Parolin’s Votes Did Not Shift En Masse to Prevost – Conclave

Francesco Capozza challenges (IlTempo.it, February 8) the claim that the bloc of votes supporting Cardainal Pietro Parolin at the recent conclave shifted en masse to Cardinal Robert Prevost between the second and third ballots.
The number of votes Parolin received in the first ballot, held late on the evening of 7 May, remains uncertain. Some sources speak of around twenty votes, others of more than thirty, and a few even claim he came close to forty.
The one point on which nearly all accounts agree is that the only truly cohesive group from the outset was the conservative bloc, which voted unanimously in the first round for its standard-bearer, the Hungarian Cardinal Péter Erdő.
According to early testimonies, Cardinal Parolin’s supporters allegedly reached a nocturnal understanding summarized roughly as follows: the papacy for Cardinal Prevost, and the confirmation of the Venetian prelate as Secretary of State for at least two years. Whether such an agreement truly existed, however, …More