Secrets of the Conclave (BBC 2)
Does the Pope have a cinema room at the Vatican, I wonder? If so, does he ever have a few cardinals round on a Saturday night to watch Conclave with Ralph Fiennes and chuckle at the mistakes?
His Eminence Timothy Radcliffe, an 80-year-old Englishman who was created a cardinal last year, has certainly watched the film — and gleefully pointed out an error, on Secrets Of The Conclave.
One of 133 cardinals who gathered in the Sistine Chapel last April to choose the next pontiff, following the death of Pope Francis, the keen-eyed Dominican friar spotted that the ballot box, a silver and gilded bronze urn, was in the wrong place.
‘You place the ballot in the urn and shut the lid,’ he explained. ‘And the urn is on the altar. This is very important. That was a detail that the film Conclave got wrong. It had the urn on a table.’
Tantalising snippets like this were the only real secrets that this charming documentary revealed, because all those involved in electing the Pope take a solemn oath to preserve its mysteries.
We heard nothing of the deliberations and, though the frontrunners were named, there were few hints of how anyone voted.
Vatican correspondent Philip Pullella, an American who looks incongruously like Tony Soprano’s twin brother, did suggest that the first ballot is really a dry run: ‘Some cardinals will vote for somebody who doesn’t have a chance of getting elected, but just as a show of gratitude for the service that has been done for the Church.’
After that, with St Peter’s Square packed by crowds watching the Vatican smoke signals, business gets serious. But the discussions were always amiable, insisted the cardinal from the Philippines Luis Antonio Tagle, whose sweet smile never left his face.
All those involved in electing the Pope take a solemn oath to preserve its mysteries
Cardinal Tagle was one of those tipped early on for the throne of St Peter. He wasn’t asked directly whether he had hoped to win, but he made it pretty clear he was happy to miss out.
Once the Press had named him as a possible Pope-in-waiting, he said, ‘People recognise you and some would stop you and say, “Oh, let us have a selfie!” It was not pleasant at all.’
The papal tailor, Raniero Mancinelli, was busy making three cassocks — small, medium and large — so he could be sure of having something the right size. He could have saved himself some trouble if he’d trusted his intuition: Signor Mancinelli was practically the only person to predict the new Pope would be Cardinal Robert Prevost, from Chicago.
The only other observers who seemed unsurprised, when puffs of white smoke signalled the choice was made, were a pair of gulls with their chick, on the chapel roof. They have no idea, of course, that they’re nesting above the world’s most famous ceiling.
