The progressive camp in the conclave never stood a chance against Cardinal Ratzinger's experienced band of brothers, writes Paddy Agnew in Rome
In the end, the election of Pope Benedict XVI was not so much an electoral contest as a walkover. What had been billed by many, present company included, as a "highly uncertain" conclave turned out to be quick and relatively straightforward. Of the nine conclaves in the last 102 years, only one, that which elected Pius XII in 1939 on the eve of the second World War, was shorter.
For many long-time Vatican observers, the events of the last week have been almost surreal. Sure, we knew Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dean of the College of Cardinals and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was the obvious ante-post favourite. What we did not realise was that he was the only real entry in the race.
Throughout the last decade and the long "end of pontificate" phase, we were accustomed to consistent speculation about the successor to John Paul II. Names such as Eyt, Etchegaray, Hume, Schotte, Moreira Neves, Silvestrini, Pio Laghi and others came and went, some of them even outlived by the man they were allegedly about to succeed.
One name that was almost never mentioned as a serious starter was Cardinal Ratzinger. His role and his "fame" as John Paul II's rigorous guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, not to mention his age, were all said to rule him right out of the contest.
Sure, clerics would say, he will be a major, perhaps the major grande elettore (kingmaker) in the conclave, but he will never be a candidate.
In the months prior to the death of John Paul II, however, all that changed dramatically. From last autumn through to the Pope's last illness in February, occasional articles appeared in the Italian media suggesting that Cardinal Ratzinger was "now" a candidate to become the next Pope. Furthermore, these articles were written by authoritative Italian vaticanisti such as Sandro Magister in L'Espresso and Marco Politi in La Repubblica, reporters who have the ear of a number of Curia and Italian cardinals: put simply, some time before the death of John Paul II, senior Curia cardinals had decided that the Catholic Church would be best served, in the wake of such a momentous pontificate, by a doctrinally sound, intellectually robust, "safe pair of hands". No one fitted that job description more than Cardinal Ratzinger. It just remained to let the word out, via the media.
Thus it was that, on the death of the late Pope, shakers and makers such as the secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano and the Vicariate of Rome, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, supported by some of the Curia cardinals including Spaniard Julián Herranz and Colombians Darío Castrillón Hoyos and Alfonso López Trujillo, had their candidate all ready to run.
At that point, a number of factors came together that no one could have predicted. In his role as Dean of the College of Cardinals (he was elected to that position in November 2002), Cardinal Ratzinger became the leading actor in the emotionally intense, dramatic showpiece events of the "interregnum". As the world's media beamed in on the Vatican, he always seemed to be the MC running the show. "Right from the beginning, there was the possibility of Cardinal Ratzinger," said Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna on Wednesday morning, adding: "His is a strong presence. He was the Dean of the College, he gave the sermon at the funeral [ of Pope John Paul II] and at the "Pro Eligendo Pontifice" Mass. We all felt that he was our brother, but one with qualities superior to us."
Helping Cardinal Ratzinger along the way was the fact that the world's media, unfamiliar with Vatican ways, turned to Italian newspapers to find out what was happening. There they read that Ratzinger was the favourite. Soon he was the favourite, worldwide.
For any cardinal unsure of which way to vote, it was hard to ignore Ratzinger. Every time, you attended a major event, Cardinal Ratzinger seemed to be running it. Every time you turned on the TV or opened a newspaper, you were informed that Cardinal Ratzinger was the favourite.
Then, too, it seems that discussions in the "congregations" of cardinals which met in the period between John Paul II's death and the conclave were far from free and open. A tight rein was kept on debates which tended to focus on single problems rather than general "state of the church" issues.
In the meantime, the "progressive" camp was in difficulty. Given that only two of the 115 cardinal electors - Cardinal Ratzinger and US Cardinal William Baum - had experienced a conclave, many of them found themselves a little lost and bewildered throughout the "interregnum". While the inner core of Curia cardinals were playing a well-organised home fixture, meeting over lunches and dinners, the progressives were left to their own devices.
THIS MAY HAVE led to a strategic error on the part of the progressive camp. As a candidate to "block" Cardinal Ratzinger, they chose Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan. The idea was that he, like Cardinal Ratzinger, would be a rallying point, a testing of the electoral waters.
Yet, the Martini candidacy made no sense since Martini himself had made it abundantly clear that, at 78 years of age and suffering from Parkinson's disease, he had no intention of running. Significantly, Cardinal Ratzinger made no such statement at any time.
Media leaks suggest that, at the first count on Monday evening, Martini and Ratzinger nearly tied on around 40 votes each, with Martini perhaps even topping the future Pope. (Yes, we know the conclave is secret, but cardinals talk).
Next morning, for the second vote, the progressive camp switched to its "real" candidate, Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. Although Bergoglio is believed to have picked up perhaps 40 votes in the first ballot on Tuesday, the Ratzinger vote had already begun to gain momentum and may have been close to 55 by this stage.
At this point, a new twist in the electoral process emerged when Cardinal Bergoglio appeared to be in difficulty with the idea of his own possible election as Pope. A humble, holy man, Cardinal Bergoglio was apparently much troubled by the idea of the responsibilities that might be thrust on him.
At that point, the electoral contest was over. Having started out with a symbolic candidate, the progressives now had a reluctant one. Over lunch on Tuesday in the Domus Santa Marta, the word went out - the progressive vote would go to the future Benedict XVI. The final tally may have seen more than 100 of the 115 votes going to the new Pope, with only a dozen or so holding out against him.
As if partly awestruck with what they had done, the cardinals then went into major media spin overdrive next morning, in an obvious attempt to help reshape the "image" of the new Pope. It was as if a script had been sent around. One after the other they said that, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger had had one difficult job to do, but that as Pope Benedict XVI he would be a "father" to the whole church.
Cardinal after cardinal told us that he was "humble", "intelligent", "a good listener", "a pastoral man", "a man gifted with wisdom, simplicity, humanity and a great heart", while Cardinal Rosalio José Castillo Lara of Venezuela got right down to the nitty-gritty, saying: "It's just a caricature of the man to call him a conservative."
THE NEW POPE, of course, did the major work himself in the shift of image. Last Monday, on the eve of conclave, he was railing against the dictatorship of "a [ moral] relativism which accepts nothing as definitive and which takes as its ultimate benchmark the ego". By Wednesday he was reaching out to other Christian churches and to non-Christians in order "to construct an open and sincere dialogue in the search for true good for man and society".
Throughout the last six months, it has been speculated that the pro-Ratzinger camp wants a lower-profile pontificate, one that eschews the travelling, the open-air Masses and the set-piece "mea culpa" or "Assisi Day of Prayer" ceremonies that were such an intrinsic part of John Paul II's pontificate.
Instead, the new Pope may be thinking of a thorough internal clean-up. In his meditations for the Via Crucis on Good Friday of this year, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of "the dirt" in the church, of "how much Christ has to suffer in his own church".
In that context, his choice of name may not so much refer back to the pre-first World War pope, Benedict XV, but rather to St Benedict, the patriarch of western monasticism. It could be that we will shortly see a very familiar type of Ratzinger, attempting to get to grips with disciplinary problems within his priesthood.
His immediate confirmation of three senior Curia figures in Cardinal Angelo Sodano as secretary of state, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri as sostituto (deputy secretary of state) and Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo as foreign minister may be only temporary measures, but they could yet indicate a confirmation of a very particular, hard-line status quo.
Many commentators have been predicting plenty of surprises from this pontificate. That could well be. Certainly, the Holy Spirit sprang one last Tuesday.
