Ballot smoke

In the Philippines, we’ll probably hear  the cry by 4:30 Tuesday afternoon. More than 5,000 journalists accredited to the papal conclave have microphones and cameras clustered at  the entrance of Rome’s Sistine Chapel. There, the  papal master of  ceremonies will order:  Extra omnes! “Everybody out.”

Aides, guards to cardinals over age 80, will file out. After doors are locked, Manila’s Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle and 114 other cardinals cast  the first ballot for a successor to Peter the fisherman.

Michaelangelo’s  painting of the “Last Judgment” hangs behind the altar. Behind the fresco are 21st century systems to scramble any communications with the world outside. Here, ancient ritual meets high-tech security.  Even the merest hint of deliberations can bring on excommunication.

Can anyone muster 77 votes at first go? “There is no clear front  runner,” writes National Catholic Reporter’s Thomas Reese. A fifth of the cardinals had red caps for a year. They’re matching faces  with  biodatas.

Rewind  to 1978. Karol Wojtyla from Poland was elected on the eight ballot as a dark-horse candidate. “Karol who?” asked many in Piazza di San Pietro when the man who took the name of John Paul II,  stepped forward.

Tuesday’s first ballots will be tallied then burned between 6  to 7 p.m. Rome time. That’d be past midnight here—too late for many Filipinos to watch smoke waft from the Sistine chimney. If black, it means  no pontiff  was elected.

Four votes on Wednesday would follow: two in the morning and two in the afternoon. And so on—until a pope is elected. Smoke would then turn white. When Benedict XVI was chosen in 2005,  “the smoke was more of a light gray color than obvious white,” recalls  reporter  Barbie Latza Nadeau. “There was initial confusion.”

This time around, the bells of St. Peter’s will clang.  It’ll  take about 45 minutes or more. After the new pope says “Accepto”, he’ll appear on the balcony overlooking the  piazza. During that time, he chooses a name.

Few noticed, meanwhile, the gap in Roman tailor Gammarelli’s display window. Founded in 1798, this shop is today located near the Pantheon. It dressed every pope since 1922.  Early March, it exhibited three white cassocks: small, medium and large. Multiple cassocks in the past   provided a choice from the portly John XXIII to his slender successor, Paul VI.

“The small model may suit Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle from the Philippines,” the UK Guardian speculates. “The large model is (right) for  papabili such as New York archbishop Timothy Dolan.”

The  cassocks  now hang  in  a room behind the Sistine chapel,  known as the “Room of Tears.” Emotions  often choke up  the new pontiff as he heads there alone to change into the white cassock. After the dean of cardinals declares “Habemus Papam”, he steps forward

The new Pope faces an overflowing in-tray, writes veteran Vatican reporter John Allen. One is the “global realities of Catholicism”. Two-thirds of today’s 1.2 billion Catholics live in the southern hemisphere. That will surge to three-quarters by 2050 in a church that “shifted southwards” over the past century, notes New York Times.

Indifference and secularization emptied Europe’s pews. In contrast, Asia has 130 million Catholics, up from 126 million, Vatican’s statistical yearbook reports. Latin America’s Catholics will rise to 600 million within two decades. There’d be 220 million  African Catholics by 2025.

Is  the Vatican is now in the wrong location? “It’s 2,000 miles too far north of its emerging homelands,” writes Philip Jenkins in the New Republic.  At the conclave,  cardinals will look south.

Yet, 80 percent acts of religious discrimination are directed against Christians. In Lahore, Pakistan, this week, three thousand Muslim extremists attacked Joseph Colony and burnt 200 homes. Police did nothing.

Catholics are arrested, beaten or killed from Nigeria to India. Their fate is worthy of papal attention as hairsplitting over worship.  “That doesn’t mean the next pope has to be a non-European,” Allen writes. “But there’s a growing sense… he must act for oftentimes beleaguered Catholic cohorts outside the West.”

The  “New  Evangelization,” which the last Synod endorsed, seeks to  relight  missionary fires of the faith, specially among alienated or dropouts from sloth or indifference. In the US alone, there are 22 million ex-Catholics. That’s  “enough to constitute the US’ second-largest religious denomination, if so minded.”

These suggest preference for a pope with extensive experience working in parishes, able to gauge what works at the grassroots. “It may mean a pope who’s slightly less cerebral—a pastor, not a professor.”

Administration: “A magnificent teaching pope, Benedict was but a mixed bag as a governor. He was ill-served by key aides. “Reform of the curia” could  be the 2013 shibboleth.

Cardinals cite  three pillars: (a) Transparency:  They want a curia that’s clearer about the logic for decisions and who makes them (b) Accountability: Put right people in the right jobs, and scrub poor  performers.  (c) Modernization: Update with 21st century standards of business management.

Perspective:  “Benedict exemplifies the Vatican’s legendary penchant for thinking in centuries. Yet, this long view also insulated Benedict from the fallout of crisis.Still, his stunning decision to resign separated  the end of his papacy from the end of his life. He ensured elbow room for future conclaves.”