"Most Eminent Princes"

The body of the late Pope Pius XI, clad in a red chasuble and mitre of cloth-of-gold, lay one day last week in a triple coffin near the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. For three days before, throngs (estimated as high as 1,200,000) had ceaselessly filed past the chapel where the Pope's body lay upon a catafalque.

For the tumulation (burial) of the Holy Father, a scattering of candles lit St. Peter's, in whose dim, religious light sat several thousand invited diplomats, nobles, churchmen and Vatican functionaries. The clergy of the Basilica committed Pius XI to his God with the same prayers chanted for humble sinners. Thirty-seven Cardinals gazed for the last time at the Pope's shrunken visage, then descended to St. Peter's crypt while workmen fastened down the wooden coffin-lids, soldered the leaden one. (They ran out of solder, held up the tumulation until more was found.) Finally the 1,000-lb. coffin was lowered into the crypt with block-&-tackle, fitted into a niche while the Cardinals prayed silently.

Conclave. Once kings and nobles, the lower clergy, even the Italian populace, helped elect Popes. In 1180 Pope Alexander III restricted the right to Cardinals alone.* Century later, when Cardinals meeting in Viterbo took nearly three years to elect a Pope, an indignant populace locked them up, deprived them of all food except bread and water. Hence the word conclave, meaning "with key."

When the conclave of 1922 gathered, there was almost no ready cash in the Vatican. Foresighted Pius XI reserved a fund for the next conclave, and last week the three Cardinals in charge had a reported $100,000 for its expenses. These were bound to be large. Seldom has the Sacred College been so full as it was last week (62 members out of a possible 70), and even its two ailing members planned to attend, with their physicians. Preparations for the gathering involved redding-up 62 modest bedchambers for Cardinals, as well as quarters for 62 ecclesiastical secretaries, 62 valets, a number of ceremonialists, doctors, carpenters, a druggist, waiters, and Sisters of St. Martha to cook the conclave meals on electric stoves.

Since the latest comers (Boston's Cardinal O'Connell and the two South American Cardinals) were expected to reach Naples on February 28, the conclave was scheduled to begin that evening. By then, corridors and chambers near the Sistine Chapel (where the balloting takes place) would be bricked up, so that the only access to the conclave would be one doorway. Over that entrance the head of Rome's noble Chigi family would stand guard--Prince Ludovico Chigi Albani della Rovere, hereditary Marshal of the Holy Roman Church. The Marshal would carry in a red velvet satchel two keys to the door, open it only after consultation with Cardinal Camerlengo Pacelli within.

In the Sistine Chapel, when the voting begins, 62 thrones with violet baldachins (canopies) will line the walls. Twice a day, with solemn prayers and oaths that they are following their highest duties, the Cardinals will mark their ballots, place them one at a time in a chalice. When one of them is elected Pope (by a two-thirds majority), he expresses his acceptance (if he feels worthy; some do not), chooses a name, dons a white soutane. The Cardinals pay him homage. All the baldachins except that of the new Pontiff are folded back to the walls. To show the crowds outside that "a Pope has been made," the ballots, which previously have been burned in the conclave stove with damp straw (to send up black smoke), are this time burned alone, and a thin wisp of white signals from the chapel chimney.

For the first time in history, the new Pope will be announced to the world by radio, over Vatican Station HVJ, probably before the crowds in St. Peter's Square hear of it.

Vetoes. Cardinals are bound, under pain of excommunication, not to discuss conclave matters outside;* not to tell the secrets of the conclave afterward; not to carry commitments into the conclave. But in this election secular diplomats have a big stake in treating the "Most Eminent Princes" of the Church as if they too were secular diplomats. Last week in Rome there was a prodigious whispering and bustling of emissaries around Cardinals' palaces. And in the Rome-Berlin axis there was some clumsy public hinting to the forthcoming conclave. In Germany Das Schwarze Korps warned the four German Cardinals against voting for an anti-Nazi Pope. Even less tactful was German Ambassador to the Vatican Carl-Ludwig Diego von Bergen, who, while conveying to the College of Cardinals the condolences of the diplomatic corps, told them: "We are assisting at the elaboration of a new world, which wants to raise itself upon the ruins of a past that in many things no longer has any reason to exist. We want this evolution to be peaceful, and the papacy without any doubt has an essential role."

Very coldly the Princes received this speech. They were no more pleased when II Telegrafo, mouthpiece of Foreign Minister Count Ciano, thumbed down as a "political" Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli, nominated as a Pastor Angelicas, predicted in old prophecies, the pious Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal dalla Costa. Since as a rule the Roman Catholic Church prefers to lead opinion rather than follow it, Il Telegrafo's nomination could be considered a death-kiss.

This public hinting to the College of Cardinals pointed to the likelihood that, in private, there was tremendous pressure at work, probably more than at any time since the days when Catholic monarchs exercised a veto over the conclave. Wrote Michael Williams, U. S. Catholic journalist en route to Rome: "If certain powerful influences known to be deeply concerned both in Italy and neighboring countries are effective in their behind-the-scene maneuvers, the conclave will be greatly prolonged beyond the few days requisite for the slow and orderly movement of even the most obvious decision in the Vatican."

It was Journalist Williams' dark opinion that: "The papal election of 1939 is destined to go down in history marked not only with great importance but also because of singular and possibly unique attending circumstances."

*There is still no canon law forbidding the election of Catholic laymen to the papacy. Last week a reader of the New York Daily News, apparently in earnest, proposed Alfred E. Smith as candidate.

* Gossip columny is an institution which has arisen since the 1922 conclave. To forecast the election of a Pope would be a columnist's ultimate triumph. Up to this week Walter Winchell had not done so.

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