Letter #39: 48 Hours To Go

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Letter #39: 48 Hours To Go

[2013-03-10]

[Engleză]

March 10, 2013, Sunday -- 48 Hours To Go

The 115 voting cardinals will begin to vote in about 48 hours from now, Sunday afternoon in Rome.

The Osservatore Romano issued a special supplement yesterday with all the photos of the 115 cardinals who will enter into Conclave. Here they are in two photos:

The Italian and world press are full of prognostications. Nearly all are wrong, although they may be useful to understand some of the "dynamics" of the election process. Only one will be right.

La Repubblica -- which I turn to because it is Italy's largest paper, not because everything written there is objective, or reliable; the paper "influences" the opinion of people in Italy, and, by osmosis, opinion worldwide -- this morning suggested seven cardinals were the leading "papabili."

The paper also headlines "It will be a brief conclave," echoing the words of the Vatican Press Director, Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., who said yesterday that he presumed the cardinals would not have voted to enter into Conclave on Tuesday afternoon unless they felt they were ready to elect a Pope in a relatively brief time.

During the 20th century, the length of papal Conclaves has never exceeded 5 days. On the basis of this precedent, one would imagine that a Pope will be elected by Saturday, March 16. (However, precedents are being broken regularly in Rome in these recent weeks.)

Here is the history of the length of the last Conclaves:

1903 -- 4 days, 7 votes (Pope Pius X elected)

1914 -- 3 days, 10 votes (Pope Benedict XV elected)

1922 -- 5 days, 14 votes (Pope Pius XI elected)

1939 -- 2 days, 3 votes (Pope Pius XII elected)

1958 -- 4 days, 11 votes (Pope John XXIII elected)

1963 -- 3 days, 6 votes (Pope Paul VI elected)

1978 -- 2 days, 4 votes (Pope John Paul I elected)

1978 -- 3 days, 8 votes (Pope John Paul II elected)

2005 -- 2 days, 4 votes (Pope Benedict XVI elected)

Here are the names of the cardinals La Repubblica puts "in the lead" right now -- again, just their opinion, and possibly, in a way, their preference:

Under the heading "Curial Cardinals" (though Malcolm Ranjith is not a Curial cardinal, being in Sri Lanka -- although he was in the Curia, in the early years of Pope Benedict's pontificate)

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri

Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith

Each of these three is "teamed" with one of two Italians as the proposed new Secretary of State:

Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello

or

Cardinal Mauro Piacenza

Then, under the heading "Reformers" are listed:

Cardinal Angelo Scola

or

Cardinal Marc Ouellet

with those two "teamed" again with one of two Italians, neither of them cardinals, both from the Vatican diplomatic service (Ventura, a very capable man, is nuncio in Paris, and was for many years the personal secretary of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, Secretary of State in the early years of Pope John Paul II) to be Secretary of State:

Luigi Ventura

or

Pedro Lopez Quitana

And then, under the heading of "Third Way" (whatever that means), is listed:

Cardinal Peter Erdo

while alongside Erdo is listed a highly respected French Vatican diplomat to be Secretary of State:

Dominique Mamberti.

What one can glean from this is that the election is now wide open, but that there is some serious "horse-trading" going on to build a consensus around a candidate who will undertake to provide continuity on the diplomatic front, while launching his papacy (again, in this schema) under either a "curial" or a "reforming" or a "third way" umbrella.

So what will likely happen?

A considerable importance must be attributed to the very first ballot. If one candidate surpasses about 40 votes, there is a strong chance that, immediately, the other cardinals will be compelled to make a decision: either to say "no" to that candidacy, and strive to form a "veto" block of 39 cardinals, so that the candidate cannot reach the 2/3s majority of 77, or to, over the next two, three or four votes, say "yes" to that candidacy, and send it over the top.

The candidate most likely to have about 40 votes is Angelo Scola, who is in many ways very close to Pope Benedict, and a student of Pope Benedict's thought. But, if Scola seems to be impeded by the time he reaches 50 or 60 votes, the Conclave would open up to allow a number of other hypotheses, like the ones above -- Sandri, Scherer, Ranjith, Ouellet, Erdo -- but also many others, including the Americans, led by Dolan of New York, and then by O'Malley of Boston, but not counting out Wuerhl of Washington (who is respected in the Roman Curia) or even George of Chicago, who is regarded as a profound thinker and a man of moral courage. And there are others. At this point, it is harder to exclude a cardinal than to mention his name, as the "race" becomes wide open, and unpredictable. Something will have to happen to coalesce sentiment, and what that "something" will be is unable to be known today.

It is in this area of mystery, and the freedom of the human will, that the action of the Holy Spirit has and will have its place, imperceptible to human sense, and perhaps even to human reason, as the Spirit speaks to the mind, but even more, to the soul, where the final decision will have to be taken.

====================

Then, here is a little something that I wrote yesterday, and did not send, but I decided, under the circumstances, to simply send it, without either supporting or condemning the thoughts expressed.

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"All I can pray for and ask of the cardinal electors is: 'Re-elect Ratzinger.'" —email from a reader

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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