A Swift, Stunning Choice

For more than an hour, confusion reigned in St. Peter's Square. When the smoke first began to curl out of a temporary rooftop chimney from the Vatican's Sistine Chapel at 6:24 p.m. on Saturday, it looked white--the traditional color to signal that the secret conclave within had elected a Pope. But could it be true? Not likely--not on the opening day of the largest, most complex gathering of Cardinal electors in the long pageant of papal elections. Sure enough, with dusk beginning to enfold the splendid statues and pillars of the Bernini colonnade, the smoke turned blacker, then gray. Exasperated, the Vatican Radio announcer said, "There is still uncertainty about the color of the smoke." The crowd in St. Peter's Square swelled from 10,000 to 25,000 and then to 50,000 on the off-chance that history was about to be made.

Suddenly, more than an hour after the puzzling signals began to billow forth, the Vatican's Pericle Felici, ranking Cardinal-deacon in the Sacred College, appeared at the opened Window of the Benediction in the center of St. Peter's Basilica. His Latin words boomed out over loudspeakers: "Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam!" (I announce to you a great joy. We have a Pope!) The crowd was hushed as Felici went on: "He is the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Cardinal Albino Luciani, who has taken the name of John Paul the First [in Latin, Joannes Paulus Primus]."

The name was unusual--and unprecedented. No Pope had ever adopted a double name; none had selected a first-of-its-kind name in a millennium. Apparently, the new Pontiff wanted to signal originality and also a bond of continuity with his two immediate predecessors: the reformer, John XXIII, and the moderator, Paul VI. Or was he evoking their New Testament forebears?

If the election's speed was surprising, so was the identity of the 263rd Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. In the first days after Paul's death, Luciani, 65, Patriarch of Venice, had been mentioned only as a remote compromise candidate if the conclave reached a deadlock. Now he was in the window, a frail-looking, slight, bespectacled figure in ponifical vestments, lifting his hands gingerly in the papal salute, offering blessing with a brisk gesture of his right hand, nodding smilingly at the excited crowd below.

Master of Ceremonies Virgilio Noe held a large scroll before him as John Paul I read out his first apostolic blessing, the traditional benediction, urbi et orbi (to the city and to the world). His high voice quavered a bit as he chanted the Latin in lilting Gregorian style. Before the blessing, the new Pope made an unusual gesture, granting "to all" who heard the words--either in person or by broadcast--a plenary indulgence. In Catholic belief, all sins, though forgiven, must be atoned for--either here on earth or, after death, in purgatory. For those truly repentant, a plenary indulgence cancels the debt for all past sins.

After the blessing, with the bells of St. Peter's ringing loudly, the new Pope met the rising applause with a wave and a wide, yet almost shy smile. He withdrew, but three minutes later, at the insistence of the continuing applause, the new Pope appeared again. The 110 Cardinals, crowded together on the lateral loggias flanking the central balcony on the basilica fac,ade, smiled happily. John Paul lifted his hands slowly in the papal gesture and smiled once again, this time more radiantly, less shyly.

As the news circled the world, most Catholics admitted knowing little about their new leader. London's Sunday Times headlined him as THE UNKNOWN POPE. "We have never heard of him here," said James Reuter, a leading Jesuit in the Philippines. But he added, "At least we are thankful it is not some of the others." In Little Rock, Ark., Bishop Andrew J. McDonald heard the news from a priest and was forced to look up Luciani in a church directory. The rapid decision, quipped the bishop, "just shows that the Holy Spirit is quicker than the speed of light."

The swiftness of the vote also caught the Vatican bureaucracy by surprise. Some of the Swiss Guards had to be rounded up from neighborhood cafes, and they finally mustered for an honor march across the square during John Paul's appearance on the balcony, but not--as is customary--before it. Vatican officials on the list of those who make the act of obedience to the Pope after the appearance were scattered, some at the beach. Such notables as Substitute Secretary of State Giuseppe Caprio scurried back just in time for Felici's announcement. They were not summoned into the Sistine Chapel for the obedience ritual, however. Like John XXIII, John Paul decreed that the Cardinals remain in sealed conclave overnight, presumably to hear the Pope's views or convey their own. The new Pope also announced that his coronation would be held on Sept. 3.

With the Cardinals still behind locked doors, Vaticanologists could only guess at how a long shot like Luciani had been thrust so suddenly into the most power ful position in Christendom, the leadership of the world's 700 million Roman Catholics. When Paul died at his summer villa in Castel Gandolfo three weeks ago, there seemed to be a front rank of about half a dozen contending Cardinals, a second echelon of another six or so, and a dozen or more dark horses. Not until about a week before the conclave convened did the Patriarch of Venice begin to emerge as a genuine possibility.

Then how did the required majority coalesce so swiftly? One observer explained it succinctly: "The foreigners," the 85 non-Italians, did not want a bureaucrat from the Curia but a man who, like John XXIII, had the warmth of a good pastor. In addition, almost all the Cardinals seemed to want a man who emblemized faith as well as hope and charity, one who, like Paul VI, had a deep concern for doctrine. Luciani fitted both bills. He was also ideal in another respect. The Cardinals are always uneasy at the prospect of a lengthy papacy--15 or more years--and the Patriarch of Venice is a 65-year-old who was sickly as a child and suffered a two-year siege of tuberculosis as a young man.

In past elections, caught in near deadlocks, "arrangements" sometimes had to be made--for instance a "ticket" pairing a papal candidate with a Secretary of State, the virtual Prime Minister of the Vatican. According to an informed reconstruction of the 1958 conclave, just such a gentlemen's agreement was worked out. Key Cardinals approached Angelo Roncalli, the man who became Pope John XXIII, and implied that they would vote for him in return for indirect assurances that Domenico Tardini, an experienced administrator and a Curial traditionalist, would be appointed Secretary of State. Replied Roncalli: "Eminences, one could not fail to take into consideration a man of such abilities." Soon thereafter, Roncalli was Pope and Tardini the Secretary of State.

The "instant conclave" of 1978 may be explained, at least in part, by the unusually long interim between Paul's death (Aug. 6) and the beginning of the conclave (Aug. 25). The Cardinals had plenty of time to get together in small groups and large, conferring, trading intelligence, lobbying ever so discreetly. By last Friday, when they assembled at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica, beneath Bernini's stained-glass window portraying the Holy Spirit as a white dove in a solid circle of gold, they had carefully weighed all the papabili (possible Popes). During a Mass celebrated in Latin, the Cardinals invoked divine guidance for the task ahead of them.

As the 111 Cardinals, in scarlet chasubles and gleaming white miters, flowed out of the transept in two slow-moving files, a four-year-old girl in the crowd was heard to ask, "Which one is the Pope?" Replied her father: "One of them is--but they haven't decided which one yet."

Six hours later, having replaced the white miters with red birettas, the Cardinals reassembled to begin making that decision. Promptly at 4:30 on Friday afternoon, Jean Cardinal Villot, Camerlengo (Chamberlain) of the vacant Holy See, gave a signal and the 70-member Sistine Chapel choir started to sing Veni Creator Spiritus (Come Holy Spirit). The Cardinals then filed into the Sistine Chapel. There, beneath Michelangelo's great fresco The Last Judgment, they seated themselves on facing rows of plain chairs at twelve long tables. There were too many Cardinals this time to accommodate them with the traditional canopied velvet thrones.

To the left of the portal through which they entered was the iron stove that was later to send out those confusing signals. Beside the stove were chemical cartridges for producing black and white smoke. After a brief prayer, a final roll call and a last-minute sweep for bugging devices, the master of ceremonies pronounced: "Extra omnes" (Everybody out), and the doors were locked.

The next morning the balloting began, and as the basilica bells were still pealing the noontime Angelus, the first puff of smoke wafted from the chapel chimney: black. Nine minutes later, more black smoke billowed forth, then seemed to turn white, then black again. False alarm. After the morning's first two ballots, Vatican Radio announced, there was no decision.

As the Cardinals entered their carefully sealed sanctum, most Vaticanologists anticipated a wide-open race but, paradoxically, a relatively brief conclave. Until the election of Pius IX in 1831, conclaves normally ran for weeks, months and, in one case, more than two years. The conclave period was often punctuated by power plays among Europe's monarchs, high intrigue within the College of Cardinals, and brawling in the streets.

This time, the chief reason for celerity was the Cardinals' fear that a prolonged struggle would betray factionalism and damage the new Pope's image. Besides that, the Cardinals, particularly those who were aged or ailing, were not anxious to prolong their quarantine in the less-than-comfortable quarters of the rambling Apostolic Palace. Genoa's Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, 72, a veteran of the two previous elections, said prophetically as the conclave was about to begin, "One does not feel very comfortable in a conclave. In a certain sense, one is buried alive. This is why I think those who believe we will have a long conclave are not well informed."

Siri was right, but even the best-informed Vaticanologists were stunned by the conclave's brevity--about 8% hours from first ballot to last. True, Pius XII was elected in a record 7% hours in 1939, but he was a rising star, renowned throughout the Catholic world as a diplomatic genius and the protege of his predecessor, Pius XI. He was not a very popular man, this remote intellectual, but no one else came close to promising the firm hand that the church needed in a world hurtling toward war.

Today the church confronts a less dramatic but no less complex situation. That is especially so in Italy, where the church is closely identified with the long-ruling Christian Democratic Party in its struggle with the Communist Party, which has been gaining ground.

Luciani has been adamant that the priests of his patriarchate must not condone Catholic votes for Communists. Said he: "Marxism is incompatible with Christianity." But neither is he known for advocating get-out-the-vote sermons in favor of the Christian Democrats. He has said that if priests disagreed with his policy on Communism, they should at least not express this in church.

His biggest policy crisis as patriarch undoubtedly came on the eve of the 1974 divorce referendum in Italy. The local Catholic students' movement, whose radical experiments in liturgy and biblical research he had tolerated, issued a pro-divorce statement. Luciani stayed up all night pondering the document and the next morning closed down the students' union and withdrew its spiritual counselor. He also warned 20 of his priests that if they persisted in participating in pro-divorce rallies, he would suspend their right to say Mass. Like other Italian bishops, he is against both abortion and women priests. In the 1960s there were reports that Bishop Luciani was open to modification of the church's rigid teaching against artificial birth control, as a consultant to the papal commission on the problem. But when Paul issued his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Luciani announced that this relieved him of "every doubt," and he was among the first to insist that doubters assent.

But he is no rigid Pius XII in his approach to the new scientific issues of the age. When the first test-tube baby was born and some Catholic theologians condemned the experiment, Luciani said in an interview, "I extend the warmest wishes to the English girl. As for the parents, I have no right to condemn them. Subjectively, if they acted in good faith and with good intentions, they could even gain great merit before God."

Then, his pastoral point made, Luciani continued, "Progress is a great thing, but not all progress is good for man. Will not science bear the appearance of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, who scatters mighty forces without, however, being able to dam or dominate them? Could there not be danger of a new industry arising, that of manufacture of children? The individual conscience must always be followed, but the individual must make an effort to have a well-formed conscience. Conscience, indeed, does not have the duty of creating law, but of informing itself first on what the law of God dictates."

Luciani is a man who is not afraid to change his mind. He kept a low profile at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and admitted afterward, "The part that caused me most problems was that on religious liberty. For years I had been teaching his [Vatican Cardinal Alfredo Otta-viani's] theories about law, according to which only the true Roman Catholic religion has rights. I convinced myself, however, that we had been wrong."

Given the new Pope's flexibility, any predictions about his papacy--liberal, middle-of-the-road or conservative--are perilous. Above all, the Cardinals seemed to want a pastoral figure, and they selected a man with no experience in the Vatican bureaucracy or diplomatic service. John Paul is a quietly genial man whose priests find him approachable. He is also the third Patriarch of Venice to become Pope in this century. The first was Pius X.* The second was John XXIII, a beloved figure of reform.

The new Pope paid homage to both John and Paul in choosing his name, but he also made it clear that he would be neither John XXIV nor Paul VII. Said Baltimore's liberal Lawrence Cardinal Shehan: "Perhaps we can take it as a sign of his independence." "The name is of great importance," said Jose Miguez Bonino, a Protestant liberation theologian in Argentina and an honorary president of the World Council of Churches. "It shows that the new Pontiff is ready to continue with the program of reforms launched by the Vatican Council."

Luciani's name had first been floated in the preconclave period by Carlo Confalonieri, 85, the dean of the College of Cardinals. Respected among the "foreigners" as well as the Italians, Confalonieri was ineligible for the conclave himself because of Paul's ban on those 80 and over.

The other pivotal personality in Luciani's camp was Giovanni Cardinal Benelli of Florence, for years Pope Paul's right-hand man as the No. 2 official in the Vatican Secretariat of State. "Benelli spoke of Luciani to many of the other Cardinals," said an Italian prelate. At 57, Benelli proved too young to become Pope. Still, he seemed to be the leading Pope-maker of the 1978 conclave, and figures to be a prime contender at the next one.

Though he had Confalonieri, Benelli and many of the 85 non-Italians behind him, the new Pope was clearly not the Curial candidate. Said one official: "He was one of those Cardinals who always kept his distance from Rome, and he is virtually an unknown quantity in the Curia."

And elsewhere. Those who quickly asserted that Luciani would be a conservative as Pope, one of his former aides cautioned, should know that he left Venice for Rome intending to vote for the president of the Latin American bishops' conference, Aloisio Lorscheider, an outspoken advocate of social justice.

Luciani has a reputation as a pastor quick to pardon carnal sins, but not those of the spirit, and is particularly severe with those in positions of responsibility who openly question church teachings. "Those who treat theology as a human science rather than a sacred science, or exaggerate their freedom," he wrote in the Vatican daily in 1974, "lack faith."

Having long been a catechist and a teacher of theology, Luciani now assumes the primary teaching office in Roman Catholicism. The dissent against dogma from within the church that anguished his predecessor produced insistent demands for yet more change from the left and cries for discipline from the right. It is just possible that when the Cardinals so swiftly cast their two-thirds-plus-one majority for Albino Luciani, this problem was paramount.

In the scenic Argordo Valley of Northeast Italy, home region of the new Pope, church bells pealed in triumph to announce the election, as they had in Rome and round the world. At Belluno, the regional capital where he was a religion teacher, people rushed into the streets as the news broke. Said his brother Edoardo, a retired professor who lives in Canale, a town of 1,500: "I really did not expect that Albino could have been elected Pope. I am confused, moved. I can't say anything else. It's too great, so unexpected." Brother Edoardo spoke for legions, in urbe et orbe.

* According to a French gibe, Pius packed the Vatican with fellow Venetians: "De la barque de St. Pierre Us out fait une gondole " (They've made the barque of St. Peter into a gondola).

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