Viva il Papa!!

St. Peters

Tuesday March 12, 2013 marked the start of the conclave to elect the new leader of the Catholic faith. I had the tremendous opportunity of being able to witness such an event. This even held such magnitude that it is even difficult to describe the feelings of not only me but of those around me for such a historic moment in history. Luckily, I was in Rome while this all took place!

Black smoke after the first round of elections

 I did not expect a decision to be made on the very first night, but nonetheless I was still in attendance. The very first vote results were announced at around 8 p.m. What happens is there are 115 cardinals and any of that 115 can be elected as the new pope after the death, or in this case retirement, of the previous pope takes place. Pope Benedict was the first pope in over 600 years to resign his papal position which also made for an interesting interim time for the cardinals to decide as to how to proceed in their elections of the new leader. Normally there is a 9 day mourning period after the death of the pope but because in this case that did not happen the conclave happened fairly quickly after the official resignation date.

Black smoke

As predicted the first election resulted in no conclusion as to who would be the next pope. St. Peter's square immediately dispersed as soon as the black smoke announcing no decision billowed into the air. The black smoke means no pope, while white smoke means that the cardinals have elected the new leader of the church.

Many people flock to the square to stand and wait for the elected leader, and to be the first people to witness such an amazing phenomena. Below are a couple of nuns that were huddled together trying to get a glimpse of a potential pope the first night of elections.

Pockets of nuns and priests gathered in the square

Waiting for the announcement!

The next night however yielded some far more interesting results. I got out of my class around 5:45 and I dropped some of my gear off at my apartment. I was contemplating whether or not I should try and make it to the election results that night and I figured that with my luck I better hustle on over to the Vatican because they would announce it and I would have missed it.

Door from which the pope comes out

The smoke was supposed to go up around 7 pm and I left at 6:30; the buses were so packed full that I decided I might as well walk. A walk for me to the Vatican is about 40 minutes. I pretty much sprinted my way over to St. Peter's to make it just in the nick of time. They began to close the gates to the square just as I began to arrive. The guards began not letting any more people in but I sprinted along the side of the columns and when there was no guard watching I hopped the fence (along with a couple of other people as well!). But there was no way I was not getting into the square after sprinting across half of the city of Rome!

Panorama of St. Peter's Square

WHITE SMOKE! NEW POPE!

After entering into the Square over the fence, I immediately saw the white smoke billowing out of the chimney. This sign was that Rome had a new a pope. There were at least 200,000 people in the square that night straining to hear the announcement of the new pope. There were cries and chants of joy. We had to wait about an hour before he was finally announced and came onto the balcony. After the hour and the many people that flocked to the square a cardinal rushed out and announced that the new pope was to be called Pope Francis and he was from Buenos Aries Argentina  The first pope from the Americas!

The pope is in white in the middle window, hard to see but he is there

The cardinals are in red on the side windows