Black smoke: No pope yet

By NICOLE WINFIELD

Asso­ci­ated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Black smoke poured from the Sis­tine Chapel chim­ney on Tues­day, sig­nal­ing that car­di­nals had failed on their first vote of the papal con­clave to choose a new leader for the world’s 1.2 bil­lion Catholics and their trou­bled church.

Sur­rounded by Michelangelo’s impos­ing fres­coes imag­in­ing the begin­ning and the end of the world, car­di­nals locked them­selves into the chapel fol­low­ing a final appeal for unity to heal the divi­sions that have been exposed by Pope Bene­dict XVI’s shock­ing res­ig­na­tion and rev­e­la­tions of cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment in the Vat­i­can bureaucracy.

Led by prelates hold­ing a cru­ci­fix and can­dles, the 115 scarlet-robed prelates chanted the Litany of Saints, the hyp­notic Gre­go­rian chant implor­ing the inter­ces­sion of the saints to guide their vot­ing, before the mas­ter of litur­gi­cal cer­e­monies intoned “Extra omnes” or “all out” and closed the heavy wooden doors.

Out­side, thou­sands of peo­ple braved cold night rain and packed St. Peter’s Square, eyes fixed on the nar­row chim­ney pok­ing out of the Sis­tine Chapel roof. They were rewarded some three hours after the con­clave began when thick black smoke bil­lowed out of the chim­ney, sig­nal­ing that no pope had been elected.

The car­di­nals now return to the Vat­i­can hotel for the night and resume vot­ing Wednes­day morning.

Bene­dict XVI’s sur­prise res­ig­na­tion has thrown the church into tur­moil and exposed deep divi­sions among car­di­nals grap­pling with whether they need a man­ager to clean up the Vatican’s dys­func­tional bureau­cracy or a pas­tor who can inspire Catholics at a time of wan­ing faith and grow­ing secularism.

The lead­ing con­tenders for pope have fallen into one of the two camps, with Car­di­nal Angelo Scola, seen as favored by those hop­ing to shake up the pow­er­ful Vat­i­can bureau­cracy, and Brazil­ian Car­di­nal Odilo Scherer, favored by Vatican-based insid­ers who have defended the sta­tus quo. Other names included Cana­dian Car­di­nal Marc Ouel­let, who heads the Vatican’s pow­er­ful office for bish­ops, and U.S. Car­di­nal Tim­o­thy Dolan, the exu­ber­ant arch­bishop of New York.

Before Tuesday’s con­clave a Mass was held at St. Peter’s Basil­ica for the gen­eral pub­lic and the car­di­nals. In an appeal, the dean of the Col­lege of Car­di­nals, retired Car­di­nal Angelo Sodano, called for unity within the church, ask­ing the car­di­nal elec­tors to put their dif­fer­ences aside for the good of the church and the future pope.

“Each of us is there­fore called to coop­er­ate with the Suc­ces­sor of Peter, the vis­i­ble foun­da­tion of such an eccle­sial unity,” Sodano said. He said the job of pope is to be mer­ci­ful, char­i­ta­ble and “tire­lessly pro­mote jus­tice and peace.”

He was inter­rupted by applause from the pews — not so much from the car­di­nals — when he referred to the “beloved and ven­er­ated” Bene­dict XVI and his “bril­liant” pontificate.

Sit­ting in the front row was Benedict’s long­time aide, Arch­bishop Georg Gaenswein, who reported that Bene­dict was watch­ing the pro­ceed­ings from the papal res­i­dence in Cas­tel Gan­dolfo, accord­ing to a Vat­i­can spokesman the Rev. Thomas Rosica.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Mar 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.