Date set for secret pope selection

Nick Squires in Rome 

The conclave, the centuries-old process by which a new Pope is elected, will begin on March 12, meaning Catholics should have a new pontiff by the end of next week. 

More than 150 cardinals, who have held discussions in Rome all week on the crises facing the Roman Catholic Church, announced the long-anticipated start date on Friday, 12 days after Benedict XVI resigned the papacy because of fatigue and old age. 

The conclave will be held amid the utmost secrecy in the Sistine Chapel, famous for its frescoes by Michelangelo and other Renaissance masters. The longest conclave in the 20th century took five days, and most lasted between two and four days. 

The moment the cardinals reach a decision is announced by the famous puff of white smoke from the Vatican chimney. 

Anti-bugging devices and electronic jammers are being installed in the chapel, windows looking onto an adjoining hall have been obscured with grey plastic sheeting and Vatican officials who will assist the cardinals during the election have had to swear an oath of secrecy. 

The start date for the conclave came amid reports that two distinct blocs have formed among the 115 “princes of the Church” aged under 80 who are eligible to vote in the election. 

There is a reformist bloc led by Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan, which has the backing of many non-Italian cardinals, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, and Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Austria. 

They have been appalled by revelations of nepotism and cronyism within the Holy See that were revealed by confidential documents stolen from the Pope by his butler and leaked to the media in what was dubbed the Vatileaks scandal. 

The reformists are squaring up to a more traditionalist bloc led by Cardinal Odilo Peter Scherer, the archbishop of Sao Paolo in Brazil, and comprising many Italian cardinals, who are resisting calls for radical reform of the Curia, the Church’s governing body. 

Cardinal Scherer, who is of ethnic German background, has won the support of two of the Vatican’s most powerful insiders — Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State under Benedict XVI, and Angelo Sodano, his immediate predecessor. 

In return for lending their support, they want the next Secretary of State to be an Italian. 

If the two blocs go head to head when voting starts, the conclave could be a long one because a two-thirds majority is required to elect a new pontiff. 

The opposing groups might be forced to accept a compromise candidate with ties to neither bloc — one name being touted is that of Cardinal Peter Erdo, the 60-year-old primate of Hungary and archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest. 

During the conclave the cardinals will stay in a palazzo inside the Vatican City State called Domus Sanctae Marthae, a sort of Holy See hotel normally used to accommodate visiting prelates. 

They will sleep in plain but comfortably furnished rooms with crucifixes above the beds. 

The palazzo has its own chapel, which features a confessional fitted with a red light and a green light, to signal when it is occupied or empty. 

“Cardinals can go to one another for confession or they can go to a priest,” Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said yesterday. 

When one of the cardinals is elected the new Pope, he will move into the largest suite, room 201, which boasts an elaborately-carved wooden bed, its bedstead embossed with a figure of Christ suffering on the cross. 

He will stay there for several weeks, while Benedict’s former apartment inside the Apostolic Palace undergoes some renovation work.