Wheeling and dealing in the Vatican

Reuters

FINALE: Cardinals applaud Pope Benedict XVI at his last Ash Wednesday mass this week after he announced his retirement. Picture: Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters

Tom Heneghan

Vatican City

Pope Benedict XVI might have shocked the world by announcing his resignation on Monday, but some cardinals apparently started manoeuvring for the succession as long as two years ago.

Papal elections are among the world’s most mysterious, with no declared candidates and more bluffing than a high-stakes poker game. No cardinal can openly campaign for a job whose election is said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit.

But behind the scenes, at meetings inside the Vatican’s thick walls and dinners at the finer Roman restaurants, the cardinal electors size up potential candidates among themselves and drop subtle hints to Vatican watchers in the media about who’s up or down.

This round of discreet discussions, dubbed totopapa or “pope sweepstakes” by irreverent Romans, was only kicked into a higher gear on Monday when Benedict announced the first papal abdication for centuries. It will go into overdrive when cardinals from around the world arrive in the next few days.

FINALE: Cardinals applaud Pope Benedict XVI at his last Ash Wednesday mass this week after he announced his retirement. Picture: Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters

Reuters

But Benedict seems to have set the Roman rumour mill in motion back in 2010 when he told a German interviewer that he would consider resigning if he felt physically unable to continue.

“This confession shook up everybody who’s anybody at the Vatican and led some cardinals to launch into the semi-official battle,” French journalist Caroline Pigozzi wrote in her new book, Le Vatican indiscret (The Indiscreet Vatican).

Their approach is the polar opposite of a modern US-style political campaign, with primaries, televised debates, major donors and Facebook and Twitter strategies.

“Paradoxically, one must not appear in the papers and certainly not be photographed,” she wrote. “A man of the church is not a star and must always remember the saying: ‘Whoever enters the conclave a pope comes out a cardinal.’”

John Thavis, a veteran Rome correspondent whose book The Vatican Diaries comes out on Thursday, said he had Benedict’s comments from 2010 in mind as he rushed to finish it.

“I was afraid he would announce his resignation before we went to print,” he said. “I thought he would do it on February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St Peter, which is the feast associated with the authority of the pope.”

About a third of the 117 cardinals eligible to vote work in the Vatican bureaucracy, or Curia, and can easily compare notes on rising stars or unwanted candidates when they meet.

The others, archbishops overseeing major Catholic centres around the world, are now booking their flights to Rome, with many hoping to attend the pope’s farewell to his cardinals on February 28.

Vatican spokesman Reverend Federico Lombardi confirmed on Wednesday that the conclave would start as early as March 15, but the exact date still had to be worked out.

Normally when a pope dies, cardinals rush to Rome for the funeral, held on the ninth day after his death. Once there, the discreet exchanges they might have had by phone or e-mail with friendly cardinals can turn into face-to-face discussions.

Lombardi said the fact that there is no funeral this time should not mean “that the cardinals should not arrive in Rome, start meeting and speaking to each other and reflecting on the state of the Church and on the criteria of the choice of a successor”.

Openly naming candidates is considered bad form, but many use the polite fallback of discussing which qualities the new man should have and leaving unsaid who fits the bill.

Before the conclave, the Vatican holds plenary meetings called general congregations where cardinals discuss issues facing the Church and report on conditions in their home countries. The exact date for these meetings has not yet been fixed.

No names are debated at these sessions, but they double as platforms where undeclared candidates attract attention by making speeches and meeting cardinals they don’t know.

The general congregations before the 2005 conclave proved decisive for the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who as the dean of the College of Cardinals moderated the discussions.

Several cardinals said afterwards that his gracious way of conducting the sessions and summing up comments that had been made convinced them he was the best choice for the papacy.

Another subtle influence as the cardinals gather is the role of the so-called “grand electors”, cardinals who might not be in the running but can influence groups to vote for their man.

Polish-born Karol Wojtyla could not have become Pope John Paul without the lobbying by the then Vienna Cardinal Franz Koenig and some German cardinals.

When Benedict named an unusual number of Italian and Curia prelates as cardinals last February, several other Church leaders apparently read this as a bid by his deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, to sway the next conclave.

Their revenge came with the Vatileaks scandal – unprecedented leaks of internal Vatican documents that cast Bertone in a negative light. Benedict’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, was sentenced to 18 months in jail by a Vatican court for leaking the documents, but was pardoned by Benedict just before Christmas.

The scandal deeply embarrassed Benedict, who surprised the Church by naming six non-European cardinals in November to partly tilt the balance away from the Old Continent again.

Before the 2005 conclave, Benedict and the liberal favourite, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, stood out from the rest as the most qualified to become pope.

Martini, who died last year, was ill and threw his support behind Buenos Aires Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, but it was not enough to stem the conservative tide swelling for Ratzinger.

No single favourite stands out this time, which could make it harder for the conclave to crystallise around one man and reach the necessary two-thirds majority in a few voting rounds. – Reuters