The hour of the show and the choice – Liberation

It is the most ambitious job description ever written and we wish good luck to the cardinals to find the Pope who checks all the boxes. At the edge of this paradox that has become the conclave – both completely secret but commented in Mondiovision – the dean of the Cardinalice college, the Italian Giovanni Battista Re, 91, called on Wednesday May 7 to choose François’ successor « Which the Church and humanity need in this turning point so difficult, complex and tormented in history». The future sovereign pontiff will also have to work for « Maintaining the Unity of the Church »added the cardinal during a solemn mass in the Saint-Pierre basilica, a few hours before the first vote in the Sistine Chapel.

Just to add a little more pressure to the shoulders of 133 cardinals votersCardinal Re spoke in his homily of a « Choice of exceptional importance » and warned his flocks: « Any personal consideration must be abandoned » When you put your bulletin in the ballot box (after having duly brandished it well visible from all by approaching the ballot box then placed on a silver set as one of the many ancestral rites which codify the conclave).

This mass marks the last public event before the confinement of cardinals so that they begin to vote and we should not know the name of the future pope before at least Thursday – there is no minimum or maximum duration for a conclave – and even less the « Considerations » Having led to his election since everything that happens in Sistine remains in the Sistine: if the cardinals leak anything, it is direct excommunication.

For the rest of this day on Wednesday, the cardinals must have lunch and then pray in the Pauline chapel, which adjoins the sixtine, at 4:30 p.m. but the countdown will really start around 5 p.m. when they go into procession in the Sistine. By singing the Veni Creator Spiritus To invoke the Holy Spirit, that is to say the divine inspiration which, in the Catholic tradition, is supposed to blow the name of the elected official to the cardinals.

At a time when the slightest information can go around social networks in one minute, no mobile phone will be authorized in the room and the telecommunications networks will be cut between the walls of the Vatican City.

Wednesday evening, the result – Pope or not Pope – of the first vote will undoubtedly be known before 7 p.m., this first ballot round makes it possible to gauge the forces involved: it is very unlikely that the majority of two thirds, that is to say 89 votes, be reached. The election should continue on Thursday, with two laps scheduled during the morning session and two others in the afternoon.

In a video broadcast Tuesday by the Vatican, we measure the solemnity of the frame, familiar with CEUX who saw the film Conclavereleased in December, which is full of very precise details on the ceremonial and behind the scenes: the ceiling signed Michelangelo, the tables covered with heavy fabric, nominative places indicated by a bridge, under red flaps struck with the weapons of the Holy See as well as the needle to pierce the bulletins « at the place where the word is located Eligo « ( » I choose « in Latin), precise The Vatican site. And not one but two stoves responsible for burning the bulletins with each ballot but above all to inform the world: black smoke, no pope, white smoke, « Habemus papam ».

The 133 cardinals voters come from 70 countries – A record – which promises a particularly open conclave with an unprecedented representation of the « peripheries » dear to Pope Francis, which named 81 % of cardinals voters. Fifteen countries are thus represented for the first time, including Haiti, Cape Verde and South Sudan. To get to know each other and confront their points of view on the challenges of the Church, they have held in recent days 12 « general congregations » allowing to draw the profile of the next Pope.