{"id":664274,"date":"2025-04-21T23:10:31","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T20:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/when-will-cable-news-turn-to-24-7-white-smoke-watch\/"},"modified":"2025-04-21T23:10:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T20:10:31","slug":"when-will-cable-news-turn-to-24-7-white-smoke-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/when-will-cable-news-turn-to-24-7-white-smoke-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"When Will Cable News Turn to 24\/7 White-Smoke Watch?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tPope Francis, the first Latin-American pope, died on Easter Monday. Don\u2019t bother lighting a candle in wait for a replacement (in mourning it is, of course, good practice) \u2014 the 267th pontiff of the Catholic Church will not be announced for several weeks.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen a pope dies, there is a built-in mourning period of 15-20 days. OK, so technically the mourning period is nine days long, but it does not officially begin until four to six days after the pope\u2019s passing, which is when the body is moved to St. Peter\u2019s Basilica so the public can pay their respects. Burial comes later.<\/p>\n

\n\tA conclave of the College of Cardinals to select a new pope can commence immedia<\/a>tely after those roughly two to three weeks. (Only cardinals under 80 years old, known as the cardinal electors, can participate and vote.) <\/p>\n

\n\tConclaves historically have lasted anywhere from a few days to a few months. In modern times, they\u2019ve mostly taken less than four days, and the lengthiest conclave in the 20th century met for just five days. Once a decision is made, the new representative of God on Earth (for Roman Catholics, at least) is announced. Nobody was ready for what happ<\/a>ened last time.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis\u2019 predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, resigned the post on February 28, 2013. The resignation was only semi-sudden: Pope Benedict XVI announced his decision on February 11, 2013, citing a \u201clack of strength of mind and body\u201d due to age. He was 86; he\u2019d live to be 95.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was weird. Pope Benedict XVI was the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415, and the first to do so without external pressure since Celestine V in 1294. It sounds like there may have been at least internal<\/em> pressure, however. Leaked documents<\/a> later chronicled a power struggle within the Vatican.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tFox News<\/a>\u2019 Lauren Green reporting outside the Vatican in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tSo there was no mourning<\/em>-mourning Benedict, but the conclave to replace him didn\u2019t begin for nearly two weeks anyway. At least not officially<\/em>, because just over 24 hours into the March conclave, white smoke came pouring out of the Sistine Chapel\u2019s chimney \u2014 the universal sign for we\u2019ve got a new pope.<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, that\u2019s not entirely correct. At first, black smoke came out \u2014 you can imagine how confusing that was for producers, anchors and correspondents trying to cover the moment live. They had already seen five separate emissions of black smoke \u2014 one for each failed vote. But this time was different. The black smoke soon turned to white; perhaps the Sistine Chapel just needed a good chimney sweep. <\/p>\n

\n\t(Black smoke, created by simply burning the ballots with a mixture of potassium perchlorate, anthracene and sulfur signifies the cardinals could not reach a two-thirds consensus on a new pope. Black smoke is . White smoke, the chemical combination of potassium chlorate, lactose and chloroform resin, means it\u2019s go time.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd go, go, go did everyone have to\u2026 go. Reporters scrambled and Romans ran.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were on the platform at the end of the Via della Conciliazione, which is the street that looks directly at the Vatican. All the reporters asked: \u2018Is that white smoke? Is that white smoke?\u2019 Because nobody wants to be the first to be wrong,\u201d Fox News Channel\u2019s chief religion correspondent Lauren Green recalled in a Monday conversation with The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>. \u201cThe next reaction was, \u2018Oh my goodness, that was so fast.\u2019 And then the next thing I remember seeing were people running, just Italians running to St. Peter\u2019s Square because they knew within minutes the new pope would appear on the loggia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of those in the race was Ben Wedeman, CNN\u2019s senior international correspondent based in Rome. Hey, everyone else was doing it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat we saw \u2014 and I\u2019d never seen this before \u2014 was a lot of people from the surrounding residential neighborhoods here in Rome also running\u2026 toward the square,\u201d Wedeman told THR<\/em>. \u201cAnd when the announcement was Jorge Bergoglio, I looked at my cameraman, Alessandro Gentile, and our producer, Caroline Paterson, and we all said to one another, \u2018Who\u2019s that?!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOh, right \u2014 there were two<\/em> surprises that day.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tCNN\u2019s Live Breaking News Pope Francis<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of CNN<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tBergoglio, who later took on the name Francis, wasn\u2019t on anyone\u2019s short list to replace Pope Benedict XVI.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere had been much speculation about who might be elected pope, but this was not one of the names of the so-called papabile or the \u201cpope-able\u201d people,\u201d Wedeman said.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven the leaked names were wrong, Green said. (Yes, cardinals have cell phones and they leak info to the press \u2014 they\u2019re \u201chuman beings,\u201d after all, as Green reminded us.)<\/p>\n

\n\tGreen sees the next conclave lasting just \u201ca couple of days.\u201d While she doesn\u2019t have a frontrunner per se, Green is \u201clooking\u201d at Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state. As Francis\u2019 right hand, Parolin makes the most sense, but if any lesson is to be taken from March 13, 2013, it\u2019s that our next pope could be practically anybody.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Francis, the first Latin-American pope, died on Easter Monday. Don\u2019t bother lighting a candle in wait for a replacement (in mourning it is, of course, good practice) \u2014 the 267th pontiff of the Catholic Church will not be announced for several weeks. When a pope dies, there is a built-in mourning period of 15-20…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":664276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/WhiteSmokeVatican.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[79345],"class_list":["post-664274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-cable-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}