St. Peter’s Square in Rome was packed Thursday in anticipation of the announcement of a new Pope. When Pope Leo XIV walked out onto the balcony, that crowd got its first view of the new pontiff — the first American Pope.
Sarah Ventre, NPR’s senior producer of religion, was in the square and joined The Show to talk about what it was like there.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: And Sarah, at what point did you realize there was actually white smoke coming out of that chimney?
SARAH VENTRE: Well, so everybody was gathering and waiting, and we kind of knew around what time we might be able to expect it, but like the vote the night before had taken a really long time, so we sort of expected it at one time and it didn't come out, the black smoke didn't come out till like two hours later.
So everybody was sort of gathered in the square in anticipation. And I think that they were like, OK, we should see something. But there was like a lot of waiting around. So, you know, there was like a kid in front of me who was talking to a priest and, you know, there were like families and all kinds of people and everybody was just sort of like chatting and stuff.
And then all of a sudden, you could hear the crowd kind of like swell up as the white smoke started to plume. And so as soon as I heard that crowd swell, I just looked up and saw all of the smoke coming from the chimney, and there were these like giant screens in the square where they showed a close up of that chimney too, and people just completely erupted.
BRODIE: Well, so there must have been such anticipation both leading up to that moment, but then once everyone saw the white smoke, knowing that within some amount of time we would know who the new pope was, what was that sort of waiting period like to see who this person was going to be?
VENTRE: So the day before, I had talked to a woman in the square who had said she described the mood as having a kind of quiet anticipation. And I think once the white smoke came, it was no longer quiet. So at that point, everybody, you know, there were tens of thousands of people there. And once the white smoke came, more people started to come, and people started to pack in tighter.
So if you imagine being at like, you know, a giant sporting event or like a New Year's Eve party outside or something like that, like, everybody just kind of started crunching closer and closer together, and you could really feel like people are packing in, people are like, you know, asking questions, they were taking photos, they were like, you know, everybody was just like super, super like on the edge of their seat, on the edge of their toes, I guess that we're just standing.
So I think like in between when the white smoke came and when we heard the pronouncement and who the new pope was, you could just sort of feel this extra electricity in the crowd.
BRODIE: What kinds of things were people saying? You mentioned a lot of people were asking questions like what of things were people talking about?
VENTRE: Well, I mean, a lot of people were like, who do you think it is? I mean, going into this conclave, there was a really open field of possible, so the word is papabile, which literally means popeable. So, going into a conclave, there's sort of cardinals that people think of as being, you know, potential front runners for the, for the papacy, and they're, they call them papabile. So there was, but there were a lot of papabile this time, because Francis had appointed so many cardinals himself.
And so there was a sense that like, a lot of these cardinals are new. They don't know each other. Who knows what it could be. And so there was sort of a feeling like, for example, when Pope Francis was named, people were like, wait, who is this guy? Like, he was sort of a dark horse that nobody expected. And there was definitely a sense that like, this could be another dark horse, and we don't really know who it's gonna be.
So people, I think, were really like, I heard two nuns asking each other, I think in Spanish, like, do you know who do you think it's going to be? I don't know who it's going to be. So it was just like a lot of that kind of anticipation.
BRODIE: Well, so watching the coverage of it here in the newsroom, somebody commented that it almost looked like a World Cup match because there were so many people with different countries' flags flying in St. Peter's Square. What was the the mood like? What was the feeling like when we realized who the new Pope was going to be and that it was somebody from the United States?
VENTRE: So I think that's something that truly almost no one could have predicted. I mean, it was really, really shocking. There's kind of a moment that you could hear in the crowd. They announced the name. When it was announced that it was Cardinal Prevost, you could hear people sort of processing it, like you could hear them kind of being a little bit surprised and unsure, and you kind of hear her like, “oh,” kind of like come over the whole crowd.
And people were like really not expecting that. I mean, and because it is such an important event to so many people across the world, you know, there are 1.4 billion Catholics across the globe, and there were people there from all over the world speaking all different languages. So I think even Americans were not expecting it to be an American pope, and also this year, there were so many new cardinals from different parts of the world that have not really had a lot of representation in the College of Cardinals before.
There was a lot of conversation that maybe this year we could have expected a cardinal from the global South. So I think there was just sort of like a surprise, and then I immediately saw people starting to Google his name. And there was really almost no cell service in the square. But people were like, Wait a second, who is this guy?
BRODIE: That is so interesting. And you mentioned all different languages, you must have heard so many different languages just standing in that square.
VENTRE: Absolutely, I did. I mean, I heard people speaking languages I recognized. I heard people speaking languages I didn't recognize. There were pilgrims from all over the world. You know, there were clergy, there was leity, there were faithful, there were Catholics, there were non-Catholics, secular people. I even met one woman who just happened to be visiting from India. She said, I'm Hindu, but this moment is so overwhelming and special, and I just really wanted to be here for it. So I think like it is a moment that feels really important and special and unique and really so many people in the world are watching whether they're Catholic or not.
