Ratzinger 'faced strong challenge for papacy

Ratzinger led from the start, but Bergoglio was in second place the whole time, according to the diary kept by a cardinal whose identity was not revealed.

Most accounts of the mystery-shrouded conclave have said that retired Milan archbishop Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, 78, was the main anti-Ratzinger candidate and that a “Third World” pope was never realistically in the running.

While Bergoglio, a Jesuit, never threatened Ratzinger’s lead and, according to the diary made clear he did not want the job, his runner-up status could signal that the next conclave might settle on a pope from Latin America, home to half of the world’s one billion Catholics, analysts said.

In Argentina, a spokesman for the Buenos Aires archdiocese, Enzo Paoletta, said the cardinal had no comment.

The diary is also significant because it shows that Ratzinger did not win with a huge margin – he had 84 of the 115 votes, seven more than necessary, against 26 for Bergoglio.

His two immediate predecessors, Pope John Paul II and Pope John Paul I, are believed to have garnered 99 and 98 votes respectively, and that was when there were only 111 voting cardinals.

“It does seem that somebody wants to indicate that the conclave was a more complex process than was being depicted and that Benedict’s mandate was not a slam dunk,” said David Gibson, a former Vatican Radio journalist who is writing a biography of Benedict.

Finally, the diary includes a few surprises, including a “curious” vote for American Cardinal Bernard Law, forced to resign as Boston archbishop because of the US church sex abuse scandal, in the final ballot.

It also offers some other colourful insights of what went on behind the scenes during the two days that the 115 red-hatted “princes” of the church were sequestered in the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel to select the 265th leader of the Catholic Church.

Because the hotel prohibited smoking, Portuguese Cardinal Jose Policarpo da Crux sneaked outside to have his after-dinner cigar, and Cardinal Walter Kasper shunned the minibuses that shuttled the voters to the Sistine Chapel, preferring to walk by the Vatican gardens instead, the diary says.

“Sunday, April 17: In the afternoon I took over my room at the Casa Santa Marta. I put down my bags and tried to open the blinds because the room was dark. I wasn’t able to. One of my fellow brothers asked a nun working there, thinking it was a technical problem. She explained they were sealed. Closure of the conclave …” the diary begins.

In the Limes piece, the diary entries are interspersed with explanations and background by Vatican journalist Lucio Brunelli, who says he obtained the diary through a “trusted” source he had known for years. He told The Associated Press he spoke in Italian to his source.

Brunelli says he obviously couldn’t identify the author because of the vow of secrecy each cardinal took before entering the conclave. Punishment for violating the vow is excommunication.

Nothing official is ever recorded from conclaves since the ballots are burned in the Sistine Chapel stove – ashes that signal to the world through white smoke or black whether a pope has been elected.

As a result, the revelation of diary’s tallies which Brunelli said he confirmed through other cardinals – is unusual, although previously tallies have leaked out piecemeal.

According to the diary, Ratzinger won 47 votes and Bergoglio 10 on the first round of balloting, while Martini got nine and some 30 others got a few token votes.

In round two, Ratzinger edged up to 65 and Bergoglio 35.

By the third ballot, Ratzinger had garnered 72 votes, just five shy of the two-thirds majority needed to win. But Bergoglio scored 40, just over the threshold needed to stall the conclave if his supporters wanted to.

But the diary says Bergoglio made it clear he might not have accepted the job. The cardinal recalls watching Bergoglio cast his ballot: “The suffering face, as if he were begging, ‘God don’t do this to me’.”