"His Holiness Benedict XVI, pope emeritus"

The Vatican today answered some of the nagging questions hanging over the papal resignation, including the title Pope Benedict will carry after he leaves office.

“His Holiness Benedict XVI, pope emeritus” or “Roman pontiff emeritus” is the proper way to address the retired pope, the Jesuit spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, told reporters.

On a practical level, it’s an issue that few people are expected to face, since the pope has said he plans to live behind the Vatican walls and avoid public appearances.

Father Lombardi said the pope would wear a “simple white cassock” after retiring. His famous red shoes will be set aside in favor of a pair of brown shoes he was given last year in Leon, Mexico – a city known for its footwear industry.

As expected, Benedict’s fisherman ring and the seal of his pontificate will be destroyed; how and when will be determined by the College of Cardinals.

The pope’s final public appearance will be a greeting to faithful in Castel Gandolfo, where the pope will arrive for an approximately two-month stay on the day of his resignation, Feb. 28. In another symbolic step, the Swiss Guards who serve the pope will leave their post outside the Castel Gandolfo villa at 8 p.m., the precise hour of papal resignation.

The Vatican spokesman said that during the countdown to resignation, the pope was receiving messages “of gratitude and understanding” from people all over the world, including many heads of state.

Meanwhile, efforts were being made to coordinate prayers among Catholics around the world on resignation day.

Conclave secrecy: A two-edged sword

Conclave secrecy cuts both ways. It guarantees that cardinals will have the absolute privacy needed to select a new pope without outside pressure. But it also creates a news vacuum that journalists are happy to fill with speculation, scenarios and outright fantasy.

As the world prepares for Pope Benedict’s resignation, there are signs that some at the Vatican are trying to lift the veil of secrecy that has covered some of the proceedings – not the actual vote inside the Sistine Chapel, but the daily meetings cardinals will have in the days leading up to the balloting.

In the past, these pre-conclave meetings, called “general congregations,” have sometimes been subject to the secrecy rule, too.

The conclave rule book, a 1996 apostolic letter called “Universi Dominici Gregis,” says cardinals “are forbidden to reveal to any other person, directly or indirectly, information about the voting and about matters discussed or decided concerning the election of the Pope in the meetings of Cardinals, both before and during the time of the election.” (my emphasis)

In 2005, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who chaired the general congregations, was said to have exhorted cardinals on multiple occasions not to give interviews about the content of these meetings.

Nevertheless, this time around sources have said that senior Vatican officials are considering whether it may be possible to take a more flexible approach to the general congregations.

The idea would be to provide journalists with the major themes discussed in these meetings, and perhaps summaries of interventions. No decision has yet been made, and some believe it might not be determined until the cardinals begin the meetings March 1.

Giving the world a glimpse into the general congregations would make sense on many levels. If there’s an information blackout, Catholics around the world would have no clear idea about what’s on the cardinals’ minds as they prepare to enter the conclave, about the different priorities being discussed and about who’s doing the talking.

As a result, people can imagine whatever they want – and they often imagine that cardinals are using these encounters to trade votes, outmaneuver opponents and make back-room deals.

As reported below, the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, last week blasted what he called the efforts by some journalists to “sow confusion and to discredit the Church and its governance, making recourse to old tools, such as gossip, misinformation and sometimes slander.”

The spokesman has a point: some recent reporting on this unusual papal transition, especially in the Italian press, has been reckless and unreliable.

But the best way to lay this kind of speculation to rest would be to pull the curtain back on the cardinals’ discussions when they arrive in Rome.

Rules cover secrecy as well as vote-trading

How seriously does the Vatican take breaches of conclave rules?

The word “excommunication” says it all.

There’s excommunication for breaking the rule of secrecy – which by the way covers words, signals or any other form of communication, and applies to the voting and the discussions carried out before and during the conclave.

The punishment of excommunication also awaits cardinals who engage in simony – the buying and selling of votes – or who engage in vote-trading agreements, such as promises to swing a bloc of votes to a certain candidate at some point in the conclave.

Any cardinal who tries to interfere with or influence the conclave on behalf of a civil authority will find himself excommunicated, too.

Outsiders often imagine the politicking of a papal conclave as an ecclesial version of the movie “Lincoln,” where pressure tactics, promises and arm-twisting featured prominently ahead of a crucial vote.

The conclave rule book was written by Pope John Paul II and covers just about every kind of possible breach of the conclave’s integrity. It even called for technicians to sweep the conclave area for bugging or communication devices.

One interesting section of the document directs the cardinals to forget about personal relationships and keep their eye on only one thing – the good of the church — as they prepare to vote:

“I earnestly exhort the Cardinal electors not to allow themselves to be guided, in choosing the Pope, by friendship or aversion, or to be influenced by favor or personal relationships towards anyone, or to be constrained by the interference of persons in authority or by pressure groups, by the suggestions of the mass media, or by force, fear or the pursuit of popularity. “

A thin partition

In a strange juxtaposition, cardinals and journalists are going to be working in the same building during the pre-conclave discussion period. An auxiliary Vatican press office is being set up in the atrium of the Paul VI Auditorium to handle the media overflow; the cardinals, meanwhile, will hold their general congregations on the second floor of the auditorium.

Lest the press and the prelates mingle, the Vatican has created a separate entrance for reporters and erected a temporary partition so that journalists are hidden from the cardinals as they enter and exit the building.

Scottish cardinal resigns in wake of allegations of sexual impropriety

UPDATE: In the wake of accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior, Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned today as archbishop Edinburgh, and said he does not plan to come to Rome for the March conclave to avoid creating a media diversion during the election of a new pope.

The Vatican said yesterday that Pope Benedict has been informed about allegations that the cardinal had engaged in inappropriate sexual acts, and was deciding what to do about it.

The allegations, which date to the 1980s, came to light in newspaper reports today in Great Britain. Cardinal O’Brien was among the cardinals expected to arrive in Rome at the end of next week for Pope Benedict’s resignation and an upcoming conclave.

“The pope is informed about the problem and the issue is now in his hands,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Sunday.

Cardinal O’Brien, 74, the archbishop of Edinburgh, has denied the allegations, which were reported to the Vatican by three priests and a former priest. According to British press reports, the complainants contacted the papal nuncio in Britain the week before Pope Benedict announced his resignation.

The press reports said the allegations concerned inappropriate contact and approaches when O’Brien was a seminary rector in Aberdeen some 30 years ago.

The issue of sex abuse has already prompted criticism of U.S. Cardinal Roger Mahony, after he announced he intended to come to Rome to participate in the upcoming conclave. Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, recently had limits placed on his public role in the archdiocese for failing to protect children from clergy sex abuse.

The allegations against Cardinal O’Brien are of a different nature — inappropriate sexual acts, not covering up alleged abuse — and the consequences could be different, too.

Experts I spoke with said a pope can remove a cardinal from the College of Cardinals for grave reasons, but added that in this case the cardinal has contested the accusations, and it’s unlikely that a serious investigation could be completed before papal resignation on Feb. 28.