The Polish Pope, by virtue of the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici gregis of February 22, 1996, decided that the Cardinals must have more dignified and affordable conditions during the period of deciding which of them is to become the head of the Church. In point 42 of Chapter 2 of this document, John Paul II clearly writes that at the moment when the procedure for electing a new Pope begins, the Cardinals should have a comfortable place of temporary residence in the Domus Sanctae Marthae recently built on the territory of the Vatican – and in the next point he adds that everything in the Vatican City State is to be organized and adapted in such a way as to ensure discretion and that no one approaches the Cardinal electors during their journey from Santa Marta to Apostolic Palace.
I remember exactly those two springs in the Vatican: in the year 2005 and then 2013. On an April afternoon, the day before the election of Benedict XVI, I stood on a beautiful terrace on the roof of one of the Vatican buildings. Behind me stretched the greenery of the Vatican Gardens. They were so close that you could smell the freshly cut grass and the magnolias releasing their first flowers. There was silence. Somewhere in the distance there were only the sounds of the bustling Eternal City. In St. Peter’s Square, crowds gathered in anticipation of the white smoke. And, just before me, below on the right, vis-à-vis the huge roof of the Vatican Basilica, the Cardinal Electors were leaving Santa Marta. One by one, they got into the approaching buses and a moment later they crossed the road behind the apse of the basilica, Via delle Fondamenta – The Way of the Foundations. To vote. To the Sistine Chapel. To write down the pages of the great history of the Church…
Looking at them, as they passed just below, I casually thought back to that decision of John Paul II in 1996, who did not want the hierarchs at the next conclave to crowd into the makeshift rooms of the locked Apostolic Palace like he and his predecessors.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
Pages: 22 – 24
