I watch as nuns stampede

Alexander Chancellor on the excitement in Rome following the election of Pope Benedict XVI

Rome

Isense a certain triumphalism in the offices of The Spectator. ‘Habemus papam Spectatoris — it’s The Spectator wot dunnit.’ So as far as I know, alone among the British media, The Spectator unequivocally endorsed the ‘Iron Cardinal’ from Germany as the best man for the job.

In an article published here a few weeks ago, as Pope John Paul II was approaching death, Piers Paul Read said that it was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who should succeed him on the throne of St Peter. In the opinion of Read and of the editor of The Spectator (despite the new Pope’s known opposition to Turkish entry into the European Union), Ratzinger was the person best able to carry on John Paul’s mission to protect the integrity and unity of the Roman Catholic Church in a fractured and tormented world.

Surprisingly, the College of Cardinals agreed with them, electing him within two days after only four ballots. Although Ratzinger entered the conclave as favourite, it was widely believed that his age (78), nationality and doctrinal rigidity would tell against him as voting proceeded.

It was thought that in the struggle between Conservatives like Ratzinger (the so-called integrists whose priority is to purge the Church of ‘heresy and evil’) and reformers who favour a more accommodating approach to the rest of the world, a ‘stop Ratzinger’ movement might gather strength and bring forth a compromise candidate.

Ratzinger is respected as a brilliant theologian, but his unyielding adherence to traditional teaching is considered by many to be an impediment to the Church’s progress. People like Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who is associated with the reformers, shudder at his rough use of language, as when he condemns the endorsement of same-sex unions and ‘the legalisation of evil’. Such talk doesn’t go down well in liberal democracies like Britain and the United States.

Yet even on Monday as the conclave was about to begin, Ratzinger was his usual unyielding self. To the Cardinals praying in St Peter’s Basilica before locking themselves into the Sistine Chapel, he delivered the most uncompromising homily.

‘Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the Church, is often labelled today as fundamentalism,’ he said, ‘whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed or “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude acceptable by today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.’ Nobody knows, and perhaps never will, how the discussions went within the conclave, for the Cardinal electors were solemnly sworn to secrecy and their mobile phones taken off them when they went in. But it would seem that the reformers were too disorganised to stop the Ratzinger bandwagon.

There is no election anywhere to compare with a conclave. Huge crowds assemble in St Peter’s Square, thousands of journalists gather at the Vatican, hundreds of camera crews bag positions on rooftops and on specially erected stands, and there is absolutely nothing to be seen or heard. There is just the conclusion of the election to await, so all eyes and lenses are focused interminably on a spindly little chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in keen anticipation of some smoke emerging. Even when the smoke is black, as it was after the first three ballots, the crowd bursts into applause. Perhaps they are relieved to have evidence that someone in the chapel is at least alive and able to light a fire.

Then, on Tuesday evening, when the smoke came out white and the bells of St Peter’s began to toll, an extraordinary invasion of the square began. Within minutes, thousands of people were flooding into it from all over Rome. It was like a sea of agitated ants.

Everyone was running in order to be there when the announcement of the new Pope was made from the balcony of St Peter’s, which was draped for the occasion with heavy red velvet curtains. People fled before sprinting nuns, for it is most unwise to stand in the way of nuns when they are craving proximity to a pope. Drivers dumped their cars anywhere.

There was the atmosphere of a carnival or a great sporting event — lots of banners, whoops, cheers and extravagant gesticulation. But there was something less than euphoria when the Chilean Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez eventually appeared to announce in Latin: ‘We have a pope; the most eminent and the most reverend Lord Joseph Cardinal of the Capital’s Holy Roman Church Ratzinger, who has taken the name Benedict XVI.’ A conservative German pope is not everyone’s cup of tea. Maybe there were Italians hoping that they would reclaim the papacy after its temporary sequestration by the Poles. Certainly there were Africans and Latin Americans in the crowd who were hoping that the Church’s growing strength in their countries, matched by a parallel decline in Europe, would reap its reward.

Yet when the Pope finally emerged on to the balcony he looked so moved and happy to have been chosen that it was difficult not to warm to him. ‘Dear brothers and sisters,’ he said with a beatific smile, ‘the Cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble toiler in the vineyard of the Lord. I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act within inadequate tools, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.’ Despite a misleading headline in this week’s Sunday Times to the effect that Ratzinger’s ‘Nazi’ past had returned to haunt him, there is no evidence of any great objections to his German nationality. Nor should there be, given that he has no Nazi past. He joined the Hitler Youth when this was obligatory and later, as a 17year-old, he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit to defend Munich against Allied bombers. But in fact he never fired a shot, and his father, a Bavarian policeman, was anti-Hitler.

Yet it is hard to imagine that a German could have been elected to the papacy even 20 or 30 years ago, when bitter memories of the war were still vivid. The choice of a German pope, coming just after the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Belsen, is perhaps a sign that the world is now ready to forgive. Even Jewish spokesmen have welcomed his election, pointing to his good record in fostering better relations between Catholics and Jews. German popes are surprisingly rare. Ratzinger is the first since the death of Victor II, a fellowBavarian, in 1057.

His choice of the name Benedict has aroused much interest. The last pope called Benedict — Benedict XV reigned during the turmoil of the first world war and strove, albeit ineffectually, to broker a peace. According to Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, speaking at a press conference in Rome on Wednesday, Ratzinger told the Cardinals that he had chosen the name because it signified peace and reconciliation.

Benedict XV also ended the papal persecution of the ‘modernists’, the Catholic reformers of those days, but there was nothing to indicate that Benedict XVI intended his name to be seen as an olive branch to their successors.

The English Cardinal described the new Pope as courteous, intelligent and fair, but made it seem that he had not personally voted for him, for he said, in a possible slip of the tongue, that ‘they’ — indicating other Cardinals — had chosen him, when one might have expected him to say ‘we’.

The conclave ended on a festive note. The Pope invited the Cardinals to supper in the modern residence inside the Vatican where they had been staying during the election, and a joyous mood prevailed. According to Murphy-O’Connor, the Cardinals toasted the Pope with cham pagne and sang songs — what kind of songs, he did not reveal.

Then on Wednesday the Pope moved into the papal apartment and started work saving the Church.