous view was “Ratzinger is the man the church needs as pope.” Neither man works in the Roman Curia. Going into the conclave of 2005, therefore, there was no mystery that Ratzinger would have votes. During the interregnum, these cardinals were by far the most determined and organized force in the preconclave politics. One cardinal who played a key role in this regard was Schönborn, who insisted repeatedly that it was “God’s will” that Ratzinger become pope. No other candidate had anything like this committed base of support.

Inside the conclave, Ratzinger’s base managed to get out to a quick lead and built on it, while the possible alternatives foundered. All of which just goes to show that forming a consensus isn’t always a matter of crafty horse-trading, but of having the fastest horse!

The Funeral Effect

Fourth, Ratzinger benefited from the “funeral effect.” While it might have been thinkable before John Paul’s death to elect a quiet, pastoral Italian to allow the Church to catch its breath, the reminder the funeral issued of the international stature gained for the Church under John Paul, and the momentum of his pontificate, meant that the cardinals knew they had to elect another serious, world-class leader. Based on everything they knew of Ratzinger, as well as his performance over the interregnum, he was ideally suited for the part. He is a man to whom the world will listen.

A Known Quantity

Fifth, Ratzinger was a known quantity among cardinals who did not know one another well. Many cardinals, especially those from the global south and those created as cardinals in John Paul’s final consistories of 2001 and 2003, came to Rome worrying aloud that they had not had the opportunity to develop personal impressions of their brother cardinals. As things turned out, because of the informal taboo on discussing the succession until the funeral Mass was over, they really had only ten days to make these judgments. In the end, many of them seem to have decided that rather than risk the unknown, they would opt for a proven figure whose interaction with them had largely been positive.

“We’ve all had contact of some kind with Ratzinger over the years,” one cardinal said afterward. “What most of us came away saying was, ‘What a brilliant man, but also what a kind man.’ When I’ve dealt with him, he’s always been very careful and very collegial. He doesn’t get credit for that. He’s always done the research, he listens, and he often brings his people into the meetings so that everyone’s on the same page. He’s a man of cooperation and collaboration. He’s honest and says what he believes.”

Getting to the bottom line, this cardinal summed it up: “We like him.”

Not an “Enforcer”

Sixth, and related to the point above, many cardinals believe that the man the world knew as the Vatican’s “enforcer of the faith” is a caricature of the real Joseph Ratzinger, and that as Pope Benedict XVI, his true self will shine through—kind, humble, and deeply spiritual. Moreover, they insist, Ratzinger will be more collegial and collaborative than the Pope he served, John Paul II, because his pontificate will be driven less by personal charisma and more by collective reflection. Further, they say, Ratzinger has a history of naming qualified aides who are not simply yes-men. (Critics sometimes charge that both the staff and consultors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith represent a edge that the current brain trust, led by the secretary, Archbishop Angelo Amato of Italy, and the undersecretary, Fr. Augustine Di Noia from the United States, know their stuff.) Ratzinger enjoys give-and-take, and though he will not yield on matters of faith, the cardinals say he can be surprisingly flexible on most other matters.

Along these lines, a majority of cardinals was also persuaded that despite his professorial streak and his shy side, Ratzinger can play to crowds and be a public figure, if not with the same charisma as John Paul II, at least with enough élan to provide the Catholic faithful with a positive image of their shepherd. Most notably, they were persuaded that he would continue the last pope’s outreach to youth. Many conceded, however, that the showman’s element of the papacy will be the steepest part of the learning curve for Benedict XVI.

“This is a very introverted man,” one cardinal said. “Talk about purification . . . this will be very hard for him. But, people grow into it.”

The Best Response to Secularism

Seventh, to the extent cardinals had identified secularism in Europe as one of the primary challenges facing the Church, Ratzinger seemed the man best positioned to articulate an answer. No one in the College of Cardinals understands the Western intellectual tradition better, no one has spent more time reflecting on the phenomenon of relativism, and no one seems to be more forceful in challenging the relativistic mind-set of the contemporary West on its own turf—that is, which worldview best protects human freedom and happiness. If secularism was the primary issue that drove this election, in other words, Ratzinger had the winning position.

While secularism was not the primary concern of most cardinals from the global south, many of them said afterward that they are convinced the next pope will also be a voice for the poor and for just development, if only because so many of them talked about it during the General Assembly meetings.

“The Pope sat through all of that,” one African cardinal said. “He has to know our concerns.”

The Impact of a Simple Majority

Eighth, Ratzinger was the first candidate to benefit from John Paul’s rule allowing the cardinals to elect a pope on the basis of a simple majority after seven days of voting, or roughly thirty-four ballots. Most analysts had said before the fact that the cardinals would never allow the conclave to go on that long because they did not wish to appear divided, and that turned out to be true. Psychologically, however, everyone in the conclave knew that with a solid majority vote, Ratzinger’s supporters could, if they wanted to, simply “run out the clock” until the thirty-fourth ballot was up, and then elect their man without two-thirds of the vote.

“Everybody had that in mind,” one cardinal said later, adding that after Ratzinger crossed the fifty-eight-vote threshold, his election became “inevitable.” In that sense, what John Paul II did, in effect, is to transform the election of the pope from a two-thirds vote into a simple majority.

This is not to suggest that Ratzinger would have been incapable of attracting two-thirds of the vote had the conclave gone on a few more ballots; obviously, in the end, he attracted far more than seventy-seven. The point, however, is that the game was over much more quickly once he crossed the fifty-eight-vote marker. Had that rule not been in place, the conclave might have gone on a few more rounds, creating at least the theoretical possibility for a serious challenger to emerge.

Ineffective Opposition

Ninth, it seems abundantly clear that the anti-Ratzinger vote in the College of Cardinals, such as it was, simply never was able to organize in a way sufficient to halt Ratzinger’s momentum. In the critical preconclave period, when Ratzinger’s candidacy was gathering steam, the more progressive cardinals never united behind a single candidate around whom a coalition might emerge, floating instead a seemingly endless series of possibilities: Martini, Hummes, Tettamanzi, even Ennio Antonelli of Florence. The fact that several of the “opposition” cardinals apparently voted for Martini in the early stages testifies to their paralysis, since it was clear from the beginning that no one with Parkinson’s disease would be elected to succeed a pope who suffered from that illness so visibly for so long.

“Only Nixon Could Go to China”

Tenth, under the heading of “only Nixon could go to China,” some cardinals felt the Church was long overdue for some needed reforms that only someone of Ratzinger’s stature and unquestioned orthodoxy could engineer, beginning with a serious reform of the Roman Curia. The culture of the Curia, some cardinals believe (along with other bishops around the world), is too dominated by a self-justifying bureaucratic mentality that seeks power over the life of local churches for its own sake, that too often meddles in matters it really doesn’t understand, and that flourished for twenty-six years under a pope whose passion for issues ad extra allowed the Curia largely to set its own course. If there is to be a shake-up in the Curia, many cardinals felt, only Ratzinger can pull it off. He knows the system, having worked inside it for twenty-four years, but is not of the system. He was already a cardinal before he arrived, so he has no debts to pay for advancement or access. He is his own man, and at least some cardinals expect serious changes in Rome in fairly short order.

REACTION

Perhaps the single greatest reservation many cardinals had about Ratzinger was the “baggage” he would carry into the papacy, meaning his reputation as a fierce enforcer who would divide and polarize the Church. In truth, this was not a great source of anxiety for cardinals from many parts of the world, such as Latin America, Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe, where Ratzinger’s stands had not been a source of much public discussion over the years. For Europeans and North Americans, however, and above all cardinals from Germany and the United States, the potential for “baggage” was a live concern indeed.

I had indirect confirmation of the point when I bumped into Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City in the Rome airport, awaiting a flight to Paris the day after the new pope’s inaugural Mass. (Rivera Carrera was on his way home, while my wife and I were traveling to Paris for a writing retreat to produce this book.) I had met Rivera Carrera for the first time during John Paul II’s trip to Mexico in 2002 for the canonization of Juan Diego, and so I went over to say hello. Speaking in flawless Italian, he asked me why I was headed to Paris, and I told him the purpose was to write a book about the conclave and the new pontificate.

“Your book will be balanced, I hope,” he said.

“I hope so, too,” I replied.

“That will be particularly important in the United States,” he said. “There could be problems there.”

Given such concerns, it is not surprising that immediately after the election, cardinals from the United States and Germany sprung into a public relations offensive designed to present Ratzinger to the world before the media and his critics had a chance to set the agenda.

Interviewed by CNN’s Alessio Vinci shortly after the result was announced, for example, Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany, the Vatican’s top ecumenical official and a man often identified as a more progressive jousting partner of Ratzinger, urged patience.

“Well, I cannot tell about the conclave, but it was a very moving event,” Kasper said. “And for me it’s the first conclave I participated in, and a sense of high responsibility, not only for my own church but for all churches, for the whole of the world. And then, the first German cardinal after eight centuries, it’s also something. Today was the feast day of the last German pope [Victor II]. He was a pope of reformers. And now, Cardinal Ratzinger, was before my colleague as professor, and now he’s pope. It makes a moving atmosphere among us.”

Kasper was generous in his praise of Ratzinger.

“Well, there are a lot of prejudices about him, and most of these prejudices are unfair. And I think you should leave these prejudices aside now and give him at least a chance. . . . I know him since the sixties when he was a professor at Münster. I was also a professor there, and we worked together. He can be a very charming person. He’s a very bright person known everywhere, and I think he will be a pope of reconciliation and peace. It is the, I think, the inspiration he gave for his name: ‘peace and reconciliation.’ And the first meeting—short—I had with him, he told me, ‘Well, now we will work together, walk together, on the paths to unity of the Churches.’ And I think that’s a good sign also for the ecumenical movement. He was formerly very engaged, especially in the dialogue with the Orthodox churches, and I think he will go on in this direction. I am happy to be able to work together with him.”

Vinci reminded Kasper that he had said, just days before, that the conclave should not look for a “clone” of John Paul II.

“Clearly he’s not a clone of John Paul II,” Kasper replied. “These are very different personalities. They are very friendly to each other and work very well together. But they are different, very different. I think he’s a pastoral man. He will be a pastoral pope, to be a pastor, since the office is job of a pope. And I think he will do his best with the gifts he has. And he has very rich gifts. . . . People wanted an outstanding person, and he is one without any doubt, and they wanted a man who is firm in faith and church doctrine but also a man who can explain faith. It’s not only important to have the truth but to communicate truth. And he is very able to do this. And it can have a good impact in this direction in our very religiously indifferent modern world. . . . We work together until now. We will work together also in the future. Sometimes you have different aspects . . . when it comes to the real issue of faith, there was never a difference. But among professionals it is a normal thing to maintain different positions and different aspects. But now he’s pope and it’s a different relation now.”

In terms of German reaction, the new pope also got a boost from an unexpected source: Swiss theologian Hans Küng, long seen as the champion of the liberal “loyal opposition” to John Paul II. He called Ratzinger’s election “an enormous disappointment,” but added: “The papacy is such a challenge that it can change anyone. . . . Let us therefore give him a chance.”

The American cardinals likewise launched a media offensive, as six of them—Mahony, Maida, George, Egan, Keeler, and Rigali—appeared at a press conference at the North American College, the residence for American seminarians in Rome, to discuss the new pope on the morning after his election.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago attributed popular impressions that Ratzinger was authoritarian to media “caricatures,” which misrepresented Benedict’s “humble genius.” George described an encounter with a woman who worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office Ratzinger led for twenty-four years, who described the new pope as a “true Christian.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., said that Benedict XVI “wants to be collegial, wants the advice of cardinals, and wants the advice of the bishops. He’ll ask for that advice in the synods, and on other occasions.”

Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia described the way the new pope had invoked the memory of the last pontiff to hold the name Benedict, Benedict XV, as someone who “promoted peace in the world, and universal reconciliation.” He predicted that the new Pope Benedict would pursue Christian unity, dialogue with other faiths, and a commitment to the social teachings of the Church, and would be “a great proclaimer of Jesus Christ in the world.”

Cardinal Edward Egan of New York described Benedict as “extremely kind” and a “lovely gentleman.” He challenged reporters to “start reading all his books, read what he has to say.” Egan predicted that Pope Benedict “will come to be known for who he is, and much admired.”

Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit struck a similar note.

“I firmly believe that Cardinal Ratzinger with all of his gifts and talents, and even some of his shortcomings, will somehow be able to reach others,” he said. “We prayed that God would send us a true shepherd, and those prayers have been answered.” Maida pointedly said it was his expectation that all people would embrace the new pope with love and affection, and support him in his ministry.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles told reporters “to be very careful about caricaturing the Holy Father and putting labels on him.” He added, “I’ve already seen some headlines doing that.”

Finally, Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, whose longtime passion for Christian-Jewish dialogue gives him a special sensitivity to Jewish reaction, pointed out that a rabbi who had worked with Ratzinger was present at the NAC for the press conference, and said that he would testify how a recent document from the Pontifical Biblical Commission on the Hebrew Scriptures, with a preface written by Ratzinger, had been very helpful in Jewish/Christian relations. Keeler made the point in part because day-two discussion of Ratzinger’s election, especially in the British press, featured prominent mention of the new pope’s brief and unenthusiastic compulsory enrollment in the Hitler Youth.

In the end, the American cardinals may have had less to worry about in terms of public reaction than many had feared. A CNN/USA Today /Gallup poll of American Catholics conducted shortly after the white smoke came up from the Sistine Chapel found that 31 percent had a favorable reaction to the new pope, 9 percent unfavorable, and almost 60 percent said they didn’t have enough information to reach a conclusion. In other words, more than 90 percent of American Catholics already like the Pope, or at least are willing to give him a chance. That’s considerably less baggage than some early comments in the press had suggested, painting a picture of a Catholic community almost evenly divided between Ratzinger fans and critics.

Still, 9 percent of America’s 65 million Catholics amounts to roughly 5.8 million people, which is a large pocket of opposition right out of the gate. Those numbers have been mirrored in polls across western Europe. Obviously, Pope Benedict is aware that some Catholics have trepidations about where his papacy will go, and at least part of the drama of the early stages of his pontificate will be determined by whether he is able to win at least some of these skeptics over. Like presidents and prime ministers, every pope gets a honeymoon. In the case of popes, the initial climate of goodwill is probably even stronger, because there is an overwhelming Catholic desire in most quarters to want to like, respect, and be proud of the pope. Benedict XVI thus has a window of opportunity to define himself and his pontificate before judgments begin to harden.

THE EXPECTATIONS GAME

When John Paul II was elected in 1978, he invited the cardinals to remain with him that night for dinner, and as champagne was served, he and a number of other cardinals broke out into traditional Polish folk songs. On the night of Pope Benedict’s election, however, there were no Bavarian drinking anthems among the cardinals gathered in the Casa Santa Marta, merely a couple of hymns in Latin and a dinner featuring soup, cordon bleu, and spumanti. (One cardinal later described the fare as “good but not great.”)

Yet the evening meal had barely been served when the political jockeying surrounding the new pontificate began, especially in the press.

In the Roman newspaper La Repubblica, for example, an article appeared the morning after Benedict’s election claiming that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was preparing to issue four new documents that would now await Ratzinger’s replacement. One would approve communion for the “innocent party” in a situation of divorce and civil remarriage; another would raise the retirement age for bishops from seventy-five to eighty; and third and a fourth would redefine church teaching on the divinity of Christ in an ecumenical key, and commit the papacy to the search for full Christian unity.

These reports, senior Vatican sources told the National Catholic Reporter on April 22, are “absolutely false.” There are no such documents, nor any projects to produce documents along the lines suggested, within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sources said. While it is possible that other Vatican offices might be thinking about such documents, a Vatican source said that nothing is close to publication.

On the question of Communion, Vatican sources said that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is working on a study of the principles underlying reception of the Eucharist, responding in part to the debate raised in the United States over pro-choice Catholic politicians. It will not, however, produce a change of policy for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. That issue was already addressed in a 1994 document of the congregation, “Reception of Communion: Divorced-and-Remarried Catholics.” The heart of that document was the following affirmation: “If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists.”

On the question of the retirement age, Vatican sources indicated that this question is not part of the competence of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and in any event, no document on the subject exists in that office.

On the ecumenical question, the new pope has already expressed his commitment to the search for Christian unity. That congregation had conducted a symposium on the papacy following John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical on ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint, the proceedings of which were published in 1998. At the moment, sources said, no further documents are planned.

If no documents exist, what’s going on?

Longtime Vatican-watchers speculate that this is part of the traditional dance when a new pope is elected. Forces that would like to nudge his pontificate in one direction or another float trial balloons, in this case most prominently a relaxation of discipline regarding Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Doing so will either compel the Pope to adjust his policies, or will exact a price in terms of public relations when expectations of a change are not met. It’s all a standard part of the political game, observers say, and it would appear that even in its earliest hours, the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI was not exempt.

FIRST MOVES

Whatever else may be said of him, Pope Benedict XVI is not a dumb man. He understands that his role as universal pastor is different from that of doctrinal guardian, and he also knows that some constituencies both inside and outside the Catholic Church initially received the news of his election with trepidation. His first few days as pope, in that light, seemed in part designed to reassure the anxieties of many interest groups and currents of opinion that might have had reason to fear a Ratzinger victory.

Mass in the Sistine Chapel, April 20

The morning after his election, Benedict XVI celebrated his first Mass as pope with the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel. For the occasion, he prepared a four-page speech in stylized Latin, laying out the basic principles that he said would guide his pontificate. He started off, as he did on the evening of his election, with a note of humility, saying he was strongly conscious of his own “inadequacy” for the task thrust upon him. Yet he said he felt John Paul’s “strong hand holding my own,” adding that he felt as if he could see his smiling eyes and hear his voice, saying one last time: “Be not afraid!”

The Pope then asked all the cardinals, and all the bishops of the world, to sustain him in his efforts, saying he wanted to truly be “the servant of the servants of God.” It was an indirect way of saying that he wants to pursue a collegial mode of governance, crafting policy in collaboration with the bishops, striving to reassure those who would expect precisely the opposite from a Ratzinger pontificate. He quoted in this regard the document Lumen Gentium from the Second Vatican Council, signaling his desire to stand in continuity with the council’s aim of strengthening the role of the College of Bishops. “Collegial communion,” Benedict said, is essential to an effective proclamation of the living Christ to the world. The documents of Vatican II, Benedict said, have lost none of their relevance in the forty years that have passed since the formal close of the council. (This was read by many as an indirect way of saying that there is no immediate need to call another ecumenical council, an idea that has from time to time been floated by some reform groups in the Church.)

Benedict noted that his papacy is beginning in a year already dedicated by John Paul II to the Eucharist, and he affirmed that the synod scheduled for October on the theme of the Eucharist will go ahead. Some cardinals had suggested to the Pope in the immediate aftermath of his election that he might wish to postpone the synod, but Benedict vowed to press ahead, another way of suggesting that he wants to hear the contributions that the bishops will make.

Pope Benedict then turned to ecumenism, pledging to make a “primary commitment” of his reign “working tirelessly for the reconstruction of full and visible unity among all the followers of Christ.” Moreover, Benedict said, he is fully aware that progress on this front requires more than “the manifestation of goodwill,” but also “concrete gestures that enter into souls and stir consciences, inviting everyone to that interior conversion that is the presupposition of all progress on the path of ecumenism.” In that regard, the Pope called for a deeper “purification of memory,” an acknowledgment of past and present faults. The Pope took the opportunity to salute all Christians and to pledge to do everything possible to improve relations.

Benedict said the funeral of John Paul II made him ever more conscious that the pope must address himself not just to Christians but to followers of all religions and to all men and women of goodwill, and pledged to work for a “sincere and open” dialogue with the rest of the human family. In this context, he also confirmed the Catholic Church’s commitment to work for “authentic social development,” a way of saying that the Church’s option for the poor will continue on his watch.

Benedict also pledged to continue John Paul II’s outreach to the young.

“With you, dear young people, the future and the hope of the Church and of humanity, I will continue to dialogue, listening to your expectations with the intent of helping you to meet ever more deeply the living Christ, who is eternally young.”

Inaugural Mass, April 24

Pope Benedict XVI received the symbols of his authority in a two-hour inaugural Mass, marked by a call for unity with other faiths and a pledge to govern the Church through cooperation rather than papal mandate. He accepted the fisherman’s ring and seal—the symbol of his continuity with St. Peter—and a lamb’s wool pallium, a sash that signifies the pope’s role as the shepherd of the faithful.

In his homily, he recast these tokens of papal power as symbols of servitude, signaling a dramatic departure from his former role as the Church’s chief doctrinal authority.

“My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole church,” Benedict said. He extended his call to Christian churches “not yet in full communion” with the Catholic Church, and to the “Jewish people,” whom he characterized as “brothers and sisters,” heirs to an “irrevocable” bond with God, united with the Church through “a great shared spiritual heritage.”

“Like a wave gathering force, my thoughts go out to all men and women of today, to believers and nonbelievers alike,” Benedict said. The homily was interrupted almost thirty times by strong applause.

Benedict described the pallium as a “yoke” that “does not alienate us, it purifies us—even if this can be painful.”

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state, brought before the pontiff a golden bejeweled box with its lid ajar, exposing the glittering fisherman’s ring, emblazoned with a relief of Peter casting his fishing net—the image traditionally used to seal apostolic letters. Benedict plucked it from the box and slid it onto his right ring finger. Twelve people representing Christ’s disciples then lined up to kneel before Benedict and kiss his ring. Among the twelve chosen was a Benedictine sister, the first religious woman ever to participate in the ritual.

“I am not alone,” Benedict declared, prompting loud cheers from the audience. “You see,” he said, briefly lifting his eyes to the crowd in a brief departure from his text. “We see it. We hear it.”

Sunday, Benedict cast his condemnation of Western ideological influence in a more subtle light.

“All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way. They justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity,” he said. “God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the crucified, not by those who crucify.”

“Pray for me,” he said, “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

Each time the crowd cheered their new pope, he appeared to receive the affirmation with gratitude. Although it was clear that the new pope did not have the same immediate gift for connecting with a crowd of his predecessor, it was also clear he was trying, and on this day that seemed quite enough for the supportive flock gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

After the Mass concluded, Benedict mounted a white jeep and circled the square to the cheers of onlookers who held out their hands and flashed digital cameras. Beyond the square, an endless crowd packed the Via della Conciliazione, which was lined with mega-screens for the occasion. Similar screens were positioned outside Vatican City walls to accommodate late arrivals. City officials estimated that 100,000 pilgrims from the Pope’s native Germany attended the event.

Dignitaries from more than 131 countries attended the Mass, including German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Prince Albert II of Monaco, and Florida governor Jeb Bush, head of the American delegation. In another sign of the new pope’s ecumenical openness, the crowd included Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; Metropolitan Chrisostomos, a top envoy for Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Christian Orthodox; and a senior representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Kirill. All met with the Pope later in the day.

Interreligious Audience, April 25

In the morning of April 25, Benedict XVI met with members of the Muslim community who had attended Sunday’s installation ceremony. He assured them the Church wanted to continue building “bridges of friendship” that he felt could foster peace in the world, and said he was particularly grateful that members of the Muslim community were present.

“I express my appreciation for the growth of dialogue between Muslims and Christians, both at the local and international level,” he said. He noted that the world is marked by conflicts but longs for peace.

“Yet peace is also a duty to which all peoples must be committed, especially those who profess to belong to religious traditions,” he said. “Our efforts to come together and foster dialogue are a valuable contribution to building peace on solid foundations. It is therefore imperative to engage in authentic and sincere dialogue, built on respect for the dignity of every human person, created, as we Christians firmly believe, in the image and likeness of God,” he said.

Some Muslim leaders had reacted with apprehension to Benedict’s election, based especially on comments he made in 2004 opposing the entry of Turkey into the European Union on the grounds that it might compromise the Christian identity of Europe.

St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, April 25

The Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, one of the four major patriarchal basilicas in Rome, was a particularly important port of call for the new pope for two reasons. First, it is administered by the Benedictines, the order named for St. Benedict, from whom the Pope had taken his name; second, it is associated with ecumenical outreach, so his appearance in this church took on special resonance for the leaders of other Christian denominations who had come to Rome for his inaugural Mass.

In his remarks, Benedict noted that St. Paul was the great apostle of the early church, a man who traveled throughout the ancient world to bring the message of Christ to the entire world. The Pope pledged that he, too, felt the urgency of the missionary mandate of announcing Christ, signaling that his would not be a sleepy pontificate in which the Church turned in on itself, but an attempt to build on the energy and dynamism of John Paul’s reign. He also said that his approach to mission would not be through force or power, but through example. He cited the rule of St. Benedict, in which the fifth-century saint urged his monks “to put absolutely nothing before the love of Christ.”

A BROADER MANDATE

Collaborators of the new pope say these words and gestures were not part of a calculated effort to mount a “spin” campaign, putting a false face on the “real” Ratzinger. They arise directly out of his long-standing passions, and mark the beginning of the transformation of Cardinal Ratzinger into Pope Benedict XVI, a man with a broader mandate, and a better opportunity to speak words of hope and brotherhood as well as doctrinal correction to the broader world.

If this were a spin campaign, however, it would be difficult to imagine a better one. The Pope struck the right notes, and everywhere he went he appeared smiling, waving to crowds, caressing infants, and even making impromptu jokes. When he showed up late for an audience with German pilgrims, for example, he quipped that he had been “Italianized” because of his long years in Rome, and pledged to work on his punctuality.

These early moves all played to generally positive reviews, though some cynics noted that paradoxically, Pope Benedict benefits from low expectations because of his rather fearsome reputation. In these early days, anything at all that comes across as optimistic, relaxed, and open is eagerly embraced, and perhaps overinterpreted, precisely because it was not what some people were expecting. Measured against such low standards, these critics say, almost anybody would get a “bounce” just by showing up.

Nevertheless, there was much that was genuinely intriguing in these telltale first steps of the new pope. It’s early in the game, but all this suggests that the pontificate of Benedict XVI may turn out to be more complex, less predictable, than some early commentators had anticipated.