VATICAN CITY — The men who will elect the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics did not come to agreement during two rounds of balloting on a rainy Wednesday morning, and will break for lunch before returning to the Sistine Chapel to try again.
Black smoke poured from the Vatican chimney at 11:40 a.m. local time (6:40 a.m. Eastern) signaling that neither of the morning votes had produced a winner.
Video
Black smoke emitted from the chimney at the Sistine Chapel signals that the cardinals did not elect a new pope after the first vote during the papal conclave.
Elizabeth Tenety
Live coverage of day two of papal conclave
Jason Horowitz
Average age of voting cardinals is 72, an age when most Americans are thinking of retirement.
Monica Hesse
Viewers are glued to papal Smoke Cam, which focuses on the puffs from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney.
Unlike the first vote on Tuesday evening, which is traditionally a sort of test case to measure support and float favorite candidates, Wednesday’s balloting was expected to provide an opportunity for alliances to begin to take shape.
Momentum will be tested, and the possibility of white smoke when the cardinals reconvene for an afternoon session — signifying the election of a new pontiff to succeed Benedict XVI — is real.
To win, one of the candidates (reported front-runners have included Cardinals Angelo Scola of Italy, Marc Ouellet of Canada, and Odilo Pedro Scherer of Brazil) need to consolidate support from a diverse cross-section of the 115 voting cardinals.
No one bloc of cardinals, either organized around passport or priorities, has enough votes to push a candidate through.
And if consensus remains elusive for any of the top candidates, the cardinals could look to the less familiar names in their college, which is what happened when John Paul II was chosen in 1978.
“Today is the fundamental day,” said Marco Politi, a papal biographer and a veteran Vatican watcher with the daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. “It is a referendum on Scola and whether the papacy will go back to an Italian or cross the Atlantic. For the first time there is a real possibility to have a pope from the Americas.”
There could be as many as four ballots on Wednesday.
There was no smoke at 10:30 a.m. Rome time (5:30 a,.m. Eastern). If there had been, it would have been white, signaling that the cardinals had found their man on the day’s first vote.
Instead, black smoke poured forth about 70 minuutes later, indicating the end of the morning session without a papal election.
If smoke emerges from the chimney at 3 p.m., it will be white and a new pope will soon come to the balcony, introduced with a call of “Habemus papam” — Latin for “We have a pope.” If there is no smoke, the crowds gathering in St. Peters will have to wait until about 5 p.m., when a fourth vote will have been held and the smoke could again be either or white or black.
Angela Troilo, 77, stood by the obelisk in the center of St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday morning, surrounded by puddles and looking up at the chimney, waiting for smoke to emerge.
“The church used to do so much!” Troilo said, describing herself as a poor working woman who had been let down by her country and needed her church. “The Italian government is dead and buried. We need someone with energy, who can command!”
Conclaves are officially open-ended, but none has lasted more than five days in more than a century. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI, was viewed as a strong front-runner before the last conclave, in 2005.
Black smoke poured from the Vatican chimney at 11:40 a.m. local time (6:40 a.m. Eastern) signaling that neither of the morning votes had produced a winner.
Video
Black smoke emitted from the chimney at the Sistine Chapel signals that the cardinals did not elect a new pope after the first vote during the papal conclave.
Elizabeth Tenety Live coverage of day two of papal conclave
Jason Horowitz Average age of voting cardinals is 72, an age when most Americans are thinking of retirement.
Monica Hesse Viewers are glued to papal Smoke Cam, which focuses on the puffs from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney.
Unlike the first vote on Tuesday evening, which is traditionally a sort of test case to measure support and float favorite candidates, Wednesday’s balloting was expected to provide an opportunity for alliances to begin to take shape.
Momentum will be tested, and the possibility of white smoke when the cardinals reconvene for an afternoon session — signifying the election of a new pontiff to succeed Benedict XVI — is real.
To win, one of the candidates (reported front-runners have included Cardinals Angelo Scola of Italy, Marc Ouellet of Canada, and Odilo Pedro Scherer of Brazil) need to consolidate support from a diverse cross-section of the 115 voting cardinals.
No one bloc of cardinals, either organized around passport or priorities, has enough votes to push a candidate through.
And if consensus remains elusive for any of the top candidates, the cardinals could look to the less familiar names in their college, which is what happened when John Paul II was chosen in 1978.
“Today is the fundamental day,” said Marco Politi, a papal biographer and a veteran Vatican watcher with the daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. “It is a referendum on Scola and whether the papacy will go back to an Italian or cross the Atlantic. For the first time there is a real possibility to have a pope from the Americas.”
There could be as many as four ballots on Wednesday.
There was no smoke at 10:30 a.m. Rome time (5:30 a,.m. Eastern). If there had been, it would have been white, signaling that the cardinals had found their man on the day’s first vote.
Instead, black smoke poured forth about 70 minuutes later, indicating the end of the morning session without a papal election.
If smoke emerges from the chimney at 3 p.m., it will be white and a new pope will soon come to the balcony, introduced with a call of “Habemus papam” — Latin for “We have a pope.” If there is no smoke, the crowds gathering in St. Peters will have to wait until about 5 p.m., when a fourth vote will have been held and the smoke could again be either or white or black.
Angela Troilo, 77, stood by the obelisk in the center of St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday morning, surrounded by puddles and looking up at the chimney, waiting for smoke to emerge.
“The church used to do so much!” Troilo said, describing herself as a poor working woman who had been let down by her country and needed her church. “The Italian government is dead and buried. We need someone with energy, who can command!”
Conclaves are officially open-ended, but none has lasted more than five days in more than a century. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI, was viewed as a strong front-runner before the last conclave, in 2005.