Secret Consistory

Once a stocky mountain-climber named Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti, Pope Pius XI is at 77 in good health, except for a slight diabetic condition. In February he celebrated the 13th anniversary of his accession to the Chair of St. Peter. He has thus outreigned his two immediate predecessors, Benedict XV and Pius X, who respectively died after eight and eleven years in the Papacy. But Pius XI must marshal his health for many more years to equal the longevity of two other Popes of the century past, Leo XIII who lived 93 years, died in 1903 after a 25-year reign, and Pius IX who set a record by ruling 32 years, dying in 1878 aged 85.

When, as it must to all men, Death comes to the eleventh Pius in the Vatican, an interregnum will ensue before the College of Cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel to mark ballot after ballot in electing the 262nd Pope. Before 1922 that interregnum amounted to only ten days-- a fact which highly vexed Boston's William Henry Cardinal O'Connell who arrived in the Vatican too late to help choose Pius XI. One of the new Pope's first official acts was to extend the period to 18 days. Thus before the next conclave there should be ample time for the arrival of the four U. S. Cardinals, Quebec's Cardinal Villeneuve, Rio de Janeiro's Cardinal Leme da Silveira.

Head of the Roman Catholic Church during the 18-day interregnum is the Cardinal Camerlengo. who sits during the conclave under a baldachin with the head Cardinal Bishop, Cardinal Priest and Cardinal Deacon, the four being reverenced with a genuflection as if they were one Pope. Entrusted with what remained of the old office of Minister of the Interior & Finance in the Papal States, the Cardinal Camerlengo came, during his brief rule, to appropriate some of the powers of the Cardinal Secretary of State. Modern pontiffs have united the two offices, and for many years, until his death last November, the Camerlengo was Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Gasparri (TIME, Nov. 26). For this week Pope Pius XI summoned a secret consistory of the Cardinals of the Curia (resident in Rome and Vatican City). One of the matters he laid before the consistory was the appointment of a new Camerlengo. No surprise was it that the Pope presented the name, which the Cardinals speedily approved, of Secretary of State Eugenic Cardinal Pacelli. Thus this brilliant, courtly Prince of the Church may some day preside over a conclave at which he will be decidedly papabile (in line for the papacy) rather than papeggiante (working for the election of another Cardinal).

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