A conclave was held on 18 and 19 April 2005 to elect a new pope to succeed John Paul II, who had died on 2 April 2005. Of the 117 eligible cardinal electors, all but two attended. On the fourth ballot, the conclave elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the dean of the College of Cardinals and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. After accepting his election, he took the name Benedict XVI. Ratzinger was the first cardinal from the Roman Curia to become pope since Pius XII in 1939.
Papal election process
The papal election process began soon after the death of Pope John Paul II on 2 April 2005.
New voting procedures
Pope John Paul II laid out new procedures for the election of his successor in his 1996 apostolic constitution Universi Dominici gregis. It detailed the roles of the cardinals and the support personnel, the scheduling of the conclave, the text of the oaths, the penalties for violating secrecy, and many details, including the shape of the ballots ("the ballot paper must be rectangular in shape"). He denied the cardinal electors the right to choose a pope by acclamation or by assigning the election to a select group of cardinals (by compromise). He also established new voting procedures that the cardinals could follow if the balloting continued for several days, but those were not invoked in this conclave. He maintained the rule established by Paul VI that cardinals who reached the age of eighty before the day the pope died would not participate in the balloting.
In previous conclaves, the cardinal electors lived in the Sistine Chapel precincts throughout the balloting. Conditions were spartan and difficult for the cardinals with health problems. Showers and bathroom facilities were shared and sleeping areas separated by curtains. John Paul kept the voting in the Sistine Chapel, but provided for the cardinal electors when not balloting to live, dine, and sleep in air-conditioned individual rooms in Domus Sanctae Marthae, better known by its Italian name Casa Santa Marta, a five-story building that was completed in 1996, that normally serves as a guesthouse for visiting clergy.
The cardinals departed from his instructions only in that they did not assemble in the Pauline Chapel. Restoration work begun in 2002 required a change of venue, and they used the Hall of Blessings instead.
Cardinal electors
{|class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders floatright"
|+Cardinal electors by region
|-
!colspan="2" style="padding:1em"|frameless|200px|center|alt=Graphic with the numbers of cardinal electors in attendance from each region
|-
!scope="col"|Region
!scope="col"|Number
|-
|scope="row"|
|style="text-align:center"|20
|-
|scope="row" data-sort-value="Europe, Rest of"|
|style="text-align:center"|38
|-
|scope="row" data-sort-value="America, North"|
|style="text-align:center"|22
|-
|scope="row" data-sort-value="America, South"|
|style="text-align:center"|12
|-
|scope="row"|
|style="text-align:center"|10
|-
|scope="row"|
|style="text-align:center"|2
|-
|scope="row"|
|style="text-align:center"|11
|-
!style="text-align:center"|Total
!115
|}
Although there were 183 cardinals in total, cardinals aged 80 years or more at the time the papacy became vacant were ineligible to vote in the conclave, according to the rules established by Pope Paul VI in 1970 and modified slightly in 1996 by Pope John Paul II.
The cardinal electors came from slightly over fifty nations, a slight increase from the 49 represented at the 1978 conclave. About 30 of those countries had a single participant. The Italian electors were the most numerous with 20, while the United States had the second largest group with 11. Poor health prevented two of the 117 cardinal electors from attending: Jaime Sin of the Philippines and Adolfo Antonio Suárez Rivera of Mexico. All the electors were appointed by Pope John Paul II, except for three: Jaime Sin, who was not attending, William Wakefield Baum, and Joseph Ratzinger, making Baum and Ratzinger the only participants with previous conclave experience from the two conclaves of 1978.
{|class="wikitable"
|-
!width="145px"|Cardinals
!width="45px"|Votes
|-
|Joseph Ratzinger
|<div align="center">72</div>
|-
|Jorge Bergoglio
|<div align="center">40</div>
|-
|Giacomo Biffi
|<div align="center">1</div>
|-
|Darío Castrillón Hoyos
|<div align="center">1</div>
|-
|Others
|<div align="center">1</div>
|}
Tens of thousands of people waiting in St Peter's Square reacted with timid applause and then silence a little before noon when smoke of indeterminate color appeared and the lack of bell-ringing indicated that the morning's ballotting was inconclusive. Press speculation held that "A pope who was elected tonight at the fourth-fifth ballot or tomorrow morning at the sixth-seventh would still be a pontiff elected promptly. Beyond that perhaps some problems might arise."
By this point, Cardinal Ratzinger had emerged as a strong contender for the papacy and recounted in an April 2005 audience to German pilgrims that he felt as though he was beneath the metaphorical axe of papal election, and his head began to spin. However, a fellow cardinal, later revealed to be Christoph Schönborn, encouraged Ratzinger, reminding him of his quotation of the Calling of Matthew in his funeral homily for John Paul II and applying it to Ratzinger.
Initially, at the conclave, "[the question] was, if not Ratzinger, who? And as they came to know him, the question became, why not Ratzinger?"
Fourth ballot
The results of the fourth ballot, according to the anonymous cardinal's diary, were:
As the voting slips and notes were burnt after that ballot, "All of a sudden, the whole Sistine Chapel was filled with smoke," according to Adrianus Johannes Simonis. Christoph Schönborn joked: "Fortunately, there were no art historians present."
At 17:50 CEST (15:50 UTC), white smoke rose above the Sistine Chapel. The bells of St. Peter's pealed at about 18:10 CEST.