For the first time since 1415, we are going to have a conclave
or papal election with no Pope to bury beforehand. But the
procedures for the election are not affected by this ‘novelty.’
Dan Brown might seem an unlikely source for information on a
Papal election but the detailed description in Angels and Demons
was apparently taken from a book by a Jesuit scholar and is
quite accurate. When the See of Rome is declared vacant –
normally when a Pope dies – most of the senior prelates who were
the Pope’s ‘ministers’ resign. Power is entrusted to a cardinal
called the Camerlengo, in this case Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone,
who under normal circumstances would bury the Pope. The last
papal election took 48 hours, but such speed wasn’t always the
case. In the 13th century the papacy was vacant for a year-and-
a-half and an election was forced by the people of Rome who
locked up the cardinals until a pope was elected. In another
case, the people not only locked up the cardinals, they tore off
the roof of the building and