5 | CONCLAVE
5
CONCLAVE
The hours will be solemn with eternity. The light that poured from the high, narrow windows of the Sistine Chapel lit brightly, but with a kind of sacred fatigue. Marble and fresco, gold and crimson, the faces of prophets and saints carved by genius and sanctified by centuries—all will watch in impassive silence. The air, will likely be heavy with incense, a scent older than kings.
A few days ago, the Vatican revealed the installation of the stufa within the Sistine Chapel, that austere chamber in Vatican city, where history so often turns. It is here that the stove, an object at once mundane and sacred, awaits the anonymous hands that will feed it with the ballots containing the votes of the cardinals for a new pontiff.
It will soon begin. May 7, 2025. As has been in the past.
From the shadows, the cardinals --deemed as authorities between the temporal and the eternal-- will emerge in solemn and orderly file, clad in their crimson elaborate vestments, appearing like shawls of martyrdom. They bear the contradictions of authority and humility, of spiritual calling and institutional power. Their heads bowed, they chant the ancient hymn that has stirred generations toward the doorway of the Sistine Chapel.
Veni Creator Spiritus,Mentes tuorum visita,
Imple superna gratia,
Quae tu creasti pectora.
Qui Paraclitus diceris,
Donum Dei altissimi
Fons vivus, ignis, caritas,
Et spiritalis unctio.
Tu septiformis munere,
Dexterae Dei tu digitus,
Tu rite promissum Patris,
Sermone ditans guttura.
Accende lumen sensibus:
Infunde amorem cordibus:
Infirma nostri corporis
Virtute firmans perpeti.
Hostem repellas longius,
Pacemque dones protinus:
Ductore sic te praevio,
Vitemus omne noxium.
Per te sciamus da Patrem,
Noscamus atque Filium;
Te utriusque Spiritum
Credamus omni tempore.
Gloria Patri Domino,
Natoque qui a mortuis
Surrexit, ac Paraclito,
In saeculorum saecula.
No ideal harmony in the earthly sense, only the resonance of unity, of ancient submission, of men invoking that which was far greater than themselves. As authorities of the church, they are both actors and symbols, bearing the weight of centuries, standing before his own conscience, are called to make decisions for the world but which will commence in solitude.
The words had been sung at coronations, at deathbeds, on battlefields, in catacombs. Now, in the Sistine Chapel, under the frescoes of the Judgment to come, they'll sing it again. Not for their own glory, but to summon the Paraclete, the Advocate, the silent flame of God.
The Sistine Chapel becomes a world unto itself. None may enter. None may listen. Not a whisper is permitted to escape. The sacred secrecy of the Conclave is sealed with divine gravity. No eye, no ear beyond those walls shall know what transpires. Even now, in the age of information technology, sentries of silence are appointed to scour every corner, to ensure that no tongue may steal the Church’s holiest hour.
The room is rectangular, narrow, severe in dimension yet overwhelming in presence. Its stone walls rise like sentinels, cold and immovable, their silence bearing witness to five hundred years of power and prayer, of smoke and secrets, of the trembling of popes and the whisper of angels.
But my God, this chapel which was constructed in 1473–81 by architect Giovanni dei Dolci for Pope Sixtus IV is not just a sacred containment of historic choices nor the heartbeat of Christendom's temporal authority. It is itself the Renaissance murals by Michelangelo.
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| Sistine Chapel. Screen-photographed from a video. |
Once inside the Chapel, one enters a suspended reality—a liminal space poised between the finitude of man and the silence of the divine, between history’s weight and the aspiration toward the eternal. It is neither heaven nor earth, but a realm caught in solemn twilight—a place where man, burdened by his mortality and yet stirred by something eternal, dares to contend with the vast and implacable face of the absolute. The murals that unfurl across its vaulted ceiling and solemn altar wall are not merely the triumphs of aesthetic genius—they are thunderous proclamations of the soul, rendered in color and form by a man who wrestled with God and dared to give vision to what was unseen through his gift of translucent imaginings.
Across the vast ceiling unspools the primeval story of Genesis—Creation, Fall, and the first whisper of Redemption. God the Father, ancient and immutable, robed in celestial wrath and compassion, strides across the firmament with the solemn force of eternity. With one finger, He reaches—not toward the heavens, but toward man. Toward Adam, who lies in a state of luminous awakening, not yet burdened by guilt or glory. There are Eve and the serpent, the taste of knowledge, the weeping exile from Eden. And there—always—are the eyes of humanity, wide with sorrow, stunned by the sudden weight of choice. Each form is not simply painted but born from agony and awe. There is no sentimentality here. Michelangelo gave us not the ideal, but the real—man as he stands before God, unclothed, unyielding, forever beloved, and forever fallen.
Years later, disillusioned with the corruption of those who claimed to speak for God, Michelangelo returned to paint The Last Judgment. From 1534 to 1541, he once again placed himself above the altar—not as a penitent, but as a man who dared to hold a mirror to the moral cowardice of the world. His Christ is no redeemer; he is the embodiment of judgment, of consequence, of chosen destiny. The swirling chaos of angels and sinners is not theology—it is the spectacle of human choice laid bare.
Below, the lateral walls unfold like scripture made visible. Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, and others—each a master in his own hour—laid brush to plaster and revealed the twin chronicles of salvation: Moses and Christ, Law and Grace, the old covenant and the new. There, Moses receives the tablets beneath a brooding sky. And here—Christ, serene yet sovereign, hands the keys of the kingdom to Peter, and the Church is born in solemn duty. The colors are softer, the forms more restrained, the faces touched by idealism. At its center stands Christ—not the gentle healer, but the inexorable Judge. His arm is raised, not in welcome, but in verdict. Beneath Him, saints ascend with shining wounds, the faithful rise in trembling hope, and the condemned spiral into darkness—drawn by demons whose faces mirror our own worst fears.
Michelangelo Buonarroti—sculptor by conviction, painter by necessity—was not summoned to the Sistine Chapel to serve faith, but to defy it. He did not ascend the scaffold as a supplicant, but as a sovereign. Under the decree of Pope Julius II, a man of brute authority, Michelangelo confronted the ceiling not in agony but with the pride of his worth. From 1508 to 1512, he transformed the Chapel’s ceilings and walls into a declaration—not of doctrine, but of man’s spirit. The stories of Genesis, in his hand, are not sacred allegories—they are the architecture of human strength, rendered in the grandeur of flesh, muscle, thought. Creation, the Fall, the Flood—they are not divine mysteries, but human dramas, shaped by will and consciousness. Indeed, Michelangelo was fortunate to be born into a world ruled by contradiction: Popes who preached humility and wielded armies; cities that celebrated art while poisoning their thinkers. But he bowed to none. He accepted no creed, no dogma, no throne higher than his own reason. He lived poorly, not from virtue, but from refusal—refusal to barter his soul for comfort. His was a life of discipline, not sacrifice. Of labor, not submission.
His David is a man, confident, rational, perfectly naked and alone. His Pietà is not just about divine grief—it is about form, precision, and the impossible tenderness articulated as an elegant ingenuity in sculpting. But these are displayed elsewhere. Even in painting the heavens, Michelangelo exalted the body—not as temple, but as engine of strength and clarity. In his painting of The Last Judgment, he placed his own face on the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew—not in despair, but in defiance. He knew what it meant to be stripped bare before a world that feared the power of an honest mind. He made art not to soothe the masses but to confront them.
Unlike Pope Franciscus, Michelangelo died alone, as every great man must. He was returned to Florence, the city he loved and scorned. Maybe buried, but his arts live in marble and pigment, carved through time either by reason or rebellion. He does not reach toward heaven. He demanded to meet him on his terms. For centuries, the world tried to bury this truth—coating it in smoke and dust, muting its clarity with piety and tradition. But truth, like the human mind, cannot be extinguished. In the twentieth century, a meticulous restoration peeled back the lies of time. What was revealed was not merely color, but purpose. Not the divine, but the human.
Although the feet of millions tread these stones each year, though voices murmur in every tongue beneath the gaze of painted prophets and saints, the Sistine Chapel is not for them. It was never meant for spectacle. It was forged for the soul—for that secret, immeasurable place where grace contends with law, where light stands against shadow, and where man, fragile and immortal, is called to choose.
Like how history will repeat the ritualistic procedure, from the great doorway of this chapel, a voice—clear, firm, and will echo: "Extra omnes." Everyone out.
The attendants, the chamberlains, the masters of ceremony—those who had hovered quietly in the corners of the Chapel like ghosts of protocol will depart without protest. Their footsteps will be muffled like fading prayers.
Only the cardinals will remain.
252 cardinals across the world. 242 attended the burial of the Pope. 180 attended the pre-conclave meetings.
135 are legible to vote, of which, 53 are Europeans, 37 from North Central and South America, 23 from Asia, 18 from Africa, and 4 from Oceania. Various reports.
One hundred and more, robed in red like flame—like blood—sits beneath the terrible majesty of Michelangelo’s Judgment, where Christ raised His hand not in blessing, but in separation, in the fearful act of choosing. These men, princes of the Church and sons of the divine dust, would now cast their votes not merely for a man—but for the vessel of God Himself on earth.
The door will be locked.
There would be no more voices save their own.
No counsel but prayer.
No witness but God.
May 7, 2025. The Conclave begins.
