A "Foreign" Pope

Monday, Oct. 30, 1978
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The friendships cemented during those travels were to figure importantly last week. TIME has learned, in fact, that the campaign that led to the Pope's election quickly gained backing among two or more Germans and many of the Americans, led by Philadelphia's Polish American John Krol, partly because of Wojtyla's familiarity with their nations and partly because of his doctrinal conservatism and antiCommunism. The original impetus came from a more liberal nucleus of Europeans rallied by Austria's Franz Konig, who stressed Wojtyla's commitment to the Second Vatican Council's reforms.

Most had entered the conclave expecting to elect another Italian, for both domestic and international political continuity. Wojtyla himself was said to be backing Florence's powerful Giovanni Benelli. As Wojtyla carried his scarred satchel into his less-than-choice assigned lodgings in the Apostolic Palace, cramped cell No. 91, he did not take his own prospects seriously. When TIME had asked him to sit for a photographic portrait before the conclave, he waved off the request with a laugh and said, "Don't worry. I'm not going to become Pope."

During the first day of voting last Sunday, Wojtyla nonchalantly read a quarterly review of Marxist theory as the timeconsuming balloting dragged on. "Don't you think it's sacrilegious to bring Marxist literature into the Sistine Chapel?" joked a Cardinal. Wojtyla smiled. "My conscience is clear."

That Sunday came to be known as the "Italian day." The lead candidates were Benelli, 57, who for a decade had virtually run the Vatican as Substitute Secretary of State, and Genoa's ultraconservative Giuseppe Siri, 72. After Sunday's first ballot had been completed, Siri quickly showed his strength among Curialists and other conservatives, gaining 46 of the necessary 75 votes on the second ballot. Benelli was second. Blocs of votes went to other Italians—Milan's Giovanni Colombo, the Curia's Sergio Pignedoli, Naples' Corrado Ursi—and scattered votes to other Italians and a few non-Italians.

After the lunch-and-siesta break, Siri slipped back; Benelli gained, but never reached more than 36. Ugo Poletti, Vicar Cardinal of Rome, got 30 votes as an unsuccessful compromise candidate. It was becoming clear that the Curial-conservative alliance would not accept Benelli, who had alienated them with his power-wielding at the Vatican; paradoxically, he was now deemed an anti-Curialist, partly for his backing of John Paul I. Nor were Benelli's backers about to vote for a dinosaur like Siri, who had recently been quoted in a Turin paper as saying, "Collegiality? I don't even know what that is."