Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1877 — How the Next Pope Will Be Elected. [ARTICLE]

How the Next Pope Will Be Elected.

The time for the meeting of another Conclave is drawing near, and it will hardly be out of place if we give a few notices of what usually takes place upon the Holy See becoming vacant. The chief rule during the vacancy belongs to the Cardinal Camerlingo. He repairs to the chamber where the dead pontiff lies; he strikes him on the forehead thrice with a slender hammer, and calls him three times by his original name (as, for instance, Giovanni Mastail”). Receiving no reply, he takes off the “ring of the fisherman” and breaks it. Nine days are allowed for assembling the Conelave. It can no longer be held in the Quirinal; the next, therefor*, will be convened in the Vatican. The doors And windows of the room set apart for it will bo walled up, one or two panes of glass only being left at the top to afford a little light. A dozen Conclaves might be held in the spacious palace where the Pope resides, and cells for the Cardinals can easily be constructed in the long galleries. They will be made of ordinary fir planks, and covered on the outside with violet-colored serge, if the inhabitant was created Cardinal by the Pope just deceased, and green by some previous pontiff The Cardinals may not visit each other by night, and emissaries are {daced as sentinels to prevent this ifreguarity. However, Deßrosses says, they often manage y to do it. Uu the first day of the Conclave then eminences hear mass and sing the “ Veni Creator” before proceeding to business. Many a last word is said before the bell rings and the master of the ceremonies pronounces An ” Extra OmneS,” and the last door is shut and walled up. Nobody is then permitted to leave the Conclave. But by this time the evening has arrived and the Cardinals retire to rest. At eight o'clock the next morning a bell is rung at the door of each cell, and at nine, clad in cassock, band, rochet, cape and croccia, with their scarlet berrette, they proceed to the chapel, hear mass and communicate. Many minute ceremonies are observed which may here be passed over. Then they return to their calls to breakfast, and afterward proceed to their first scrutiny. The midday meal follows. The dinners of their eminences are brought to the “rota,” or turn-table opening, at which they are to be passed into the Conclave with much care and in a solemn manner. Each CAHlinal has A “dapifer,” or feastcarrier, who discharges that function for his imprisoned master. During the introduction of the viands great care is taken that no communications respecting the business of the Conclave shall take place between those immured and the oatside world. Mr. Adolphus Trollope, who is no friend to the Catholic Church, says in reference t<J Conclaves: “Given the necessity of having a Pope, it wonld probably be impossible to devise a better means of getting one than that which the church has gradually perfected.” There have been but five Conclaves held this century; the first which elected Chiaramonti, Pope Pius VII., in 1800; the second, to which we owe Della Genga, Leo XU., in 1823; the third, which choose Saverio, Pius ViiL, in 1820; the fourth, which convened in 1831, whose choice fell on Capellan, Gregory XVI.; and the fifth, which elected Alastai of Sinigaglia as Pius IX., in 1846. Two of these Pontiffs have reigned an unusually long time, Pius VI. having been on the Papal throne nearly twehty-tirree years and a half, and the present occupant of the Bee of Rome being tire only Pope in all the 202 successors of St. Peter who has overpassed a quarter of a century. — Westminster Gazette,