What made me do it? What possessed this lapsed Catholic, an agnostic who has not darkened the door of a church in 30 years, to travel to Rome and join the crowds in St Peter’s Square, waiting for white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel?
Quite simply, it was on my "bucket list". I love ritual, I love drama, I love tales of the unexpected, and the election of a new pope provides such a magnificent combination of all three that I had promised myself that, given the chance, I would witness it first-hand before I died.
In this country, great public events such as jubilees and royal weddings reach their climax on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, with thousands massed in the Mall. They are all very jolly, and I will tune in if there is no cricket on the other channel, but when you compare the stolid bourgeois architecture of Buckingham Palace with the great soaring columns of St Peter’s Basilica, it is like comparing bingo in the village hall with Aida at Covent Garden.
If the stage is sublime, the drama that unfolds on the stage is also sublime. At a secular election, you know who the candidates are, so even when the outcome is momentous, like the election of Barack Obama, there is no element of surprise.
Papal elections, by contrast, are all surprise. Over 100 cardinals take part in the Conclave and, by the time one of them has secured the necessary majority of votes, it is anybody’s guess who it will be. Soon afterwards, an old man who is a complete stranger to the watching world steps blinking on to the balcony, the chosen successor to St Peter.
It is a beautiful moment and having watched previous popes take their bow on television, I have been captivated by the rich play of emotions on their faces: half petrified by the magnitude of their new responsibilities, half bursting with boyish pride - "If my mum could see me now…"
But
the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio on March 13 last year exceeded all my expectations.
I had caught a Ryanair flight from Stansted that morning and spent the afternoon with the crowds in St Peter’s Square. There was a steady drizzle and, like most people, I had taken shelter in the colonnade at the edge of the square.
Only when white smoke appeared above the Sistine Chapel, and the bells of St Peter’s pealed in celebration, did we surge forward into the square and await the traditional announcement in Latin. "Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum…. Habemus papam!"
Here I have a confession to make. I love a flutter, so I had studied the form-book, weighed up the chances of the various
pababili (cardinals viewed as possible Popes) and invested £30 on a 40-1 shot from Honduras. He fell at the first fence, alas, but when the winner was announced as Cardinal Bergoglio, I had an advantage over the people standing next to me. I knew who he was.
"Argentine," I said with authority. "Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Mid-seventies." American tourists gawped. Congolese nuns looked at me in amazement. A German woman – the shame of it – asked if I was a priest.
(Incidentally, I did better than the "Vatican expert" covering the event for ABC, the Australian broadcaster, whose Latin failed him and who told viewers that Italians would be delighted as the Archbishop of Genoa had been elected Pope. Whoops!)
A couple of minutes later, to thunderous applause, the new Pontiff stepped out on to the balcony. Here I have another confession to make. Embarrassing though it is to admit, my first thought when the man from Buenos Aires took centre stage, shy, unsmiling, his face tight with tension, was: "They’ve elected Mr Bean!"
"Underwhelmed," I texted a friend in London. ‘He looks like a civil servant who has wandered into the wrong script.’ How wrong I was. How utterly, utterly, wrong.
As the new Pope Francis – and his very choice of that iconic name had been applauded by the crowd – took the microphone, and said a few words, his warmth, if not yet his charisma, started to shine through. The crowds cheered him to the echo and drifted off into the night.
Two hours later, I witnessed what I still jokingly refer to as the first miracle of the Pope’s reign. I was having dinner in a restaurant in a suburb of Rome when the elderly American couple at the next table rose to leave. They had paid their bill with a credit card and left a 20-euro tip. Minutes later, to general amazement, the waiter chased them down the street to return their money and explain that service was included. "Uno miracolo!" whispered the Italian lady at the next table.
Since then, hardly a day has passed when I haven’t marvelled at the wise choice made by the College of Cardinals that day, and thought, as one might think of some famous sporting event: "I was there." Not since Pope John XXIIII, who revitalised the Church by convening the Second Vatican Council, has a new Pope won so many hearts so quickly. Pope John Paul II certainly had star quality but, for me, there was a scintilla of vanity in his make-up – he
knew he had star quality, and played to the gallery – that stifled admiration. Poor Pope Benedict XVI was far too donnish to have the common touch.
In the new Pope, day after day, one can see a palpably good man living the Christian life with an unfailing smile. He has taken a leaf out of the book of his namesake, St Francis of Assisi, living in a simple hostel in the Vatican rather than the grand Papal apartments. As a pastor, he has been, in the words of the old hymn, slow to chide and swift to bless.
"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" he asked astonished reporters during an impromptu news conference on a flight back from Brazil. Could this really be the Pope talking? It was if centuries of narrow theological dogma were being, not discarded, but infused with Christian charity and love.
Nobody is expecting sweeping changes in traditional Catholic teaching, but the change of
tone – light years from the bad old days, epitomised by the infamous Magdalene laundries in Ireland – has been like throwing open a window.
Formidable challenges lie ahead for Pope Francis. It will take leadership of rare sure-footedness to erase the stain of the child abuse scandals that have rocked the Church. Catholic homosexuals will demand not just understanding, but the respect due to equals, and rightly. The Holy Father will also need to surf the choppy waves of celebrity – epitomised by the launch of a glossy new fanzine, Il Mio Papa, by Silvio Berlusconi, the evil genius of Italian tittle-tattle.
But one thing is already clear. The whole face of the Church – the face the world sees and by which it judges Catholics and Christians generally – has been transformed.
And I thought the College of Cardinals had messed up and elected Mr Bean! Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
28 Comments 