Cardinal Electors

The Cardinal Electors are the voting body charged with choosing a new pope. In the conclave, their secret ballots turn individual judgments into a collective decision, but the process is shaped as much by vote thresholds, shifting alliances, and control of information as by the candidates themselves. The first ballot’s scattered support gives way to changing coalitions; later, the electors must weigh damaging evidence while deciding how to preserve a fair and legitimate election.

Composition and Electoral Procedure

The electors vote in the Sistine Chapel under rules that require continued balloting until a candidate reaches the necessary two-thirds majority. The first ballot illustrates how widely support can disperse: thirty-four cardinals receive at least one vote, described as a record, and some vote for themselves, a friend, or a fellow countryman. More than a hundred votes are counted, yet no candidate approaches the seventy-nine needed for election.

The ballot is secret, but the counting is not without a record in the moment. Lomeli tallies the names as they are announced, then the officials collect the electors’ notes and ballot papers for destruction. He reminds the assembly that written voting records cannot leave the chapel and asks them not to discuss the result within hearing of the drivers. These procedures protect secrecy while making the electors’ immediate knowledge of the contest temporary: some hold on to their tallies for a few final seconds before surrendering them.

The rules also make deadlock consequential. The electors are required to continue voting, potentially for as many as thirty ballots over twelve days, before they may use a different system under which a simple majority can elect a pope. Faced with the possibility of such a prolonged process, the cardinals must find a viable candidate through repeated rounds rather than treat an early plurality as decisive.

Voting Shifts and Coalition Formation

The first result leaves the leading candidates close together. Tedesco receives twenty-two votes, Adeyemi nineteen, and Bellini finishes behind them; Tremblay is only two votes behind Bellini. Lomeli receives five, while thirty-eight votes go to others. The outcome overturns expectations: Bellini’s campaign manager, Sabbadin, had forecast that Bellini would lead with as many as twenty-five votes and that Tedesco would receive no more than fifteen. The numbers leave no candidate near the threshold and make subsequent coordination essential.

In the second ballot, support begins to consolidate. Adeyemi gains sixteen votes from candidates who fall away, a striking endorsement, while Tedesco adds seven. Bellini and Tremblay move little, and Benítez’s support rises from one vote to two. The changes show how a ballot can both register a candidate’s strength and signal whether a campaign remains viable: Bellini’s disappointing first showing threatens the momentum his supporters had expected, while Adeyemi’s gains make him a serious contender.

After the lunch break, Adeyemi loses thirty-two votes, more than half his support. Tremblay gains eleven, Bellini eight, Lomeli six, Tedesco four, and Benítez three. Information about an incident in the dining room has spread among the electors, changing their assessment of Adeyemi’s candidacy. The reversal ends the prospect of an African pope in this contest and puts Tedesco back in the lead, while Tremblay’s prospects improve and Benítez reaches five votes despite having been little known to the electors only days earlier.

The shifting totals also generate private bargaining. In a later discussion, Sabbadin argues that Bellini’s fifteen votes and Lomeli’s twelve cannot make Lomeli a viable candidate, even if Bellini’s supporters transferred their votes together. He proposes that the two groups support Tremblay instead: their combined twenty-seven votes, added to Tremblay’s forty, would bring him to sixty-seven, leaving twelve more votes needed for a two-thirds majority. Bellini accepts the electoral logic reluctantly, reasoning that broad appeal may be evidence of the Holy Spirit’s will. The exchange makes explicit how electors weigh personal preference against coalition arithmetic and the possibility of a winning majority.

Secrecy, Accountability, and Conscience

The electors’ duty extends beyond choosing among candidates. After Lomeli circulates a report about possible misconduct, he tells the assembly that he broke the seals on the late Pope’s rooms and investigated because he had been alerted to a possible excommunicable offence. He accepts responsibility for circulating the document but leaves the electors to judge what weight it deserves. Some cardinals approve of his resolve; others condemn the disclosure as unjust because Tremblay has not had an opportunity to present a defence.

At the dining-room discussion, Tedesco asks Lomeli to identify eight cardinals whose names have been blacked out in the report and to let them confirm whether they received payments in exchange for votes. Lomeli refuses. He explains that he withheld the names to avoid creating bitterness that would further obstruct the conclave’s work, and says each elector must examine his own conscience. He also offers to stand down as dean and proposes Bellini as his successor, but Bellini rejects the offer. The episode exposes the competing responsibilities within the body: transparency about suspected wrongdoing, fairness to those accused, protection of confidential information, and the need to continue the election without turning the assembly into a vehicle for retaliation.

Lomeli’s position is therefore not simply that secrecy must be preserved at all costs. He has already broken the papal apartment’s seals and shared evidence with the electors, but declines to make the redacted names public. He distinguishes investigation and disclosure to the voting body from a public naming that could intensify factional conflict. In this way, the electors receive both the evidence and the unresolved responsibility of judging it.

The Election’s Outcome

The final ballot figures recorded in the account show Benítez with ninety-two votes, Lomeli with twenty-one, and Tedesco with five. The result marks the end of the coalition contest traced through the earlier ballots: support that had been scattered among numerous names has settled decisively behind a candidate who began with only one vote in the first ballot and five after the later upheaval. The electors’ choice thus emerges not as a foregone conclusion but through repeated voting, abrupt reversals, negotiation, and the demands of conscience.