Sunday would start with three sessions, although Benelli shouldn’t need them all. He would be pope by the end of the day or before, Karol Wojtyla thought naively, unaware of the machinations of his great friend. The first session of the day, third of the general conclave, gave forty-five votes to Benelli, twenty-seven to Felici, an unusual eighteen votes to Ursi, and the same nine to Wojtyla. Thirty more and Giovanni Benelli would obtain the two-thirds plus one necessary, not very problematic.
In the following round, Benelli, still ahead, achieved sixty-five votes, Ursi four, and Wojtyla advanced to twenty-four. A new candidate emerged, Giovanni Colombo, archbishop of Milan, with fourteen votes.
Before the last vote of the day, Cardinal Colombo presented a petition asking not to be considered in the subsequent sessions. So, Benelli had seventy votes, five less than needed for the papacy, and Wojtyla received forty. He returned to cell number 91 after dinner with some anxiety, but not much. Benelli was close to the votes needed to become the next Supreme Pontiff. By morning everything would be resolved in favor of the Florentine. Wojtyla prayed for Benelli to obtain the necessary enlightenment to guide the Church in its next years. With the third pope in the same year, they needed stability.
So Monday morning and the sixth round surprised Wojtyla on hearing his name fifty-two times, while Benelli saw his number reduced to fifty-nine votes. As conclaves go, when one lost ground, one never recovered.
Now you know why the cardinal from Krakow looked at his cannelloni with no appetite. His nerves gripped his stomach, and he was left pale, breathing hard.
‘The conclave is for dark horses, Karol,’ the Pole heard. It was Franz Koenig sitting down by his side. Karol’s compatriot, Wyszynski, was with him.
‘This is your work,’ Wojtyla accused him, looking at his companion.
‘Mine?’ the Austrian replied with a smile. ‘No, Karol. This is your work.’
‘Everything is going to turn out well,’ Wyszynski added in support.
The three men got up and went to the chapel. Wojtyla’s plate remained untouched through the entire meal.
‘Do you remember what Willebrands said to Luciani in the last voting?’ Koenig asked in a low voice.
‘I was not close to him in the last conclave.’
‘I was. And when Luciani began to panic at his imminent election, Willebrands told him a great truth: “The Lord gives the burden, but also the strength to bear it.” ’
‘Don’t wish to be in my place, Franz. I hope Benelli recovers and puts an end to this right away.’
They got in line for the orderly entrance into the chapel. Nothing in this place was disorderly, everything according to the standards of God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Karol Wojtyla closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Everything would be as He desired. Benelli or him. What shall be shall be.
A little farther behind in line Franz Koenig rejoiced in his work. Since the beginning, he had carried out a strategy that would lead to the election of Karol Wojtyla. He had spoken with the majority of his non-Italian colleagues, given them works by Wojtyla to further convince them. Nothing like a little publicity, not deceitful, since Wojtyla was a serious man with integrity. All this with Wojtyla completely unaware. Enough of Siri, Benelli, and Felici. They all had their good qualities, of course. All right, Siri might not have any, but it was a moment for change. The time of the Italians must come to an end. The seventh session of voting, the same ritual of eight centuries, the days of black and dirty white smoke, the suspense, the frustrated, expectant onlookers in Saint Peter’s Square. Two hundred thousand people in that place, on constant watch, and a million ears pressed to the radio and eyes glued to the television. There were also all the experts and the curious, unmotivated by religion, and those fond of spectacle. The recount threw seventy-three votes to Wojtyla and twenty-eight to Giovanni Benelli. Two votes more and Karol Wojtyla would never see Krakow with the eyes of a cardinal, but only as pope on brief visits. This thought daunted his heart and his eyes watered with emotion.
At five-twenty in the afternoon, according to the watches, whether more or less on time, Wojtyla became the first non-Italian pope in more than four hundred and fifty years of history. The last one was a Dutchman, Adrian VI, elected in 1522, very unpopular in Rome for defending and referring in one of his works to the haeresiam per suam determinationem aut decretalem asserendo, which meant that the popes could commit errors in matters of faith. Sacrilege. Sacrilege. He died little more than a year after his enthronement, leaving behind no desire to remember him.
The two hundred sixty-fourth pope of the Catholic Church put his hands to his head and began to weep, spreading emotion through the chapel that turned into moderate applause. Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, chamberlain to the pope, and the equivalent of interim pope, a duty that only exists from the death of a pope until the election of the successor, approached Wojtyla with a frown, a sign of solemnity.
‘Do you accept your canonic election for Supreme Pontiff?’
With wet eyes Wojtyla raised his head and looked at everyone. Tears slid down his face.
‘With obedience to the faith of Christ, Our Lord, and with confidence in the Mother of Christ and in the Church, in spite of great difficulties, I accept.’
A sigh of relief ran through the chapel, especially around the Austrian, Franz Koenig. Electing a pope was easy. Accepting the duty was up to the elected one alone.
‘By what name do you wish to be called?’ Villot continued. The same question that only six months ago had been asked the unlucky Albino Luciani, later found dead in his apartments in the early morning of the twenty-ninth of September, the pope who died alone, according to the official version. Some claimed it was a shady death, that he’d been murdered because of his reformer impetus and total incorruptibility. They even talked of poison or a pillow that suffocated him in the silence of the night. But that was the story of Pope Luciani. What is important now is the story of the Pole, Wojtyla.
Karol Wojtyla thought for a few seconds and smiled for the first time.
‘John Paul the Second.’
The opening of the chapel was ordered. The brothers Gammarelli came in to robe the new pope in the sacristy. They had made three spotless tunics. One of them must fit the Pole.
The papers were burned in the way that produces the famous white smoke, but the problem wasn’t in the chemical compounds, but in the dirty chimney that hadn’t been cleaned in a century. Onlookers were not sure if the smoke was white or black. A few spectators stayed uncertainly in Saint Peter’s Square. Others delayed returning to their homes or hotels, to their own lives.
Two hours later the bells rang announcing the good news and the doors of the portico of Saint Peter’s Basilica opened. The plaza seethed with the faithful in silence for Pericle Felici to pronounce the same words of August 26, substituting only the name of Luciani’s successor.
Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum, habemus Papam! Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Carolum, Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Wojtyla, qui sibi nomen imposuit… Ioannis Pauli Secundi.
10
Sarah Monteiro knew she was one and only one of the wheels in the greater set of gears. Journalist, Portuguese/British, daughter of the captain of the Portuguese army, Raul Brandao Monteiro, and of Elizabeth Sullivan Monteiro, she realized that her position depended on her work serving the greater interests of those who controlled the gears.
If someone had told her months ago that today Sarah would be the editor for international politics for the prestigious Times of London, they would have provoked a guttural laugh, blunt but true, followed by a loud ‘You’re crazy!’