Unleashed Memoir #9 / A Conclave to Remember

And then there was the Pope….but first, the papal conclave….powerbrokers of the church.

On October 6, 2024, with my beloved wife of the past quarter century—Pamela—I celebrated the 80^th anniversary of my presence on this planet among my fellow citizens of the world. As it happens, it also marked the half century (50 years) since I embarked on my life as a foreign correspondent, observer, and chronicler of more than 90 lands far from my own. To commemorate this, another moment from my own past, frozen in time, you will find here an excerpt from my memoir, "Don't Shoot, I'm an American Reporter,” which is still being written. From time to time, Unleashed Memoir will present excerpts from this work where and when they resonate especially.

In this excerpt, the world has welcomed the first Polish pope, and I strive to understand his path to the papacy

Today, Wednesday May 7, some 133 cardinals, princes of the Roman Catholic Church, gathered in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican as they have for nearly 800 years since the decree of Pope Gregory X at the Council of Lyons in 1274, to select a new Pope—leader of the world’s one billion catholics.

On October 16, 1978, while The New York Times was still on strike, the archbishop of Krakow, Karel Cardinal Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II by the sacred college of cardinals sitting in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. And I wa

His candidacy was managed, as it turns out, in a style not unfamiliar to American voters in the years when national political conventions settled on the next presidential candidate in smoke-filled rooms packed with inner-city political bosses. In this case, as I was later told by Franz Cardinal König, Wojtyla’s candidacy was promoted by a couple of senior cardinals—König, the archbishop of Vienna, and John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia, fourth of eight children of Polish immigrants from the Tatra Mountains in Wojtyla’s archdiocese and where the new pope loved to ski.

John Paul II and John Cardinal Krol

The man who would take the name of John Paul II was the first non-Italian elevated to the papacy in 455 years—since the Dutch cardinal Adriaan Floriszoon Boeyens (to this day the only pope from the Netherlands) was elected Arian VI, succeedinmg the Medici Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenz de Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent). It was Leo who excommunicated Martin Luther and extended the vicious Spanish Inquisition into Portugal.

John Paul II had an utterly different course on which he hoped to set the Roman Catholic church. This was the reason that König and Krol stage-managed his candidacy for the papacy. It was König who described the entire process to me in some detail. He invited me to the residence of the archbishop of Vienna, a position he would occupy for 29 years, the last surviving cardinal named by Pope John XXIII. The residence, at the rear of the towering St. Stephens Cathedral, was as ornate as any oligarch’s palace—room after endless gilded rooms, red velour, glorious art and panels, frescoes and deeply carved furniture from centuries past. König received me in his principal audience chambers. We began to talk, with the understanding nothing would be attached to his name, for the moment.

Since König passed away in 2004 and Krol in 1996, I feel comfortable in revealing some of the secrets that König divulged. The way König described it to me, the consistory where the new pope is chosen is run not unlike an American political convention. When the doors of the 15th century Sistine Chapel are closed and sealed, the cardinals locked inside, the debates—and the bargaining—begin. There were ultimately eight ballots, so Krol and König waited patiently as two Italians battled it out for the post that had not gone to a non-Italian since the last Borgia, Pope Alexander VI of Aragon, mounted the throne of St. Peter on August 11, 1492, ruling for an utterly tumultuous seven years and eleven days—oh and was responsible for the Papal Bull dividing the entire known extra-European world between the empires of Spain and Portugal.

This was a momentous moment in 1978 that König described. The consistory was divided between two Italians—Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, archbishop of Genoa, the ultimate arch conservative, whose driving motivation was to take the church back to the days when the Sistine Chapel was first built and a Borgia was on the papal throne, and Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, the more liberal archbishop of Florence. Through seven ballots, neither came closer than nine votes to the two-thirds-plus-one majority of voting cardinals needed for election. The black smoke of the burning ballots filtered again and again into the Roman sky to the dismay of the tens of thousands gathered in the St. Peter’s Square as the votes dragged on without resolution.

Pope John Paul II and Franz Cardinal König

Finally, König, highly respected by both the liberal and conservative cardinals, began quietly circulating the name of the dark-horse candidate he and Krol could support, with Krol bringing along most of the American delegation—second in power only to the Italians. Eventually, König told me, he rose to place in nomination the name of Cardinal Wojtyla. At that point, with just a single viable name in contention, it was quickly done. And on the eighth ballot, 90 of the 111 cardinals present and voting cast their ballots for the new Polish pope. The white smoke went up the chimney, a roar of the crowd swept across the plaza. Karel rose and faced his fellow cardinals: “With obedience in faith to Christ, my Lord, and with trust in the Mother of Christ and the Church, in spite of great difficulties, I accept.”

The doors of the Sistine were still locked, however. The throngs knew they had a pope. But who was the new leader of more than 1 billion believers? The name came first and many in the plaza listened carefully as the secretary of the consistory announced the result in Latin from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Some thought from the surname that he might be the first African. But within moments, Wojtyla appeared to speak to them and to the world in near-flawless Italian, affirming that, though dismayed by the nomination, he had accepted the call “in the spirit of obedience to Our Lord and with total trust in his Mother, the Most Holy Madonna.” One week later he was installed as John Paul II.

This was, however, only the beginning of my interaction with Pope John Paul II. On June 2, 1979, the new pope returned for his first visit to his native Poland to the great fear of Poland’s communist, nominally atheist rulers, who feared the consequences—quite rightly as it turned out—of his reign atop to the Roman Catholic Church and his bitter opposition to the sway the Kremlin held over his beloved land. I followed the new pope throughout his trip from his arrival in Warsaw to his departure from Krakow.

Much of this was brought into even closer focus for me personally and professionally not too long after. John Paul II had retained close ties with Cardinal Krol in Philadelphia. A year into his pontificate, after any number of controversies and false starts, Krol paid a visit to the prelate he had played such a profound role in elevating to the papacy.

“So, Krol, how am I doing?” John Paul asked the cardinal, as it was told to me.

“Well holy father, just marvelously,” Krol replied, then paused. “But frankly, you could use some help with your image.”

“I know,” the pope responded sadly, “but who can I get to help?”

“I’ve got just the man for your,” Krol smiled.

The man Krol had in mind was Msgr. John Foley, also a native of Philadelphia, the editor of the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Standard & Times, and a protégé and close collaborator of Krol. He also happened to be a classmate of mine at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a lifelong friend.

Kroll returned to Philadelphia, called in Foley and told him to head over to the Vatican to meet the pope. That’s just what happened…and then some. As Krol figured, both no-nonsense individuals with a strong sense of the modern Church and a quick sense of humor, the two hit it off like a house afire. What was supposed to be a quarter of an hour audience turned into an entire morning together.

At the end, the Pope told Foley he would be naming him head of the Pontifical Council on Social Communication—effectively the Pope’s chief p.r. man.

“The problem is that everyone who’s held that job has been a cardinal. Now, I can’t make you a cardinal, but I can make you an archbishop. So, you’re an archbishop. Go back to Philadelphia, pack your bags and come to the Vatican.”

John Foley introduces the Today Show to the Holy Father

And so he did. Decades later, he did become John Cardinal Foley. It was Foley who persuaded and then facilitated NBC to carry midnight mass every year from the Vatican and narrated the play by play himself. I traveled with Foley to the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. And decades later, I had the sad privilege of attending his funeral mass back in Philadelphia in 2011.

—Editing by Pamela Title