The new pope. My new pope. Thursday 8 May 2025
I watched the chimney for an hour and a half on YouTube. Which meant mostly watching a couple of seagulls tootling around. I live on the coast. This is the same view I can see from my office window.
I was waiting for black smoke. Then it came. Thick billows of it. Only it wasn’t black smoke, it was white.
The crowds cheered and it was all suddenly lovely. Thousands of smiling happy people, waving all sorts of flags, from every country. There were nuns, men in suits, young people in t-shirts holding up banners, older folks smiling. And all before they even knew who the new Pope was. Like a surprise party where it’s not the guests hiding behind the curtain, but the host.
But it didn’t matter. Left or right, fat or thin. All those things. It didn’t matter. Habemus Papem. We have a Pope. I have a Pope.
What might it be like for whoever it was who had just been elected on what looked like a molto bueno day in Rome?
There would be the congratulations, the faces looking at him, the trivial matter of having clothes fitted in the moments before becoming the most famous face in the world. Would he be nervous? What would he be praying? Would he be thanking God or would he have questions? And all this while hearing the cheers outside from the inside of the Sistine Chapel.
And what about the Cardinals? Would there be relief? Their job now done?
“I feel the peace knowing the decision has been made,” said one of the presenters on EWTN, and you could hear it in her voice. I felt something of that too.
Her colleague added: “Everyone, within 30 seconds, will have become an expert on the pope.”
Then after an hour of watching happy folks spotting and waving at themselves on the giant screen in St Peter’s Square, the doors opened and the curtains were pulled back. Cardinal Dominique Mamberti spoke those words.
“Habemus Papam!”
Another cheer, and words, in Latin, which were difficult to interpret even as they announced the name of the new Pope. The voice from EWTN confirmed it, although there was a note of hesitation, as if the presenter needed someone to double-check his Latin. Was that right? A first American Pope?
Ten minutes later we got our first look at Cardinal Prevost, now forever known as Leo XIV. We saw him smiling, and we saw his eyes become a bit glazed as he looked out over St Peters Square. And our eyes glazed a bit too.