The Papal Conclave

Attended a breakfast meeting with Cardinal John Dew where he spoke about the recent Papal Conclave. I found aspects of it very interesting, and thought readers might also.

I asked how well the Cardinal-Electors know the other Cardinals before the Conclave, and whether the pre-conclave meetings are very important for getting to know them. I assumed they wouldn’t know each other that well, but it turns out they do. Cardinal Dew said that he sits in three Curia committees or groups that meet several times a year and each one has around 20 cardinals on it, so that is regularly meeting around half the Cardinals through those.

Also when new Cardinals are inaugurated, existing Cardinals are encouraged to attend the ceremony in Rome, so that helps get to know them also.

I was interested that at the actual Conclave there is a book with profiles of all Cardinals, with their biographical details, where they have served etc etc. This reminded me of List Ranking Committees where you get profiles of all the candidates before voting on their List places.

Also there are unofficial publications put forward by certain groups which might only include profiles of their favoured candidates, which to keep with the political analogy was like the pamphlets at party conferences. We were told though these had little sway.

And unlike the Conclave film (which is excellent) there is no overt politicking. However Cardinal Dew did say that there was a consensus at the pre-conclave meetings that they were looking for someone to continue on the work of Pope Francis, rather than change course.

During the voting each cardinal has a tally sheet with the names of all cardinals, so they can record votes for them as the names are read out. These tally sheets are burnt after each vote, along with the actual ballot papers.

There is no official person reading out the vote tallies as they go, but when Cardinal Prevost got his 89th vote on the fourth ballot, there was spontaneous applause so all the Cardinals had obviously been keeping track of the votes as they were read out. And once Cardinal Prevost responded to Acceptasne electionem de te canonice factam in Summum Pontificem? with “Accepto”, he became the Bishop of Rome, and 266th Successor to Saint Peter.