VATICAN CITY – A cardinal has broken his vow of secrecy and released his diary describing the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, revealing in an exceedingly rare account that a cardinal from Argentina was the main challenger and almost blocked Benedict’s election.
Excerpts from the diary, published Friday, show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led in each of the four ballots cast in the Sistine Chapel during the mystery-shrouded April 18-19 conclave. But in a surprise, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit, was in second place the entire time.
Most accounts of the conclave have said retired Milan archbishop Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini was the main challenger to Ratzinger, who took the name Benedict XVI after his election, and that a Third World pope was never realistically in the running.
While Bergoglio never threatened Ratzinger’s lead – and made clear he didn’t want the job, according to the diary published in the respected Italian foreign affairs magazine Limes – his runner-up status could signal that the next conclave might elect a pope from Latin America, home to half the world’s 1 billion Roman Catholics.
The diary of the anonymous cardinal also shows Ratzinger didn’t garner a huge margin. He had 84 of the 115 votes in the final ballot, seven more than the required two-thirds majority.
His two immediate predecessors, Pope John Paul II and Pope John Paul I, are believed to have garnered 99 and 98 votes, respectively, and that was when there were only 111 voting cardinals.
“It does seem that somebody wants to indicate that the conclave was a more complex process than was being depicted and that Benedict’s mandate was not a slam dunk,” said David Gibson, a former Vatican Radio journalist who is writing a biography of Benedict.
Finally, the diary includes a few surprises, including a vote in the final ballot for Cardinal Bernard Law, forced to resign as Boston archbishop because of the church sex abuse scandal.
The published diary entries were interspersed with commentary from Vatican journalist Lucio Brunelli, who says he obtained the diary through a trusted source he had known for years. He said he spoke in Italian to his source – a hint the cardinal in question was Italian.
Brunelli said he couldn’t identify the author because of the vow of secrecy each cardinal took before entering the conclave. Punishment for violating the vow is excommunication.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
