Puffs of chemical pollution from a temporary chimney installed on top of the Sistine Chapel by Vatican handymen and firefighters heralds the selection of the new pope.
Inside the chapel, underneath the famous ceiling painted with Michelangelo’s frescoes depicting Old Testament narratives and The Last Judgement, the double stoves are placed with their combined flue carefully installed and scaffolded to not damage the precious artwork.
It can take a few days for the conclave of cardinals to reach a decision, so to keep the assembled masses in Saint Peter’s Square enthralled they send out smoke signals.
For viewers at home it’s alluring, in a reality TV kind of way, to await the big reveal, to see who won the contest without having to endure all the episodes.
Still, I wouldn’t mind knowing who the runner up was.
The medieval communication ritual is binary: black smoke no pope, white smoke new pope – Habemus papam!
But where there’s smoke there’s combustion, so how is it done? To communicate the yin or yang of the conclave’s daily deliberations, the cardinal’s ballots are burned in one stove and in the other either a pre-packaged chemical mixture of potassium perchlorate, anthracene and sulfur is burned to make thick black smoke, or, for the pure white smoke, potassium chlorate, lactose and pine resin.
Previously, straw with varying levels of dampness was used to make black smoke and dry straw for white smoke, but as any camper who’s tried to start a fire with damp material knows, it makes for a lot of grey smoke which just ended up confusing people.
Notwithstanding the Catholic church’s acknowledgment of climate change and Pope Francis’s direct advocacy, when you think about it, a chimney billowing smoke is a recalcitrant symbol for the times.
Although it’s no coal-fired power station, it still screams burning carbon, sending all the wrong signals about prospects for a renewable future.
The archaic ritual is apparently done in the name of transparency and to prevent vote tampering.
Vote tampering at the Vatican! Call me a stickler for record keeping, but I would have thought burning such important ballots was an egregious destruction of historical documents and shows a distinct lack of commitment to accountability.
The pope smoke ritual dates to the 1400s, yes when witches were being hunted and tried, but the chimney version didn’t get puffing until the 18th century, coinciding with the Industrial Revolution. Despite calls for modernisation over decades, the ritual has remained ‘a moment of continuity with centuries of tradition’ according to the church.
Cosmic smoke
I like a waft of cosmic smoke towards the heavens as much as anyone, but isn’t it time for some centuries old traditions to step aside?
Not to detract from the solemnity of the task, the church could consider electrifying and making the switch to a solar-powered windmill which could turn anti-clockwise for a ‘no’ decision and clockwise for a ‘yes’ decision. Instead of burning ballot papers, they could archive them for future reference or anaerobically digest them for biogas.
While any baptised Catholic male is canonically eligible to be elected pope, theoretically even the newly converted J.D Vance, let’s face it, we’ll never see a puff of pink smoke selecting a female pope while the patriarchy is still in charge, will we?
Nope. No Habemus mama! Women don’t even have the vote at the Vatican. Forget the glass ceiling, those sisters must contend with missionary men and the Sistine ceiling.
If you take a closer look at Michelangelo’s representations though, there’s a clue for us all.
In his depiction of The Creation of Adam, there’s a young woman nestled under God’s arm, holding onto to him, with her gaze fixed on Adam. It’s said she is Sophia, Divine Wisdom herself, and God’s companion throughout all acts of co-creation.
I’m no biblical scholar, but according to Proverbs, mankind can only access the kingdom of heaven by finding Wisdom, ‘for in her is life and in life the Lord’.
Michelangelo has often been criticised for his muscular depictions of women, but other scholars suggest holiness has both male and female aspects; ‘androgyny is godliness’.
So many civilisations of the past, and still today, are matrilineal societies. Women were leaders, strong and powerful under the sky, not subdued by ceilings or patriarchal notions of gender or sexuality.
The patriarchy is not inevitable, it hasn’t existed since the dawn of time, it was constructed and can be deconstructed.
While Catholics were still mourning the death of Pope Francis, time-warp Trump ruffled a few cassocks by releasing an AI-generated picture of himself as a wannabe pope.
It was shared by the official White House on X. What do you make of that? He was accused of ‘pathological megalomania’ after admitting to reporters ‘I’d like to be pope’.
I pray to Sophia that Wisdom prevails, and soon.
♦ Jo Immig is a former advisor to the NSW Legislative Council and coordinator of the National Toxics Network. She’s currently a freelance writer and researcher.
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