Rome waits for the smoke and the world waits with it

In the days after the pope’s funeral, the governance of the church passed, through the rituals that the institution has perfected over the centuries, to the cardinals who will choose the successor, and the world’s attention fixed on the procedures that the choice requires. The funeral itself, conducted with the crowds that the office commands, had been the farewell that the affection of the past days had earned; the work that follows the funeral, the congregation of the cardinals, the preparation of the conclave, the sealed doors, the smoke that signals the ballots’ outcome, is the transition that the church has conducted, in its essentials, for nearly eight hundred years. The world waits for the smoke, and the waiting is the recognition that the office being filled is one of the world’s oldest and most consequential.

The mechanics of the transition are the part that the coverage has been explaining to the audiences that the event has gathered. The cardinals under eighty, the electors, are required to gather in the conclave within the period that the rules prescribe; the electors are housed in the residence that the church maintains for the purpose, the ballots are conducted in the chapel that the rituals designate, and the ballots’ outcome is signalled by the smoke that the chimney carries, the black for the inconclusive and the white for the election; the conclave’s procedures, the oaths, the sequestration, the ballots themselves, are designed to produce the election that the church can unite behind, and the design has survived the centuries that have tested it. The world’s audiences, the commentators note, are learning the procedures with the particular attention that the rare events command.

The field that the electors are considering is the part of the story that the coverage has been mapping with the care that the stakes require. The cardinals whom the late pope appointed hold the majority of the votes, and the appointments carry the balance that he had cultivated: the prelates from the growing churches of the South, the pastors from the peripheries that he had emphasised, the reformers who shared his agenda and the moderates who had managed his compromises. The names that the speculation has floated, the archbishops of the large sees, the curial officials, the pastors of the emerging churches, represent the options that the conclave will weigh: the continuation of his path, the consolidation of the institutional centre, the pastoral priorities of the churches that are growing. The weighing will be conducted in the secrecy that the conclave requires, and the secrecy is the part that the coverage cannot penetrate and the institution insists on.

The challenges that the successor will inherit are the part that the electors are carrying into the chapel. The church that the late pope led faces the decline in the West that the statistics document, the growth in the South that the demographics describe, the governance questions that the reforms have opened and the scandals that the reforms have addressed; the successor will have to set the course through the questions, and the course will be shaped by the balance that the conclave strikes. The world’s secular attention to the election, the cameras, the commentary, the speculation, is the recognition that the church’s choices, whatever the secular verdict, still shape the lives of the billion and more who belong to it, and the shaping is the office’s real weight.

The conclave will open in the coming days, and the smoke will rise, and the world will read the signal that the church has been sending for eight centuries. The election will not settle the questions that the church faces, and the new pope will begin, as every pope begins, with the church’s problems and the world’s attention; the transition’s procedures will have done their work, the choice will have been made, and the choice will be the beginning of the next chapter of the story that the square has been watching. Rome waits for the smoke, and the waiting is the church’s oldest ritual of hope: the institution that has outlived every empire it has known is preparing, once again, to choose the shepherd, and the preparation is the continuity that the smoke will announce.