Black smoke signals no pope elected at first conclave vote

VATICAN CITY

Vatican's Sistine Chapel is ready for the conclave and the election of the new pope by the cardinals on March 12, 2013 at the Vatican. Newly-installed tables stand under Michaelangelo's frescoes in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel where Conclave of Cardinals will be hosted to pick the next Pope. The doors of the church will be locked March 12 until the Cardinals select a new Pope. Photo by ABACAPRESS.COM

Thick black smoke billowed into the night sky from the Sistine Chapel's chimney on March. 12, signalling an inconclusive first vote in the conclave to elect a new pope at a time of strife and scandal for the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinals moved into the Vatican as suspense mounted ahead of a secret papal election that has so far not seen a clear frontrunner identified to steer the Catholic world through troubled waters after Benedict XVI’s historic resignation.

The 115 cardinal electors, who are to decide the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics in a conclave in the Sistine Chapel, will live inside the Vatican walls completely cut off from the outside world until they have made their choice.

Dozens of Vatican staff working inside the conclave, including cooks, drivers and security guards, swore an oath on March 11, and jamming devices have been installed to prevent any bugging or communication in or out of the chapel. Cardinals entering the Vatican took to Twitter to say goodbye to their online flock before they are cut off from the outside world.

“Last tweet before conclave: May Our Father hear and answer with love and mercy all prayers and sacrifices offered for fruitful outcome. God bless!,” South African cardinal Wilfrid Napier told his followers. The Vatican has said anyone caught tweeting will be excommunicated.

Longer than last one

Vatican has already said it expects the smoke from the burning of the ballots to be black indicating no papal election has taken place. Ballots on subsequent days will be burnt at around 1.00 p.m. after two rounds of voting in the morning, and at around 8.00 p.m. after two rounds in the afternoon, the smoke is famously turned white when a new pope has been found. Votes are held until one man has won a two-thirds majority or 77 votes.

“It will be longer than the last one,” South African Cardinal Napier told reporters on March 11, referring to the 2005 election of Benedict, which wrapped up within 24 hours after four ballots. “It will last a few days. Maybe four or five,” he predicted. The average length of the last nine conclaves was just over three days and none have lasted for more than five days.

Italy, Brazil, Canada

Among the possible candidates, three have emerged as favorites: Italy’s Angelo Scola, Brazil’s Odilo Scherer and Canada’s Marc Ouellet, all of them conservatives cast in the same mould as “pope emeritus” Benedict XVI. But the rumor mill in the Vatican has thrown up other names as well, including cardinals from Austria, Hungary, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa and the United States.

The field is wide open, although a few key aims unite many of the cardinals after Benedict’s rocky eight-year papacy, including measures to reform the intrigue-filled Vatican bureaucracy, to formulate a response to rising secularism in the West and to provide new inspiration for Catholics in the way John Paul II did. The scandal over decades of sexual abuse of children by pedophile priests, and the efforts made by senior prelates to cover up the crimes, has cast a long shadow over the Church.

All the red-hatted prelates who will be secluded in the Sistine Chapel were appointed by either Benedict or his predecessor John Paul, and the next pontiff will almost certainly pursue their fierce defense of traditional moral teachings. But Benedict and John Paul were criticized for failing to reform Vatican bureaucracy, battered by allegations of intrigue and incompetence, and some churchmen believe the next pope must be a good manager or at least able put a good management team in place.

Compiled from Agence France-Presse and Reuters stories by the Daily News staff.