Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Black smoke on the first ballot


Clever clever me, said I to myself as I ran out of the house this morning with all my gear: voice recorder, computer, mouse, power cord, internet stick, camera, spare batteries, press pass, binoculars...

Forgot the cable thingy that makes the photos go from the camera to the computer. So, my own pics will have to wait til later tonight when I get home.

Big crowd out tonight for the first ballot, even though everyone more or less knew that there was no chance of a pope on the first ballot. Thousands came anyway.

Everyone very cheerful, lots of folks wrapped in their national flags, lots and lots of nuns, and plenty of priests and seminarians in cassocks ... evidence of the Ratzinger Effect in action. I'm told that as little as five years ago most seminarians would not have dared to wear a cassock and if you saw one it was a signal he was with the SSPX. Times changed, and we hardly noticed.

More later.



~

No comments: