We say we fell into it by accident, we couldn’t get into law school, we thought it would pay better than it does. In fact, in our 20s we all wanted to be the first to see the world change. In our 50s we’re still trying.
Being on assignment in Rome for the election of a pope could have been a chance to write stories about a big, colourful event and take pictures of huge crowds and princes of the Church. It could have been the kind of thing that attracts the world’s press, fills up airwaves and the Internet for a week, then is forgotten within a month. But from the beginning this conclave had the potential to be something more.
Before getting on the plane for the trip to Rome, there was a drama building. A pope had resigned. The clear path from Pope John Paul II to Pope Benedict XVI seemed to have ended. Could 115 men averaging 72 years old change gears, chart a new course?
There were so many intriguing possibilities — an African pope, an American pope, a pope from outside the conclave, even a Canadian pope. As well, there’s drama inherent in the process. Though democratic in that it’s an election, a conclave is an event that feeds on the absence of information. Even though minutes of the pre-conclave meetings were leaked to the Italian press, nobody knew what the cardinals were thinking.
Chances are, even the cardinals didn’t know what they collectively would do.
It would be easy to imagine secrecy would produce nail-biting anxiety, even a sense of impending danger. Will they elect the wrong man? An angry pope? A fearful pope? But really there was so little of that.
Standing in St. Peter’s Square, staring up at that little bit of stove pipe on top of the Sistine Chapel, I found myself surrounded by happy, hopeful people.
The crowd was young. There were mothers and babies, lovers huddled up under umbrellas stealing kisses, seminarians and religious sisters trading jokes.
Tourists abounded and the crowd only became more Roman after the white smoke. Brazilians were the most visible, wearing their flag as a cape and courting the Brazilian media. There was no shortage either of bright young Africans studying at Rome’s pontifical universities. Filipinos, so much a part of the Church everywhere, congregated in St. Peter’s Square in excited bunches.
Of course it was impossible to avoid the rest of the media. I was one of more than 5,500 journalists with temporary accreditation to cover the conclave. There were the behemoths of the press corps — two floors of producers, reporters, camera operators and on-air talent for CBS News — and a small army of writers and photographers from Poland, Kenya, Spain, Ireland doing their best to compete with their one- or two-person operations. All of us were writing stories and gathering pictures we hoped would be a little different from everyone else’s.
Add it all up and we were writing, photographing and filming for at least two billion people around the planet.
So that’s what history looks like. It looks like the whole world together trying to catch the moment. It looks like shared anticipation and pooled hope. It looks like old folks, babies and young lovers in St. Peter’s Square waiting for a man in white to wish them a good evening, ask for their prayers and tell them we’re in this together.
Pope Francis - A New Era
