Last June, Benedict XVI released a “motu proprio” that fixes the rules for electing a pope.The “motu proprio” got little coverage from the media.
And yet it impacts a key aspect of the Church’s life.
This much is clear from the extraordinary interest that surrounds every conclave.
Last July 18, at a press conference with cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, there was a question about the conclave that elected Joseph Ratzinger as pope on April 19, 2005.
Bertone replied: “I know that the numbers reported by the press are not exact, and I want to restate that.”
To the following question of whether the votes for Ratzinger had been more or fewer than the figures circulated, he added: “I don’t remember anything anymore; we burned the ballots.”
Curiously, the most widely accepted leaks about the last conclave come from two reporters on the Vatican who are highly trusted by cardinal Bertone himself: Andrea Tornielli of the newspaper “il Giornale” – who this year published an acclaimed biography of Pius XII – and Lucio Brunelli of the second Italian state television channel, who also writes for the geopolitical magazine “Limes.”
According to the leaks, Ratzinger obtained 47 votes in the first round of voting, 65 in the second, 72 in the third, and 84 in the fourth, out of a total of 115 electors.
The votes of his opponents are thought to have gone mainly to Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, with 10 in the first round, 35 in the second, 40 in the third, and 26 in the fourth.
In the 2005 conclave, the majority needed for the election of a pope was initially two thirds, equal to 77 votes.
But after 34 unsuccessful voting rounds, only 58 votes would have been necessary, one half plus one: this was established by the rules for conclaves promulgated in 1996 by John Paul II.
Last June 11, the date of his “motu proprio,” Benedict XVI eliminated this possibility of lowering the majority requirement.
Now, once again, two thirds of the votes will be needed to elect a pope, always.
The experts immediately grasped the importance of this decision.
But the commentaries on it have been sporadic. The most interesting of these has just been released in the latest issue of the magazine “il Regno,” published in Bologna by the Sacred Heart fathers.
The author is an internationally famous scholar, Jesuit father Ladislas M. Örsy, a professor of canon law and philosophy of law at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Örsy belongs to the progressive camp, and has been from the beginning one of the more prominent writers for the international theology review “Concilium,” a rival to the opposing review “Communio,” whose founders include Ratzinger.
But Örsy expresses warm appreciation for Benedict XVI’s “motu proprio” on conclaves.
And this precisely because he restores the ancient rule of the two-thirds majority for electing a pope. That the progressive camp should applaud the current pope for having restored tradition is paradoxical.
But the matter becomes more understandable if one looks at the potential effects of the innovation introduced by John Paul II.
Örsy advances an hypothesis: if the 1978 conclave had been carried out under the rules established by John Paul II, the election would not have gone to Karol Wojtyla, but to the ultraconservative cardinal Giuseppe Siri.
And in the conclave of 2005, at which those rules were in effect, what effect did they have?
Örsy doesn’t address this.
But another prominent exponent of the Catholic progressive camp, the historian of Christianity Alberto Melloni, wrote about it in the June 27 edition of “Corriere della Sera”: the 40 votes for Bergoglio in the third round of voting “in other times would have scrapped Ratzinger’s candidacy”; if this did not happen, it was precisely because the cardinals knew that “even with a simple majority Ratzinger would ascend to the throne of Peter.”
Melloni does not entirely adhere to this interpretation of events. He says that it would be more important to know “how, by what, and by whom another bundle of votes was shifted to Ratzinger” on the afternoon of April 19, 2005, pushing him over the two-thirds majority.
Melloni's implication is that this was done by the progressive cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, in order to prevent “an even more terrible, politically motivated solution”: read the election of cardinal Camillo Ruini.
In any case, Melloni maintains, “a shadow” looms over Ratzinger’s election as pope.
“It is clear from the current reform that Benedict XVI wants to free his successor – and, in a certain way, himself – from this shadow.”
While the “motu proprio” of June 11 restores the tradition of the two-thirds majority, in another way it is innovative.
After 34 unsuccessful voting rounds, only the two candidates who have received the greatest number of votes in the previous round are eligible from that point on, until one of the two reaches the necessary two thirds.
In the traditional system, the cardinals would have been free to abandon both candidates and look for a new one.
Instead, by introducing the runoff vote, Benedict XVI’s intention is that of preventing an excessive prolongation of conclaves.
And in the final head-to-head, the two candidates must abstain from voting – to remove the suspicion that the winner voted for himself.
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