-Robert Ventresca is a special contributor to Global’s live coverage of the 2013 papal conclave. He is a historian at King’s University College at Western University in London, Ontario, and the author, most recently, of Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII.
The litany repeated in recent days by the more skittish pundits among us, myself included, claims that it is hazardous to predict the outcome of any conclave.
True enough; but who can deny that there is great fun in trying just the same.
The history of papal elections in the past century or so suggests that this conclave will not last very long, probably a few days. Of course, given the apparently talkative mood among the Cardinals – if their active participation in the general congregations this past week is any indication – then things may drag on longer than expected. But don’t bet on it.
Among other factors, consider the weight of history and tradition in an institution where such things are privileged as the lifeline connecting past, present and future.
The Catholic Church has witnessed eight conclaves over the past one hundred years. None of them lasted for more than five days. In fact, the last conclave to last longer than that opened in December 1830 and ended in February 1831 with the election of Gregory XVI, after some fifty-one days of voting.
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And while it often is said that the front runners usually come out of conclave with red hat in hand, which is to say that invariably they fail to be elected Pope, the fact is that leading contenders, and usually well-known insiders, have been elected more often than the proverbial wisdom would suggest.
In this regard, consider that of the eight papal elections since 1914, five have resulted in the election of popes who came to the papal office with distinguished careers as papal diplomats. All but one had practical experience in governance at the local level as Bishop or Archbishop. And all of them ascended to the Chair of Peter as members of the Sacred College of Cardinals.
In other words, all of the popes of the last century or so were insiders and thus known commodities, to a greater or lesser degree.
Giacomo della Chiesa, who reigned as Benedict XV from 1914 to 1922, worked for years around the turn of the century alongside the powerful Cardinal Secretary of State Mariano Rampolla before becoming Archbishop of Bologna and then Pope at the start of the First World War. His successor, Achille Ratti, who reigned as Pius XI from 1922 to 1939 was a respected scholar but really earned a name for himself in the ecclesial hierarchy as an able diplomat in Poland before being elected Pope on the eve of the Fascist rise to power in Italy. Ratti, in turn, was succeeded by his own trusted confidant, Eugenio Pacelli, who reigned as Pius XII from 1939 to 1958. Pacelli became Pope after an active career in the ranks of papal diplomacy, first as papal representative to Germany, then as Secretary of State during the turbulent 1930s.
The two Popes responsible for inspiring and guiding the epochal work of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, John XXIII (Roncalli) and Paul VI (Montini) both had long careers in papal diplomacy before taking charge of the influential dioceses of Venice and Milan respectively. Montini, in fact, was a high-ranking member of the Secretariat of State for some thirty years, and one of Pius XII’s closest aides during World War Two and the Holocaust.
Of recent memory, Karol Wojtyla came to the papal office in 1978 after more than a decade as the prominent and politically astute Archbishop of Kraków, and having played an influential role at Vatican II in the early 1960s.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, also an active participant at Vatican II, served John Paul II as powerful Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005, before being elected Benedict XVI, thereby completing the circle of insiders to occupy the Chair of Peter in the past century or so.
For all that, as Benedict’s resignation amply demonstrates, history doesn’t simply repeat itself and, what’s more, even insiders can deliver big surprises.
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