The recent movie Conclave, adapted from the 2016 Robert Harris novel about skulduggery in the Vatican, opens with a particularly dramatic flourish.
The pope lies dead in his bed chamber. With visible effort, a red-capped cardinal wrenches an enormous ring from the great man’s stubborn finger. Whereupon another cardinal, played by the towering John Lithgow, whacks the ring with a ceremonial hammer, splits it in two and solemnly declares: “Sede vacante”, Latin for “with the seat being vacant”.
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It not only makes for captivating viewing, but the ritual is also actually (mostly) true.
In real life, the funeral arrangements and subsequent machinations dictating how the next pope is chosen are also cloaked in mystique, following “a very well-established protocol which goes back, ultimately, into the Middle Ages”, says Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church. The selection of a new pope – who is regarded in Catholicism to be a successor to St Peter, one of the 12 apostles, the first bishop of Rome – reverberates not only with the 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide but with anyone influenced by his leadership and world view.
So, what does happen immediately after a pope dies? What is the conclave? And what is the significance of black or white smoke from the roof of the Sistine Chapel?
Click here to read a detailed explainer from Jackson Graham and Angus Holland.
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