Cardinals secret conclave begin

VATICAN CITY - The doors of the Sistine Chapel were closed to the world Monday as cardinals from six continents entered the conclave, the Roman Catholic Church's ancient and secretive process to elect a new pope.
To the sounds of the Litany of the Saints, 115 members of the College of Cardinals solemnly paraded into the chapel to take individual oaths of secrecy surrounding the vote. Each cardinal placed his hand on the Book of the Gospels and swear, "I ... do so promise, pledge and swear. So help me God and these Holy Gospels which I touch with my hand."

The ancient vote formally began with the Latin directive "Extra omnes", meaning "all out." Anyone who is not one of the 115 cardinals taking part in the vote then left the chapel.

Once in the chapel, the cardinals were to have heard a "meditation" from 85-year-old Czech prelate Tomas Spidlik "on the need for careful discernment" in choosing the pope that will replace John Paul II, who died on April 2 at age 84.
"The new pope has already been chosen by the Lord," Italian Cardinal Ennio Antonelli said Sunday. "We must only pray to know who it is.

"Earlier in the day, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger issued a blunt call for the cardinals to choose a pope who will refuse to be swayed by calls for change to the church's guiding principles.

Ratzinger, a German cleric seen as a front-runner, delivered the homily at the cardinals' mass on Monday morning in his capacity as dean of the College of Cardinals.

His words were greeted with an unusual round of applause from the 115 cardinals from 52 nations who are eligible to elect the next pope. (Two of the 117 cardinals under the age of 80 are ill and cannot attend the conclave.)

"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labelled today as a fundamentalism, whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards," the 78-year-old Ratzinger said during the homily.

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."

Liberals looking to modernize the Catholic faith say it should relax its policies on birth control and consider giving women a more prominent role in church affairs in order to remain relevant to more of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.
John Paul refused to consider such changes during his 26-year papacy.
Secret balloting to begin Monday or Tuesday

During conclave, the cardinals will sit at 12 tables along the frescoed walls of the chapel, where each will write down one name on ballots printed in Latin. There, under the splendour of Michelangelo's Last Judgment, showing Christ raising up the chosen and rejecting the wicked, they will vote in a series of secret ballots until a consensus emerges.

The first round of voting will not necessarily take place on Monday. The cardinals may decide to reflect on and discuss their options and delay the balloting until Tuesday.

The winner must receive a two-thirds majority, or at least 77 votes.
If no winner emerges, the ballots are burned in a stove, once in the morning and again in the afternoon. Black smoke that billows from a chimney above the chapel signals that a decision has not been reached. When a new pope is chosen, white smoke is pumped through the chimney and the Vatican's bells will ring.

About an hour later, the new pope will appear on the balcony of St. Peter's to greet those who will assemble in St. Peter's Square for the historic occasion.
No one can say how long the deliberations will take, but Jesuit priest and journalist Thomas Reese expects this will be a brief conclave.

"If the conclave goes more than five days, the media are going to be outside saying, 'Crisis in the Church; cardinals divided.' And they don't want that message going out," he said in an interview with CBC.

"So I think there's a lot of psychological pressure on them to pick a pope within three or four days."

Three Canadian cardinals are taking part in the conclave: Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec, Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte of Montreal and Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic of Toronto.

* FROM APRIL 16, 2005: Pope's ring and seal destroyed
As an added precaution to the oaths of secrecy, the chapel has been wired to jam cellphone signals to prevent leaks.

The cardinals spent Sunday night in a hotel-like building constructed inside the Vatican for that purpose. Between votes, they'll eat and sleep at the Santa Marta residence.