First Addresses of Pope Francis

Page 12

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It may be strongly inferred that he had received a critical level of support by the third ballot on Wednesday morning. In the fourth ballot, after lunch, Cardinal Bergoglio must have consolidated this position and by the fifth ballot the Argentinian reached and surpassed the necessary seventy-seven votes - two-thirds - and was elected Pope. The scenario that the name of Cardinal Bergoglio “emerged” was confirmed to me on Thursday evening, 14th March, during a reception hosted by H E John McCarthy, the Australian Ambassador to the Holy See, at the Australian Embassy to the Holy See. The name of Cardinal Bergoglio emerged I had the opportunity to speak to Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, SDB, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, aged seventy, who knows Pope Francis well and was created a Cardinal on the same day. Asked, if he was able to say, without breaking his oath of secrecy, when the Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel decided to vote for a Cardinal from Latin America he replied that there had been a scattering of names during the first and second ballots but that the name of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ, then “emerged”. Meanwhile, on the morning of Tuesday, 12th March, after the Cardinals had celebrated the Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, I spoke to Cardinal John Onaiyekan, Archbishop

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