Conclave: papal job description, smokestacks and more

(Vatican Radio) Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center, Fr. Thomas Reese, sj. says the Cardinals may have a tough task trying to elect a new Pope in the conclave that begins Tuesday in the Vatican. In the run-up to the conclave, Tracey McClure asked him to share his thoughts on some of the aspects of the conclave and, to offer a job description for the next pope!
Listen:

A. “Well, of course what we’re looking for is someone who’s holy, someone’s who’s intelligent, that knows theology, that knows the teachings of the church. But also somebody who can communicate. You know, can communicate to the average person, not just the scholars. And finally, there’s been a lot of talk about the need for someone who can re-organize and (get) the Vatican under control because bishops are upset about the leaks, about allegations of corruption and everything else and they don’t like that so you put all that together and it looks like Jesus Christ with an MBA. That’s a pretty tough job description for anybody and there’s obviously nobody who fits it perfectly so I think we have to be realistic in terms of whoever gets elected Pope. They’re not going to be perfect. In my mind, I think it’s a mistake to look for the pope to be the answer man on everything. You know, in the last two conclaves basically they elected the smartest man in the room. Clearly, Pope John Paul II: brilliant. And Pope Benedict: brilliant theologian. You know, maybe this time what they ought to do is elect the man who will listen to all the other smart people in the Church. You know, not be the person who has the answer for everything, but the person that can bring people together, bring all the creative and bright people in the Church together to work together on the problems facing the Church. So we have a pope who’s a consensus builder. You know, who brings together a team of people. So he doesn’t have to have every one of those qualifications, but the most important thing he has to do is bring together the people who can do the jobs, especially the things that he can’t. “
Q. How have the crises that have rocked the Church affected the Church in the US and potentially the prospects of an American pope?

A. “Well of course, the Church has always been in crisis. Ever since Peter and Paul were arguing at the first Council of Jerusalem.. the Church has gone through centuries of crisis and somehow we’ve survived. And we will survive this crisis. Clearly in the United States the crisis that hit us and the most serious crisis we’ve had in our history, is the sex abuse crisis. A terrible, terrible, terrible thing that scarred these children terribly and for life. And we as a Church have to get down on our knees and apologize, apologize, and apologize to them. But because of that experience, the American cardinals are very definite in their opinion that the new pope has to be someone who understands the sex abuse crisis. As cardinal George said, someone who supports the policies that Benedict put in, namely zero tolerance, that any priest involved in the abuse of a minor must be dismissed from the priesthood. It would be an absolute disaster for the Church in the United States if the new pope, a week after he’s elected, got up and said, ‘ oh, the sex abuse crisis is not a real problem; it’s just a creation of the media.’ This would put us back twenty years of progress in the United States and I don’t know how we would recover from something like that. So for the Americans you know, that is one issue that they want to make sure that the new pope is … on target on.”

Q. People are still asking why did Pope Benedict resign? What impact do you think his decision will have on the future Church and possibly on this conclave?

A. “I am in admiration for Pope Benedict for resigning. Because he put the Church ahead of himself. You know, he didn’t cling to power and honor, and the prestige of the office. Basically, I take him at his word, his health is declining. He doesn’t have the kind of strength. I think it was inevitable that during this century, because of modern medicine, that a pope resign. Modern medicine keeps us physically alive long after anyone is capable, physically or mentally, of doing the job that is demanded of a pope. I mean, we all have parents or grandparents, relatives, who are still alive, yeah, but could they be pope? No! Totally incapable of that. And I think what he did was courageous. I think it makes it much easier for a future Pope who’s sick or ageing to retire. The real question is does it make it possible for a pope who say, turns 75 or turns 80 years of age and says well, ‘the other bishops in the world resign at 75 - maybe that’s a good idea for me.’ Or at 80… this opens up the possibillty of electing a younger man as pope. I mean, if you elect someone in their fifties or sixties, I mean they'd be pope for twenty, thirty even forty years and that’s a pretty long papacy. And especially if they got sick towards the end. So this, you know, the fact that we’ve now had a pope resign makes it possible (to think) well, maybe we could have a younger pope who would feel at ease resigning and calling for the election of a new pope. So we don’t know what all the consequences of this resignation are. The real fear of course of people is that you know, we will now see people try to pressure popes to resign. You know, if you don’t like the pope, draw up a petition and get him to resign! Put pressure on him to resign because now we know it’s possible to resign. That is the fear. Because that would be very divisive in the Church."

Q. We are already seeing a lot of these pressure groups come out with lists of who they say should be excluded from the list of ‘papabili’…

A. “Yes and of course that’s one of the reasons the cardinals go behind closed doors, lock the gates, turn off the phones, turn off the internet so that they can have complete quiet and peace and make this decision in prayer without being influenced by the outside. And I think the cardinals are pretty good at that – I don’t think they’re going to be pushed around by anybody.”

Q. Before retiring, Pope Benedict XVI changed some of the rules for the transition period between popes – what were the primary changes…

A. “Well, Pope Benedict made two changes. First a very good change that he made was to go back to the two-thirds (of the ballot) rule being totally required. Pope John Paul II changed the rules to say that if they didn’t get a two-thirds majority for the (election of) the pope, after about a couple of weeks of voting, then they could elect someone by a majority vote. This went against almost nine hundred - a thousand years of tradition of requiring a two-thirds vote. And I think Benedict was right in putting it back. The second thing he changed was to say that … since he announced his resignation two weeks in advance and under the old rules then, the conclave would begin two weeks after his resignation – well, that’s a whole month from the time of his announcement to the actual meeting of the conclave. So some people said, ‘that’s too much time, let’s move it forward.’ Other people said, ‘no, what’s the hurry?’ You know…. this is the most important thing the Cardinals are ever going to do! And when you think about it, there are twenty-four cardinals who became cardinals last year. I mean these twenty-four cardinals don’t know the other cardinals – they need a chance to get to meet them, to talk to them informally and all that so I don’t see what the rush was. I think they should have just kept to the date, the fifteen days after the resignation which would have been March 15^th. But I don’t think there was any need to rush into it.”

Q. In this digital age and age of electronic voting – it can seem a bit antiquated to have grey or white smoke coming out of smokestack - do you think we’ll see a change in these procedures in future conclaves?

A. “Well, I love the white smoke! I think that’s a great tradition- you know, it’s not that old. Actually it’s only about a hundred years old - this tradition of the white and black smoke. I just wish that they would test the equipment before the conclave starts because too often it comes out as grey smoke and we’re all scratching out heads: is it white, is it black, is it grey? What does it mean? Now, they have a back up plan which they instituted at the last conclave which is not only do we go by the smoke - but the biggest bell in St. Peter’s will also be rung when the election takes place. So if the smoke’s grey, we can at least wait for the bell. I like that tradition. Actually, they modernized the meeting of the General Congregation. Each of the cardinals now has a little clicker so that they can vote electronically during the meetings of the General Congregation. That’s a little quicker. The voting in the actual conclave is practically choreographed. I mean… each cardinal writes the name of his choice on a small piece of paper, folds it and then they march up one at a time to place their ballots into the container and they hold it up in the air so everybody can see there’s only one ballot and…before they drop it into the container they swear that they’re voting for the person that they think is most qualified to be pope. So the voting procedure takes a while because of this kind of procedure. But that’s the way they do it and they’ll probably continue doing it that way.”

Q. Of course, the Catholic Church believes that the Holy Spirit actually guides the voting process – does that mean that the future pope has been hand-picked by God ?

A. “Well I think that Cardinal Ratzinger answered that question extraordinarily well. Certainly, the Holy Spirit is trying to influence the election and through prayer, through discernment, the cardinals are tyring to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in inspiring them to pick whoever is best. But as Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out, if you look at the kinds of people that have been elected pope in the past, you certainly cannot blame the Holy Spirit for the election of the Borgias or some of the bad popes that we’ve had…. Jesus Christ founded the Church but he left it to human beings to run. And among those human beings who’ve been involved in the running of the Church, there’ve been saints, there’ve been sinners, there’ve been very smart people and very dumb people. So, it’s … a divine institution run by human beings and our call, the call of the cardinals is the same as for all Christians: to be open to the spirit. What is God calling us to do today and how to be? And… that’s why all of the Church should be praying for the Cardinals as they meet – that they might truly be open to the spirit in choosing our next pope.”

Q. There’s a saying here in the Vatican: you go into the conclave a Pope, you come out a cardinal –does that mean there might be a number of them who will be disappointed?

A. “Well, of course there will be cardinals who will be disappointed but you know, that saying, ‘you go in the pope, you come out a cardinal,’ isn’t always true. I mean, clearly, Pius XII: everybody knew he was going to be elected. (Eugenio) Pacelli was the lead candidate. Everybody knew he was going to be elected pope. And he was. The same thing I think was true with Paul VI – he was the leading candidate. All the smart money was on him and he was elected. At the last conclave, before the pope died, nobody was really talking about Cardinal Ratzinger but shortly after… Pope John Paul II died, the Ratzinger people kept talking about him as the leading candidate. And by the time he went into the conclave, he was clearly the leading candidate and all the smart money was on him. Sometimes we’re surprised but it tends to be when the leading candidates don’t, can’t get the two-thirds (majority). For example, at the time of the election of Pope John Paul II, here was a classic case where two candidates just blocked each other. Two Italian candidates, Siri (Archbishop of Genoa) and Benelli (Archbishop of Florence) , were backed by two different factions. The Italians were split. The Italians can have a tremendous impact on the election if they’re united. But if they’re split, as they were in the conclave that elected John Paul, well then people start looking outside of Italy for a candidate and they found Cardinal Wojtyla. And so that’s when we get surprised. It’s when the leading candidates kind of kill each other off and are incapable of getting the two-thirds vote.”