You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [80]
The election takes place in conclave, whereby the cardinals are quite literally locked within the Vatican palace and kept incommunicado until the papal successor is named. Communication to the outside world is solely through a smoke signal of white or black smoke from the chimney, which keeps everyone outside of the sealed-off Vatican updated on the status of the election. Politicking and extra-Vatican communication are verboten under penalty of ejection.
Once inside it soon became obvious that there was a schism among the cardinals. The liberals had all lined up behind Giacomo Lercaro, the archbishop of Bologna, who favored a simplification of the liturgy and a heavier social involvement on behalf of the Church. The conservatives had originally thought they would be in support of Giovanni Battista Montini, the archbishop of Milan, but Pius had failed to promote him to cardinal by the time of his passing (which some attribute to the old and cranky pontiff’s personal splenetic nature), which many in conclave thought rendered him ineligible for election. As a result, the second-choice conservative candidate was Giuseppe Siri, the archbishop of Genoa, who was thought to be even further right than Pius XII, and was, even more to the detriment of his electability, only fifty-two, which many feared might result in another long-term-unto-stagnation papacy since the pontiff, once elected, served unto death.
It soon became clear that neither camp had a majority of votes in their control, and that unless something was done soon, the entire College of Cardinals would be in for a long and highly spartan sojourn in seclusion, a prospect that none of the elder statesmen of the Church relished.
A few of the representatives from the right met with a few of the representatives from the left and hatched a compromise plan. Both realized that neither camp was really prepared for this election, and what was really necessary was a pontiff who would basically put a kind face on the papacy to make up for the aloofness of Pius XII, a kindly old grandfather sort who would allow them to keep the Vatican household in order with the necessary number of appointments and business matters that his predecessor had been stonewalling for way too long. Just as important, they decided that the new pope should already be in his twilight years so that the next election, the one that they would be adequately prepared for, would not be too long in coming.
What the Church really needed was a short interim papacy.
No more, no less.
There had been popes who were little more than place markers in history before. Surely the Almighty would not object to their election of one less divinely inspired pontiff for the sake of the long-term health of the Church.
As a result, Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the patriarch of Rome, was elected pontiff. He was neither well known nor an intellectual theologian. More important though, he seemed to be well liked by the people of Rome, and most important he was seventy-six years old.
He would be the perfect anti-Pius, a gregarious papal grandfather who could do the necessary glad-handing while appointments were made to pave the way for his successor (most probably Montini, who would now be assured of his cardinalship since he and Roncalli had been friends for quite a long time).
Thus Roncalli ascended to the throne of Saint Peter, whereby he assumed the papacy, taking the name and title of Pope John XXIII.
Contrary to the machinations of Vatican political insiders, the election, in retrospect, seems to have been truly divinely and ever-so-subtly inspired, because the kindly