SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
I'm Scott Detrow in Vatican City, standing on the steps in front of St. Peter's Basilica, looking up at the chimney that was just placed on top of the Sistine Chapel. Beginning Wednesday, the conclave to elect the next pope takes place in the Sistine Chapel. Everybody outside will only know what's going on by looking at this chimney and looking to see if it's black smoke, which means no pope has been elected, or white smoke, which means a pope has been elected. This is a secretive process. But in the past few years, millions of people got a sense of it through the movie "Conclave" and the best-selling book by the same name. Before we headed to Rome, we talked to Robert Harris, the author of "Conclave," to talk about what he's thinking about ahead of this real-life one.
Is it true that the election of Pope Francis was what initially inspired you to write this book?
ROBERT HARRIS: Yes. I saw - when he appeared on the balcony, I saw the - just before he appeared, the windows on either side filling up with the faces of the cardinals who'd just elected him. And I thought, this is interesting. I wonder what had happened immediately before in the voting. And I was a political journalist and I'm a political novelist, really. So I looked it up and started some research and immediately found it was a great story.
DETROW: That gets to one of the interesting aspects of this. It's in the Sistine Chapel. The stakes are high, being in charge of the Catholic Church. But in the end, is this kind of - do you think about this? - it's just a political convention, really?
HARRIS: Well, it's obviously much more than that, and it has very, very strange and arcane rules. As you say, only 130 or so electors, all of them cut off from the outside world. Their phones taken off them. There are no laptops. The windows in their hostel are all sealed. They can't talk to anyone. They're not allowed to take reading material into the Sistine Chapel or bring it out. They're forced to absolutely concentrate. There's a complete vow of secrecy. There's not supposed to be any canvassing. So it's really not like a conventional election, but at the same time, it is political. I mean, someone does emerge from these exhaustive ballots with a two-thirds majority and becomes the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics. So, you know, it's both sacred and profane.
DETROW: This is a tricky thing to report on and research because the people directly involved in the process are threatened with excommunication if they talk about the details. How did you approach your research?
HARRIS: Well, in two ways, really. I asked the Vatican. I told the Vatican I wanted to write a novel about a conclave and - but I didn't ask for any, you know, inside briefing. I just simply asked to see the locations, and they let me see all the locations I wanted. And then I simply researched as much as I could. Although it's supposed to be highly secret, things leak out. It's quite gossipy in Rome and the Vatican. There were a lot of journalists assigned to the Vatican beat. They pick up stories. There was a diary purportedly kept by a Latin American cardinal a few years ago about the election of Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict, that was very useful. And I did actually talk to a cardinal, really just to sort of confirm what I already knew. He didn't spill any secrets, but it gave me confidence to talk to someone who had actually participated.
DETROW: When you were researching and writing the book, what was the most surprising thing you learned about the conclave process?
HARRIS: I think probably that it was political. I mean, you know, there's a great deal of talk about how it's very sacred and there's no - which it is, and there's no canvassing and so on. But, you know, the truth is that the - for instance, the election of Pope Benedict, Cardinal Ratzinger did well on the first ballot. The - his leading liberal opponent did less well - the archbishop of Milan. His supporters realized he was going to not make it and so switched their support behind the unknown - the then-unknown cardinal from Argentina, Bergoglio, and the whole conclave very nearly deadlocked. I mean, that was revelatory to me and gave me really three of the characters for the novel - the conservative, the liberal and the outsider. There - you know, a drama immediately just there.
DETROW: On that note, if you had that author's perspective in real life right now, if you could be in somebody's head in this coming conclave, who would you choose? What would you want to know the most about what's going to be going through people's minds over the next week or so?
HARRIS: Well, the vantage point I chose for the novel was the dean of the College of Cardinals, who was then brilliantly portrayed in the film by Ralph Fiennes. I think that that's a very good perspective. The dean of the college organizes the election. He preaches to a great mass immediately before the conclave begins, and he effectively runs the whole proceedings. He knows everything. If there are bodies buried anywhere, he knows where they are. So I think that he provides the best vantage point.
DETROW: That is author Robert Harris, who wrote "Conclave," as well as many other best-sellers. Thank you so much for talking to us.
HARRIS: Been a pleasure. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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