Election frenzy might coincide with papal election

Lawrence Gonzi and Joseph Muscat will discover their fate on 10 March, but so could a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who will become pontiff within the same week that Malta goes to the polls.

Frank Zammit, Servizio Petrinio's blogger of all things Catholic from inside the world's smallest city-state, says it is very likely that over the course of 24 hours, the conclave of cardinals will be electing a new Pope - and that it might coincide with Malta's election of a new government.

"The dean of cardinals Angelo Sodano has set the first general congregation for Monday, 4 March at 9:30pm in the Hall of the Synod... the conclave's date might well be extended between Monday and Tuesday because the cardinals will want to meet up with each other and get to know each other better.

"So, in this connection with what's going on in Malta, there is a possibility that the conclave takes place towards the end of the week when the Maltese elect their own MPs."

So with the whole college hitting the ground running after Benedict's farewell last Thursday, it seems the earliest realistic date is 9 or 10 March, especially since the cardinal have had a lot more time than in 2005 to prepare; but also risking a longer conclave since various blocs may have consolidated divergent positions.

Of the 115 (formerly 117) cardinals that will elect Benedict XVI's successor, two men will be missing from this gathering of Catholic princes: archbishop of Edinburgh and Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Britain's most senior Roman Catholic, who resigned over allegations of "inappropriate acts" against fellow priests the day after the Observer published accusations by three serving priests and a former priest about his conduct towards them during the 1980s. And archbishop of Jakarta Julius Darmaatmadja who will not make the trip to Rome due to health reasons.

"Cardinal Sodano has been cautious over how the College decides over the date of the conclave - he wants cardinals to have some time before deciding over the final date so that no divergences are created between electors, and allowing a lot of reflection for those who want to speed up the papal election and those who want more time. Sodano is recommending much prudence on this matter," Zammit says.

The scandal effect from O'Brien's resignation might also influence the choice of a pope who must be 'clean', and that might mean eschewing valid candidates marred by even unproven allegations.

But how is the choice of the Church's leader going to be determined: will these men be guided by the hand of God, or is the future of a church still rocked by priestly sex abuse and evangelisation concerns a factor for who should take the helm of the Vatican?

"I spoke to Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, the Polish prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, who told me a cardinal enters the conclave with a spirit of great responsibility in the eyes of God... It gives me great pleasure that electors write down the name of their candidate and lift it up to the painting of the Universal Judgement and loudly declare that with Christ as their judge 'my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected'," Zammit told MaltaToday.

This 'conscientious' decision - which will take place 115 times as an illustration of the tediousness of the conclave - must also take place with the Church's ecclesiastical mission in mind. "Cardinal Josè Saraiva Martins, who at 81 will not be attending this conclave, told me that Peter's successor must be chosen without any problems... in serenity and a profound ecclesiastical sense."

There is however another factor to this election, one that reinforces the human hand at play when cardinals pick the Roman Pontiff.

As pointed out by the National Catholic Reporter's seasoned Vaticanist, when John Paul II issued his rules for the conclave in 1996 with the document Universi dominici gregis, he included a provision allowing the cardinals to elect a pope by a simple majority rather than the traditional two-thirds majority if they were deadlocked after roughly thirty ballots, meaning seven days or so.

The fact that Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was elected in just four ballots might show how much cardinals were willing to elect who many felt was John Paul II's successor.

"Procedurally, the conclave of 2005 never got anywhere close to invoking that provision, since they elected Benedict XVI in just four ballots. Psychologically, however, some cardinals said afterward that everyone knew that codicil was on the books, so that once Ratzinger's vote total crossed the 50% threshold, the outcome seemed all but inevitable."

This week's conclave is different: in 2007, Benedict XVI issued an amendment to John Paul's document, eliminating the possibility of election by a simple majority. "This time, the cardinals know that whoever's elected has to draw support from two-thirds of the college under any circumstances, which may mean they're less inclined to simply jump on a bandwagon when someone gets half the votes in a given round," Allen says.