EVO.

This series contains adult language and depictions of graphic violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

With the passing of Pope Francis, a billion Catholics around the world are now in a period of mourning.

And we're about to witness.

Well, not witness, but become aware of one of the great mysteries of the Church of Rome.

The process by which the new Pope is elected.

It's a ceremony called Conclave.

To understand Conclave, we should start with the building in which the ceremony takes place,

the Sistine Chapel.

It began as so many things in Rome do, with a vision, half divine and half political.

In the late 15th century, when the Renaissance swelled through the arteries of Italy like springtime through frozen earth,

Pope Sixtus IV, a man of iron ambition and devout intellect, imagined a sanctuary that would

rival the glory of Solomon's temple. And thus was born the Capella Sistina, the Sistine Chapel,

a place destined to be both the heart of papal ceremony and the canvas for one of the greatest

artistic achievements in the history of papal ceremony and the canvas for one of the greatest artistic achievements in the

history of man. The chapel itself rose modestly beside the old St. Peter's Basilica,

a rectangular space modeled after the proportions of Solomon's Temple as described in the Old

Testament. It was consecrated in 1483 and its early decoration fell to artists of fine repute,

Botticelli, Gerlandio, Perugino, who painted the walls with tales of Moses and Christ,

each side of the chapel telling a mirror story of law and redemption.

But it wasn't until Julius the second, the warrior pope,

...