Read Online Dark Mysteries of the Vatican by H. Paul Jeffers - Free Book Online

in the Vatican’s internal government or diplomatic corps. Despite being prominent within Italy, he was largely unknown to the wider world.
    Ordained on July 7, 1935, “he studied at Rome’s Gregorian University before a brief period as curate in his childhood parish. After he was appointed to a deputy position at Belluno seminary in 1937, he spent years teaching, during which time he became vicar-general to the Bishop at Belluno. Toward the end of 1958, Pope John XXIII appointed Luciani as bishop of Vittorio Veneto, and after a slow start at the Vatican Council (1962–65), he soon became an active voice in doctrinal matters.” Named archbishop of Venice (1969) and a cardinal in 1973, he rejected many of Catholicism’s more opulent aspects and encouraged richer churches to give to poorer ones.
    After his election to the papacy by the College of Cardinals, Time magazine reported, “The Cardinals knew what they wanted: a warm and humble man. Seated at a table in front of the Sistine Chapel altar, the Cardinal solemnly intoned the name written on each ballot. ‘Luciani…Luciani…Luciani…’ Beside him sat two other Cardinal scrutatores (vote counters) who carefully plucked the ballots from a silver chalice, unfolded them and passed them to their colleague. It was the fourth and final ballot of the astonishing one-day conclave that gave the Catholic world its 263rd Pope.”
    Succeeding in penetrating “the wall of secrecy that attends such conclaves, and the vows of silence taken by the Cardinals as they enter and are sealed from the outside world, Time ’s reporters Jordan Bonfante and Roland Flamini pieced together much of the story of the proceedings in the Sistine Chapel. It was clear that Luciani came to power through no accident, but as a result of a spontaneous consensus that evolved from three agreements reached in a lengthy pre-conclave period that followed the death of Pope Paul VI on Aug. 6 [1978].
    “Probably half of the 111 Cardinal-electors went into the conclave undecided. Most were fairly convinced that the Pope would have to be an Italian….
    “The second consensus, resisted to the end by some members of the Curia, was that the Church, whatever its far-flung political and administrative problems, needed a pastoral Pope. ‘It is one thing to interpret the faith and another to convey it to the people in the parishes,’ said one ranking Curia prelate. ‘That is something that the bishops—whatever their theology—understand better than the Curialists at their little desks.’”
    Another Cardinal said, “I think all of us had agreed in our own minds before the conclave that we needed to go back to a humble, pastoral man, although we did not really consult each other about it. And then, when we went in, it became clear to us that this was what we wanted.”
    One participant said there was a consensus that the new Pope be “not obvious, and not controversial.”
    As the balloting produced no obvious leading candidate, Luciani was a man “not actively disliked by anyone, and actively liked by everyone who really knew him.”
    “At noon,” the Time reporters wrote, “the two sets of ballots, skewered on a long needle and strung like a kind of combined ecclesiastical shish kebab and necklace, were thrust into the chapel stove along with black chemical flares to send up a dark ‘no Pope’ signal to the waiting crowds in St. Peter’s Square. But the flue above the stove was broken, and black smoke seeped through the chapel, partially obscuring Michelangelo’s famous frescoes. For a quarter of an hour, the assembled Cardinals coughed, covered their mouths and rubbed their eyes until two windows were opened to clear the air.
    “As the Cardinals broke for lunch, walking to the Pontifical Hall in the palace’s Borgia apartments, intense discussions were under way. On the third ballot, at 4:30…Luciani burst to the fore, falling just short of a majority.
    “At that point,” Luciani explained