Praying for white smoke: Papal conclave uses centuries-old method to announce a new pope
You’ll learn about the choice of a new pope through your smartphone, computer, TV, or some other whiz-bang technology. But you won’t find out until the Catholic Church tells the world, with a simple smoke signal process it started using in 1417.
The church’s papal conclave are sequestered in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel to begin voting this week on the successor to Pope Francis, who died April 21.
As in centuries past, the cardinals will write their choices on simple paper ballots, which will be counted, recorded and later burned to maintain secrecy.
Enhanced by chemicals, the color of smoke from those burning ballots – black smoke for no decision, white for "Habemus papam - We have a pope" – will inform the crowds waiting in St. Peter’s Square.
How is the papal conclave smoke produced?
Workers installed a chimney connected to two small stoves in the Sistine Chapel on May 2.
While ringing bells are another traditional crowd signal, the practice of burning ballots started in 1417, or perhaps even earlier, according to historian Frederic J. Baumgartner. That was to maintain secrecy.
In 1904, Pope Piux X ordered all ballots and other documents of the conclave to be burned, for additional confidentiality. That produced more white smoke, which was used as a crowd signal starting in 1914.
Confusion over the color of smoke in the 2005 papal conclave – it was first gray, then black – prompted the church to add chemicals to definitively color the smoke.
SOURCE Paste BN Network reporting and research; Reuters; National Catholic Reporter; OSV News; vatican.va; Georgetown University; therecordnewspaper.org; catholic365.com; aleteia.org; rtve.es; Vatican News; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; America: The Jesuit Review; McGill University, Office for Science and Society