About three hours after 133 Catholic cardinals from around the world were sequestered in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday to pick Pope Francis’ successor, smoke started pouring out of a closely watched chimney.
The smoke was black, which means the cardinals’ first vote did not produce a new pope.
The conclave will continue on Thursday, when participants will take up to four more votes.
After inconclusive votes, the chimney will produce black smoke, as it did on Wednesday.
When the final, successful vote takes place, the smoke will be white.
Wednesday’s black smoke did not come as a surprise to Vatican watchers, who felt that there was no consensus around one candidate heading into the conclave.
How does a conclave work?
A conclave brings together Catholic cardinals from around the world.
Cardinals under age 80 are eligible to vote, per the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
When the conclave begins, cardinals are sealed into the Sistine Chapel. The locked doors help ensure that the results of inconclusive rounds of voting won’t be leaked, as does the oath of secrecy that participants must take.
“The cardinals vote by secret ballot, processing one by one up to Michelangelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment, saying a prayer and dropping the twice-folded ballot in a large chalice. Four rounds of balloting are taken every day until a candidate receives two-thirds of the vote,” according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
All baptized Catholic males, including males who are not priests, are eligible to become the pope, but cardinals participating in the conclave typically only vote for one of their colleagues.
“For the last 600-plus years, the College of Cardinals has picked one of their own,” PBS reported.
In March 2013, the successful vote — the vote that led to Pope Francis becoming pope — took place about 24 hours after the conclave began, as the Deseret News previously reported.
It was the fifth round of voting.
What makes the conclave smoke white or black?
After every round of voting during a conclave, the ballots are burned with chemicals in a process that enables the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel to communicate with the outside world.
- Ballots from an unsuccessful round of voting are burned with a mixture of chemicals that produce black smoke.
- Ballots from the final, successful vote are burned with chemicals that produce white smoke.
People in Rome look for smoke four times a day when a conclave is happening: mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon and evening, according to USA Today.
Those times in Rome correspond with around 2:30 a.m., 4 a.m., 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. MDT.
The article noted that there’s typically only one vote taken on the first day of a conclave and that it happens near the end of the day.
When did smoke become part of the conclave?
The pairing of white and black smoke has only been part of the conclave since 1903, according to NBC News.
Before then, the church relied on a single type of smoke, bells or cannons to keep those outside the College of Cardinals updated on what was happening.
Catholic leaders had to overcome some mishaps before they settled on the current set-up of using chemicals to produce white and black smoke.
“At first, damp straw was used to blacken the smoke, but it didn’t always produce a definitive shade. In 1958, after two false alarms, someone got the bright idea to buy smoke bombs. The color was right, but they filled the Sistine Chapel with smoke,” NBC News reported.
Although they’ve been refining the system of using white and black smoke signals for more than 100 years, it’s still not perfect, the article said.
Sometimes, smoke that’s meant to be black or white turns out to be gray.