Black smoke on first vote. But what happens after a pope is elected?

Jesuitical

America Media

Spirituality, Christianity, News, News Commentary, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 949 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to America magazine’s Conclave Podcast. Our editors are on the ground in Rome covering the conclave to elect the next pope. In today’s episode from Rome, the team discusses: The protocols being followed by the cardinals in conclave The “habemus papam” moment, what the pope wears and other telling symbolic gestures What happens in the days immediately following the election of a pope? This episode features: Sam Sawyer, S.J., America’s editor in chief Colleen Dulle, co-host of America’s “Inside the Vatican” podcast David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center for Religion and Culture Sign up for America’s subscriber-exclusive “Conclave Diary” daily newsletter and get all of our extensive coverage at: AmericaMagazine.org/Subscribe Links from the show: Cardinal Re’s pre-conclave homily: ‘Love is the only force capable of changing the world.’ Conclave: Everything you need to know about electing a new pope What time will we see black or white smoke? Past conclaves give clues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's 841 p.m. in Rome. I'm staring at the chimney on the Sistine Chable. No smoke yet, white or black,
0:10.6	as the Cardinals are casting their first ballot. We're exactly one hour later than the smoke
0:17.8	emerged in 2013 after the first ballot. Everybody in the square is getting a little bit antsy.
0:24.4	People are clapping periodically, trying to encourage the Cardinals.
0:29.8	People have been here for hours.
0:31.5	Everybody's just waiting for the smoke signal after the first ballot.
0:38.0	The giant screens in the square just shut off randomly.
0:43.2	Maybe they're switching.
0:46.1	There's smoke!
0:49.0	Oh my God!
0:52.6	Welcome to the America Magazine Conclave podcast. It's day one of the conclave, Wednesday, May 7th. We've had one vote so far, and it's been Black Smoke. I'm Sebastian Goams, an executive editor at America Magazine. I'm joined by Colleen Dully, co-host of Inside the Vatican.
1:10.0	Hello. It was a very busy day, but let's start with the end of the evening.
1:14.3	We had a pretty dramatic and long period in the square.
1:18.7	I think my heart is still pounding, actually.
1:20.4	I mean, we saw the smoke about less than half an hour ago as we're recording this.
1:25.1	There was a long, long wait between when the smoke was expected,
1:29.4	which started around like 7, 730 people had estimated. And we didn't get smoke until 9 p.m.
1:35.4	So it was a lot of waiting around in St. Peter's Square. A lot of people starting to speculate about
1:39.7	what could be the cause of the delay. And we did that ourselves a little bit because we were thinking
1:43.6	what could possibly account for this?
1:45.3	And the obvious thing is that this is the largest conclave in history.
1:48.9	So we're talking about 133 cardinal electors versus 115 at the last conclave in 2013.
	...

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