‘Electing a pope is the stuff of novels – and Amen to that’

The election of a pope hovers between the spiritual world and the real world, between the sacred and the profane. But it is, au fond, an election, just as the Roman Catholic church is a political organisation of immense antiquity, reach and power. Its rulings – particularly on abortion, birth control, assisted dying, and the role of women and homosexuals – have a profound political effect. The pope commands, in theory, the adherence of 1.4 billion human beings, the same number as President Xi Jinping of China.

When George Orwell, whose ambition was to turn political writing into an art, was close to death in a sanatorium in Gloucestershire, he was visited several times by the Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh, who lived nearby. Orwell asked his publisher to send Waugh an advance copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Waugh wrote back frankly, stating that he found reading it “a stimulating experience…. But what makes your version [of the future] spurious to me is the disappearance of the Church… Disregard all the supernatural implications if you like, but you must admit its unique character as a social & historical institution. I believe it is inextinguishable.”

In this, at least, Waugh was right and Orwell wrong. When the conclave of October 1978 elected the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II, it committed a profoundly political act that was to play a significant part in Poland’s resistance to communism, the rise of Solidarity, the undermining of Soviet rule in eastern Europe and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. So, despite the grumbling of various right wing blowhards, one should not feel embarrassment about judging a conclave as a political event of the first importance, or about analysing it, at least to some extent, as a political contest between different strands of belief, which may be crudely expressed as reformist versus traditionalist, although of course – as in all politics – human existence is far more complex than that.

I did not have to spend long researching the history of recent conclaves – barely more than a morning, in fact – to discover the political drama inherent in the process. The cardinal who wins must secure a two-thirds majority. The ballots are secret, the results of each known only to the cardinal-electors and the few church officials administering the process. But to them it is clear from the first few ballots who are the frontrunners.

In 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger, perceived as the most traditionalist candidate, emerged as the likely winner, when Cardinal Martini, the more reformist ex-archbishop of Milan, polled less well than expected. Many of his supporters switched to the relatively unknown Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina, who might have blocked Ratzinger’s election, except that he took fright and begged his voters not to risk a schism in the church. Ratzinger duly became Pope Benedict and Bergoglio eventually Pope Francis.

The drama of these three men gave me the heart of my novel Conclave. It was necessary to invent far more characters, of course. Eventually, I constructed an entire fictional electoral college. The dilemma was how to tell the story. It seemed to me that the dean of the cardinals, responsible for organising the election, would provide the best overall view.

And here my years on The Observer came to my rescue, for Tony Howard had gone on to write books, among them the authorised biography of Cardinal Basil Hume, perhaps the most significant British cardinal of the 20th century, and a hugely sympathetic figure, who Tony discovered had been assailed by doubts at the very end of his life.

A cardinal assailed by doubt, who finds himself having to administer a conclave! This became the central figure – Lomeli in the novel, changed to Lawrence in the film version: appropriate, given the figure who inspired him. I shall watch the real-life events unfolding in the Sistine Chapel over the next few weeks with the unashamed interest of a political junkie.

And as The Observer begins its new incarnation, I am glad to be able to tip my hat to the paper that set me on my road to my own Conclave, via a motorway service station all those years ago.

Photograph Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP