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The Holy Spirit's October Surprise

SATURDAY OCTOBER 14      On the morning of the opening day of the second Conclave of 1978, as two of the 111 Cardinals were leaving the concelebrated Mass of the Holy Spirit, one said to the other, "We will not live to do this again."      The other replied, "That’s what we thought the last time."      By the time of their early evening procession into the sealed-off Conclave area, another pair of Cardinals had been tabbed by the press as "favorites" to succeed the late Pope John Paul as the 263rd successor of St. Peter: the Italians Giuseppe Cardinal Siri and Giovanni Cardinal Benelli.      Cardinal Siri, the 72 year old Archbishop of Genoa, had been a Cardinal for more than 25 years. He had proved himself to be a traditionalist, a conservative, a rabid anti-communist in his writings, his speeches and his interviews.      Cardinal Benelli, only 57, had worked at Pope Paul's right hand for a decade and had been sent only a year ear
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THE SEPTEMBER POPE

                                                                                   August 26, 1978 - Conclave Each of the one hundred and eleven red-robed Cardinals strode up to the altar in the Sistine Chapel and, holding only one piece of folded paper in his hand, said aloud: I call to witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge   that my vote is given to the one whom before God  I consider should be elected. Most of the Cardinal electors believed that “at least one more” Italian pope would be good – but did not plan to elect Cardinal Siri (“too intransigent”), nor Cardinal Benelli (“too curial”), nor Cardinal Pignedoli (“too aligned with the late Paul VI”).   Although a few Cardinals were prepared to vote for a non-Italian, even for an Eastern European, there was one Italian Cardinal – not well known outside of his own diocese - who seemed to fit the “job description” being whispered about in Rome: the need for “a happy holy man who smiles.” Surprisingly, Albino C
Prologue  In July 1978, when Pope Paul VI was leaving the Vatican to go to the papal summer residence in the hills at Castel Gandolfo, he bade farewell to Archbishop Giuseppe Caprio – his closest collaborator – with the sad words: “We will go, but I do not know whether we will return to Rome - or how we will return.” The 80-year-old Paul knew his physical state. Giovanni Battista Montini had been an intellectually brilliant but very frail youth, and throughout his service to Pope Pius XII in the Vatican of the 1930’s ‘40’s and 50’s, his famously long work days sometimes resulted in periods of exhaustion. During his fifteen years as Pope, beginning in 1963, he suffered from cancer of the prostate and painful, crippling osteoarthritis. He had recently shared with a group of pilgrims: “The clock of time moves inexorably forward, and it points to a forthcoming end.” Paul also knew his own spiritual weariness and pain. He had succeeded the immensely popular John XXI