Papal conclave, day two - habemus papam, already

We had the Methodist office of Morning Prayer today, led by Cath in my tutor group. And we prayed for the Cardinals in Rome, along with the needs of the rest of the world. I took Wendy through the liturgical moves for the Palm Sunday Eucharist at which she serves as Deacon for the Archbishop, then I had a meeting with Rhun, chair of this year's student Executive, sharing their interests and concerns about life in College. Then I spent time talking with Rufus, who's been off sick for a week, and now carefully re-inserting himself into routine life at College again. And it was lunchtime.

I went into the CBS office for a couple of hours after lunch, to draft some letters with Ashley and then send them. I was back at College in good time for the tea time Eucharist. By the time I got home to cook supper, news was breaking of white smoke issuing from the Sistine Chapel chimney. An election so soon? After eating, I drove to St Mary's Vicarage to do some maintenance work on Father Graham's computers, and learned on arrival that an Argentinian Cardinal, member of the Jesuit order had been elected, and would be called Francis in honour of the Saint whom God called to re-build his church, a holy man and missionary who went to Egypt during the crusades to share the Gospel with the muslim Caliph. 

Jorge Mario Bergoglio SJ is a man who, back home, travels to work by bus and lives in a one room apartment, an advocate on behalf of the poor of the world. Wow! What an inspired choice! Apparently he was a runner up in the election which chose Pope Benedict, but evidently that wasn't his moment. Now is, and now his particular witness to Gospel faith is really needed. I've been hugging myself with delight since I saw the news footage on TV and heard the commentary about him.

Thankfully, what needed to be done on Graham's computers posed no problems and didn't take too long. Being Fr Graham Francis a well known Anglican fan of the papacy, I was with him when he started to receive his first jokey text messages about the papal election. I bet they'll keep him busy over the ext few days. I was in Rome when Albano Luciani was elected and named himself Pope John Paul the first, but have no recollection of where I was when John Paul the Second and Benedict XVI were elected, but Francis I, I'll have not reason never to forget.
 

Papal conclave, day one

After breakfast, a three hour College planning meeting this morning, working mainly on designing a new integrated model for ministry training. It's gratifying to find that people engaged in ministry training from different angles find a common mind about the way forward. It's a positive way to start a lengthy painstaking process to create a learning process that will serve the church in response to changing times.

After lunch I drafted a rota to cover next term's chapel services, then celebrated the Eucharist in Welsh before the weekly tutor group meeting. Three members were away, two of them off sick. There's been a succession of student absences this term due to bugs of different kind doing the rounds, circulating not only in College but also in the wider community. Spring term is, in the recollection of staff past and present the time when both bodily immunity and morale seem to be at their lowest.  I can't believe just how fortunate I've been so far, not catching one of the bugs, as I was often vulnerable in the past. Perhaps it's because I've been eating lots of fresh fruit every day since I returned from Sicily - our consumption of fruit has soared. Both of us seem to have developed an appetite for it. Curious.

I'm amazed at how much interest the news media are taking in the Papal election conclave. This afternoon I set my Twitter feed to receive news tweets with the conclave hashtag. It was fascinating to see what people all over the world were saying about the event being broadcast. Lots of silly and irreverent jokes, some prayers and expressions of good will, occasional political and polemical comments, also a surprising number of appreciations expressed about the prayerful seriousness of the occasion - such a contrast to worldly political elections. The Cardinals' singing the 'Veni Creator' in particular seemed to move people. Some expressions of prayer, on the right occasion, never seem to date or feel irrelevant. They speak to those familiar with them and to those for whom they are strange and new.