The Holy See released a video of the May 7 meeting preparations Saturday, which included the installation of stoves and fake floors in the frescoed Sistine church to make it more actionable. The video also shows workers lined up on simple wooden tables, with the Cardinal sitting down and voting starting Wednesday, with a ramp leading to any cardinal's main seating area on the wheelchair.
Workers have also deactivated all electronic sensors installed in the Sistine church in recent years to help protect its precious murals, Silvio Surepanti, an engineer who oversees the work. Such work is part of a meeting of the technical blackout, the plan is to prevent issues of concealment and ensure that the cardinal has no contact with the outside world.
All windows of the Apostle Palace facing Sistine Church will turn black in the next few days. On the eve of the first vote itself, he will say in a comment from the Vatican City State University that about 80 seals will be erected around the space where they live between their residence and the Sistine Church.
These preparations led to a solemn feast at the beginning of the conference, the first successor to Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope in history, who died on April 21 at the age of 88.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni released a net rejection report, with one of the leading candidates, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, suffering from health problems earlier this week and requiring medical care. Reports about blood pressure issues were carried by some Italian media and received by some sites of conservative Americans, including Catholic.org, a U.S. site led by Brian Burch, which the Trump administration chose to be the ambassador of the Holy Land.
The speculation about the health of the Pope candidate is the midstream of conclusion politics and maneuver, as various factions try to torpedo or enhance certain cardinals. Francis experienced firsthand the dynamic firsthand: When the votes were in the 2013 meeting, a breathless cardinal asked him if he really had only one lung, just like a rumor. (Francis later said that he told the Cardinal that he had removed the upper lobe of one of his lungs when he was young.) He was elected soon after.
Bruni also confirmed the names of two main voters who would not participate for health reasons, and that number dropped to 133: Cardinal Antonio Cañizaresllovera, retired archbishop of Valencia, Spain, and retired archbishop of Nairobi, Kenya, and archbishop of Kenya. The other two cardinals have not arrived in Rome yet
What happens to the conference competition? All cardinals will be required to arrive at the Vatican's main residence, the Santa Marta Hotel in Doms, or to start quarantine at adjacent residences between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the Vatican said Saturday. They must be held Wednesday morning at St. Peter's Basilica at Mass, celebrated by Cardinal Dean Giovanni Battista Re. The afternoon after lunch, they will join the Sistine Church, hear meditation and swear, and then vote again.
If no candidate gets the necessary two-thirds majority on the first vote, i.e. 89 votes, then these papers will be burned and the smoke will show the world that there is no pope elected.
The Cardinals will return to their Vatican residence for the night and return to Sistine Church Thursday morning, with two votes in the morning and two in the afternoon until the winner is found.
Preparations are underway to discuss the future needs of the Catholic Church and the types of pope who can lead it when the Cardinal meets privately at a more informal meeting.
Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, the Archbishop of Algeria, said the cardinal felt the pressure to find a new pope but was not ready yet.
“Of course, we're not ready,” Vesco said as he arrived at a closed-door meeting on Saturday. “Because we have to discover the one God has chosen. We need more time to pray together. But I'm sure that at the right moment we will be ready and we will provide the church with the pope God himself wants.”
Cardinal William Goh welcomed Francis at the last stop of his trip to Asia in Four Nations last September that the right pope will eventually come true.
“We recognize the achievements of (Pope Francis), but without a pope is perfect, no one can do everything, so we will find the best person for successful St. Peter,” he said.
