The New Yorker:

After white smoke billowed at the Vatican, a massive crowd celebrated and rumors about the vote swirled across Rome.

By Xavier Rynne

The news that the Roman Catholic Church—and the world—had a new Pope broke unexpectedly on the morning of Friday, June 21st, at precisely eleven-eighteen. It was a beautiful morning here. The Square of St. Peter’s was already dotted with visitors, since many Romans, playing their hunches, had decided to take a stroll in the direction of the Vatican before heading home for lunch and a siesta. From eleven o’clock on, heads kept turning toward the tall, thin makeshift chimney attached to the stove inside the Sistine Chapel, which had recorded two “black” ballot burnings the day before. Now, when a first few wisps of pale smoke spiralled forth, there was the usual vocal excitement among the uninitiated, but their outcries were shrugged off by seasoned observers—the so-called veteran di fumate, or smoke veterans—who knew that the smoke always started out white before turning black. Suddenly another puff of grayish smoke floated in the air, soon followed by a full column of white, which stood out unmistakably against the blue Italian sky. Almost instantaneously, the Square began to fill with thousands of Romans, who seemed to spring up out of the ground. Schoolchildren and their nuns catapulted out of classrooms into the streets, and bus and trolley riders and their drivers deserted their vehicles, as the word spread: “E bianco!” (“It’s white!”) Paralysis overtook the city’s ordinarily tangled traffic. Skirting abandoned buses and trolleys and private cars, the crowds quickly converged on the Square in front of St. Peter’s: priests, monsignori of all grades, secretaries, laborers, pilgrims, children, waiters, nuns, businessmen, housewives, soldiers, sailors—everybody who could move. “E bianco!” they all screamed gleefully. But who could it be? “It must be Montini,” some were saying. “Impossibile!” said others, and still others asked, “Dev’essere uno straniero?” (“A foreigner for Pope?”) This wild speculation suddenly gave way to a hushed silence as a platoon of Palatine Guards, followed by a band, filed onto the ramp directly in front of the porch of the great basilica. When, finally, the tall glass doors behind the balcony above the porch were opened and the red-bordered white papal tapestry (still bearing the Roncalli arms of a tower topped by the lion of St. Mark) was draped over the balustrade, the crowd roared, in anticipation of a great moment. As the procession of ecclesiastics filed onto the balcony and the stocky figure of Alfredo Ottaviani, the dean of the cardinal deacons, was ushered to the microphone, silence possessed the multitude of more than two hundred thousand people. In a clear and slightly tremulous voice, the nearly blind Cardinal chanted, “I announce to you a great joy! We have a Pope! Eminentissimum ac reverendissimum dominum [pause]—dominum Joannem Baptistam . . . montini!” Only the rising burst of the “mon” was heard, but it was sufficient. The crowd exploded. Ottaviani waited patiently, his poor unseeing eyes looking up into the heavens. “. . . Who has taken the name . . . paulum sextum!” There was another vocal explosion from below. Surrounded by the red- and purple-clad retinue, the Cardinal then withdrew inside, leaving the glass doors ajar. The crowd seemed thunderstruck. It really was Montini! He would be Paul VI! It took some time for even the most facile-minded to digest these astonishing facts. Many had not allowed themselves to imagine that Montini could be considered, since he was so obviously the heir apparent of Pope John. Most had expected a compromise candidate—some determined middle-of-the-roader. To the majority of Catholics and of Christians, and to most people everywhere, the news was simply wonderful.
 

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