“No one makes a drama like the One Sacred Catholic and the Apostolic Church,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, Shortly after emerging from the conclave that chose Pope Leo XIV on Thursday.
The fast decision, taken about 33 hours after the doors of the Sistine Chapel were closed and the cardinals entered the kidnapping, was a sign that they probably entered the conclave with sufficient unit around the decision to continue Francis’s legacy that they did not have to spend days fighting through a new direction for the Vatican.
In the weeks before the conclave, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, said at a joint press conference with five other US cardinals on Friday. “We listen to ourselves. What does the Church need? What does the world need? What do we expect? What are we dreaming about?”
Leo, previously Cardinal Robert Prevost, a native of the United States with Peruvian citizenship and deep links with Latin America, is described by the Vatican as the “second Pope of the Americas”, to Francis first. It is known that he was close to the late pontiff, both in his daily treatment in the Vatican and ideologically.
Like Francis, Leo is known for his concern for the poor and marginalized, and in his first Sunday blessing as Pope, he quoted Francis and asked for cessation in Ukraine and Gaza, the subjects of Francis’s final message to the world.
The conclave is wrapped in secret, and many of the treatment that lead to it remain in the shadows, but from the end of the conclave, some cardinals have offered glimpses to what happened in the hours that led to Leo’s elections.
Once the doors of the Sistine Chapel are closed, the cardinals make an oath of “absolute and perpetual secret”, as well as all the Vatican personnel who help them, including chefs, cleaners and drivers. Mobile phones are confiscated, an ancient reason for digital detoxification that at least one cardinal, Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, appreciated for giving him “more time in my hands just to be prayer, just to reflect, just to be still, instead of being constantly agitated,” he told the BBC.
The first night, the cardinals cast their votes of the first round, but the black smoke left the fireplace, which means that no Pope was chosen.
The cardinals postponed at night to Casa Santa Marta, the guest house stayed most of them and ate. Cardinal Wilton Gregory said that “there was a lot of dialogue at eating, coffee breaks, those moments in which you can participate in smaller groups.”
“The only method is the human method, to talk to another, the dialogue, to listen to each other,” Cardinal Robert Mcelroy, Archbishop of Washington, said about the conversations that eventually lead to the majority of two thirds required to choose a Pope.
The next morning, the cardinals returned to the Sistine Chapel and two more ballots were thrown, but the black smoke emerged once more.
“Voting is like seeing a glacier movement, but sometimes glaciers under stress move much faster,” Tobin said.
Despite broad speculation about Pábalili following Francis’s death, once the conclave began, we do not know who the other favorites were or why they were left behind. But hurt He told CNN that Prevost’s name had begun to emerge from the relative darkness even before the conclave began. And continued to confer with his brother Cardinals to the conclave.
“It was not that he stood up and made this overwhelmingly convincing speech that simply captivated,” Gregory said. “I don’t remember any particular intervention, but I think it was involved quite effectively in smaller group conversations.”
And although we agree in past centuries they could stretch for weeks, the Premost choice began to take shape on the second day.
Or as Gregory framed him: “There was a great movement on the second day, a great movement within the body that was there and there could be nothing more than the grace of God that moved us towards this consensus.”
“What I experiment is that everything starts in politics and the mystic ends,” Mcelroy added.
Tobin remembered the moment after casting his vote. “I walked and took a look at Bob, and because his name had been floating, and he had his head in his hands,” he said. “I was praying for him, because he couldn’t imagine what happens to a human being when you face something like that.”
During a press conference on Saturday, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle de Filipinas, he considered one of the main candidates for Pope, said he was sitting next to Prevost.
In the minutes after his choice, when the new Pope was panting through the air while the weight of his new role descended on him, Tagle said he asked if he wanted a sweet. Prevost accepted and Tagle took one out of a pocket under his cardinal’s robe, “That is my first act of charity,” he said, he told Prevost, jokingly, “for our new Holy Father.”
Shortly after, Prevost emerged on the balcony of the Basilica of San Pedro as Pope Leo XIV, proof of an efficient and successful conclave.
“This was not our first rodeo,” said Dolan. “We have gone through this 268 times.”
