After the first vote, Cardinal Luciani understood he was being swept up in the current of the conclave, and that it was not possible to ignore such an unfortunate situation, though he had naively attempted to go unnoticed, which had succeeded before, in different circumstances. On this occasion, his natural reserve and shyness had provided no escape, and the process was completely incomprehensible to him. How could he have expected twenty-three votes in the first scrutiny, two fewer than Siri and five more than Pignedoli? As required by regulation, after each scrutiny all the ballots were gathered and burned in the furnace.
Paul VI had foreseen every detail of the conclave, nothing had escaped him. The preceding pope was the one to make the regulations, and this pope, for the first time, had ruled that cardinals over eighty years old could not participate in the conclave. In the apostolic constitution
Romano pontifice eligendo,
Paul VI had set this limitation for religious reasons. The responsibilities of being elected the Church’s shepherd would no longer be added to the physical woes of being eighty. There were no frivolous concerns. The governance of the Church of Christ could not be left to chance. Some ignorant people lamented the fact that some pontiffs devoted themselves to practical matters instead of spiritual ones. But the Church didn’t depend solely on Hail Marys, as one American cardinal pointed out.
After finishing his prayers, Cardinal Luciani got up and left his cell. Joseph Malula, the cardinal from Zaire, congratulated him warmly, but Luciano nodded in sadness, continuing on his way to the Sistine Chapel for the third vote.
“I feel I’m at the center of a great whirlwind,” he lamented. After the third scrutiny, Albino Luciani received sixty-eight votes, and Siri, fifteen. Albino was but eight votes away from being declared pontiff.
“No, please, no,” Luciani again prayed, under his breath. A few cardinals seated nearby heard their friend’s sigh. Prelate Willebrands tried to calm him with uplifting words.
“
Coraggio,
Cardinal Luciani. The Lord weighs us down, but He also gives us the strength to bear up.”
Felici came up to the nervous cardinal and handed him an envelope.
“A message for the new pope,” he said.
To Albino Luciani this was a surprising commentary, particularly from someone who had always voted for Siri.
The handwritten message mentioned the words
Via Crucis,
The Way of the Cross, symbol and reminder of Christ’s Passion. All the cardinals felt the same trepidation and unrest in the presence of Michelangelo’s imposing frescoes. The prelates knew that they were part of a transcendental ritual in the history of the Church and, given the circumstances, in the history of the world.
Everything had been according to tradition. The Holy Spirit had come to the participants in the conclave and had stopped over the figure of one of them, or at least that was what the majority thought.
It was God’s will.
Luciani received ninety-nine votes, Cardinal Siri eleven, and Lorscheider one (Luciani had voted for him). Destiny had been fulfilled. The cardinals erupted in fervent applause. They had scarcely taken one day to elect their pope among 111 cardinals, and that success was attributed, of course, to divine inspiration. By five minutes past six, the whole thing was over, a little before dinnertime.
The doors to the Sistine Chapel opened, and the masters of ceremony came in, following the Cardinal Camerlengo, Jean-Marie Villot, secretary of state of the Vatican with the preceding pontiff and keeper of Saint Peter’s keys until the conclave ended. All the prelates, according to the secular tradition, surrounded Albino Luciani.
“Do you accept your canonic election to become the Holy Roman Pontiff?” the French cardinal asked.
The eyes of all the cardinals were fixed on the timid man. Even Michelangelo’s figures seemed to adopt a more severe expression, lacking joy manifesting an almost unbearable sense of heaviness. Cardinals Ribeiro and Willebrand offered looks of encouragement to the Venetian priest, and Villot repeated his question.
“May the Lord forgive you for what you have done to me,” Luciani finally responded. “I accept.”
Everything continued according to the protocol established centuries before. The grave, imposing ritual proceeded with overwhelming precision.
“By what name do you wish to be known?”
Luciani hesitated again, and after a few seconds, smiling for the first time, he spoke the name he had chosen for himself in the historical records.
“Ioannes Paulus the First.”
In the Vatican it was presumed that the name chosen by a new pontiff partly indicated the religious and political direction he wished his papacy to follow. The most experienced understood that Albino Luciani had started in an unusual way and that his papacy would be an exceptional one.
“Nothing will be the same,” they said. His papacy was to begin with an innovation. In almost two thousand years of history, no other pope had used a combined name. Luciani was the only one who dared to go against tradition and in this way render homage both to the man who named him bishop and to the one who designated him cardinal.
“Congratulations, Your Holiness,” Cardinal Karol Wojtyla proclaimed.
There was a great bustle in the Sistine Chapel. Everything had been ready for days, but always some detail would come up that demanded attention—a fringe to be fixed, or an untimely visit to take care of. The cardinals distributed the chores among themselves, moving to and fro, with the urgency of those who know they are taking part in a historical decision.
Luciani was taken to the vestry to conclude the required rituals, and to finish his prayers according to tradition. Other prelates burned the ballots of the last scrutiny, adding to the fire the chemical products needed to whiten the
fumata.
But after a few white puffs, the faithful thousands waiting in Saint Peter’s Square observed that the smoke was turning black again, perhaps because of accumulated dirt in the chimney. Or perhaps because there was no new pope.
The brothers Gammarelli, tailors to the Vatican, bickered while trying to find a white vestment appropriate for the occasion. For decades now, the most famous tailor shop in Rome made sure to have on hand three cassocks—small, medium, and large—before each conclave. On this occasion, however, they had added a fourth—extra large—just in case. There had been rumors about the possible election of a heavy monsignor. The one chosen, however, had very narrow shoulders, and his name didn’t even appear on the list of the most prominent, as culled by newspaper and television analysts. After trying several garments on Albino Luciani and circling him again and again, the tailors were more or less satisfied. Luciani finally appeared wearing white vestments to present himself to the world as the new Holy Father of the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Suenens approached Luciani to congratulate him.
“Holy Father, thanks for having accepted.”
Luciani smiled, “Perhaps it would have been better to refuse.”
Why didn’t he? his conscience wondered. He wanted to refuse but didn’t have the courage. In fact, his own true humility had been overwhelmed by the speed at which everything had evolved, and by the forceful will of the majority. But ultimately he accepted because he felt capable of executing the difficult task ahead of him. If he truly had not, he told himself, he would have declined.
The cardinals began intoning the Te Deum.
In the plaza, the groups of the faithful had begun to disperse. For them, it seemed that the cardinals hadn’t reached an agreement, or that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit had not yet come to them, since apparently there was no new pope. The
fumata
had been dark, no doubt about it, symbolizing the indecision of the conclave.
The Vatican radio commentators reported that the smoke was black and white, and so they couldn’t tell.
The commander of the Swiss Guard, who had to receive the new pontiff with a loyal salute in the name of all his men, did not even have the escort ready to accompany him through the corridors leading to the balcony on Saint Peter’s Square.
The brothers Gammarelli argued in the vestry, each blaming the other for their lack of readiness.
In the midst of this confusion, the enormous door to the balcony in Saint Peter’s Basilica opened, and the voice of Cardinal Felici thundered from the loudspeakers.
“Attenzione.”
The faithful, already on their way home or to their hotels, came running to the plaza. Then there was complete silence.
“Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus Papam!”
Diego Lorenzi, Luciani’s secretary for the last couple of years, had accompanied him from Venice to Rome, and he was among the faithful thousands waiting in Saint Peter’s Square for the results of the scrutiny. He had seen that the smoke coming out of the chimney since six twenty-five was neither black nor white. For about an hour it had been kind of ashen, and nobody could decide whether that dirty smoke was the white
fumata
so eagerly awaited by all. Next to him, also waiting for the conclave’s resolution, were a couple with their two girls, arguing about the inconclusive smoke. The younger of the girls, overcome by the religious spirit dominating the plaza, asked him whether he’d said Mass in that immense church before them.
Lorenzi answered with an affectionate smile. No, he was in Rome only temporarily. He lived in Venice. He also talked with the girls’ parents, and all were in agreement that a conclave, even being outside of it, was a stimulating experience. It was all about the choosing of the Shepherd, and they felt certain that the voting of the cardinals received God’s benediction.
For Diego Lorenzi the thrilling experience was about to end. Early the next morning he would be driving the Lancia, with Don Albino Luciani, back to Venice—375 miles separating the two cities, a whole world apart. Just then, the voice of Cardinal Pericle Felici was heard loud and clear, and everybody turned to the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
“Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus Papam! Cardinalem Albinum Luciani.”
Hearing Luciani’s name, Lorenzi started to cry with joy. An irrepressible emotion took hold of his spirit, and he couldn’t understand how the cardinals had decided on Don Albino, always so shy and evasive. The girl and her parents looked at him with pleased appreciation. He was a priest, moved like them by the emotion of this historical moment. It all made sense.
Lorenzi bent down, tears welling, to speak to his new little friend.
“I am the new pope’s secretary,” he said finally.
So the new pontiff was to be Albino Luciani? And who was Albino Luciani? In fact, it didn’t matter much. The important thing was that the Church of Rome had a new pope.
Lorenzi and the thousands of faithful gathered at Saint Peter’s Square saw the figure of Albino Luciani as he appeared in the balcony, smiling and dressed in all white. That smile reached the hearts of many and filled their souls with heartwarming joy. His smile conveyed humility, benevolence, and peace. After Giovanni Battista Montini, the somber Pope Paul VI, this man appeared in the balcony with the smile of a young person willing to devote himself passionately to his mission. After the benediction
urbi et orbi,
the sun sent its last beams into the Roman dusk.
9
No one had any inkling as to why this had happened. Most of the directors of the countless secret service agencies around the world would obey any instruction uttered by this wrinkled old man who walked with the help of a cane embellished with a golden lion’s head.
Any theory was possible, though probably none could even remotely approach the truth. There was one unquestionable fact: the CIA sustained and covered up all of his decisions, and lent its men, even whole units, to the organization headed by this fragile old man with a harsh demeanor. It was a vicious cycle. If the all-powerful U.S. Central Intelligence Agency placed itself at the service of a man like this, making its agents available to him, there was no need to inquire any further.
For his own personal service he always had a man with him, usually impeccably dressed in a black Armani suit, whose name, like that of the old man, could not be revealed because provoking the anger of such powerful men was dangerous. They were always together, except on the rare occasions when it was imperative that the assistant execute some special assignment.
And as for the old man, he was often seen walking around the gardens of his city or his hometown (whose names could not be revealed, either). There was a time when the old man had to stay abroad longer than he would have liked, but that was over when finally he could afford not to travel anymore. New communication technology had made this possible, though he still couldn’t do without reliable help where his interests lay. There was nothing comparable to the air of his homeland, his dear Italy, and his city and estate.
At this moment the old man was sitting on his terrace at home, his gaze split between the
Corriere della Sera
and the distant horizon. From there he enjoyed watching the sea of green extending far beyond his own lands, vanishing behind a hill, disappearing like the sun’s burst of orange at the time of its setting, in its unequal battle against the darkness, which increased with every passing moment.
The garden lights, with photoelectric sensors, were coming on all around, programmed to activate slowly and progressively for a continuous transition in harmony with the prolonged sunset. The lamps warmed their filaments until there was no more natural light. Even dusk didn’t prevent him from reading the paper as the sea of green lapsed into total darkness, lit only sporadically by a sprinkling of fireflies in midair. “No artificial light has the power to illuminate the world,” the old man mused. “Perhaps only faith has the power to brighten it.” Lately his mind was more likely to follow a spiritual tangent. He might begin with a purely physical theme, which after going around and around always ended up touching on the spiritual. Only Heaven knew why. At an age often deemed appropriate to beg forgiveness for the sins of a lifetime, he was still not one accustomed to pleading for mercy. Nor was he a compassionate man. It had been God’s will that he had lived so many years, facing so many dangers, doubts, and frustrations. The sufferings he had had to go through, which he was still experiencing, were God’s will. The main difference now was the detachment with which he now received the provocations that the Almighty never failed to send. Whether it was a small sign or a great revelation, this old man, sitting there alone, with his newspaper as his sole companion, understood it all very well.