Behind the Vatican walls

Pope Benedict XVI delivers his final greetings to the assembly of cardinals at the Vatican Thursday Feb. 28, 2013. (Vatican TV/Associated Press)

It's certain to be one of those "global village" moments that Marshall McLuhan predicted all those years ago when the information and communications ages were dawning and converging.

Media from around the world are descending on Rome to tell the story of a powerful Church, looking for a new direction, fighting internal scandal and trying to choose a new leader for its 1.2 billion members.

I was there in 2005 when the world gathered to pay its final tribute to John Paul II and I was in good media company. Journalists from across the globe, representing every major news organization were there. After all, John Paul was a man whose impact was felt far beyond his Church. He was one of the newsmakers of his age. This time the media throng will be just as big, but for a very different reason. 

It's not about the man this time, it's about the future of one of the world's oldest institutions.
 
The Catholic Church has been buffeted by rumour, controversy and conspiracy theories for generations, but what's real life at the Vatican these days puts most of those book and movie scripts to shame.

Think about it -- the man who is about to become the first pope on a pension is doing something no one else has ever done. Sure, another pope left office 600 years ago but he was basically run out of St. Peter's Square in a people's revolt. That was no voluntary move. This is.

An elderly, frail Pope admitted to himself and to his Church that he simply didn't have the strength to deal with the huge issues that keep piling up in front of him: sex scandals that keep finding new layers, new victims, and new culprits; the damaging and bitter rivalries inside the Vatican that have been exposed by the Pope's butler - who somehow managed to lift his boss's private papers, filled with spicy detail, copy them, and circulate them to reporters.  Some butler. Some story. 

But there's more. The list goes on and dates back at least a few decades with lots of talking points. Like the continuing ban on women in the priesthood, celibacy for priests, the questions that swirl around the operations of the Vatican bank, the Vatican banker found swinging from a rope beneath a London Bridge and, to some, the still mysterious one month  papacy of John Paul I.  

No surprise then that even some cardinals now concede that these following few days and weeks, are a "turning point" for the Church. The chance to right the wrongs, fix the problems, steady the ship. As the Pope Emeritus seemed to suggest in his last Vatican mass, the waters must be calmed, the Church must not sink.

The trick for the assembled media is to try to fully understand what's happening inside the story. It's not easy. The Conclave to pick the new pope is a prime example. This is no political convention with speeches, floor crossings and public delegate declarations. It's all held in secret and the Vatican takes no chances. Even cellphones, tablets, in fact all electronic gadgets are banned from the Sistine Chapel where the cardinals will huddle to make their choice. Their fear is that at least one of the cardinals might fail to resist the temptation of sending, even tweeting, out a message before the puffs of white smoke signal a decision has been made. 

No official announcements are made other than the number of ballots and the eventual winner. Who came second will be the stuff of rumour, speculation and post-Conclave leaks. Just like it is with trying to get to the bottom of some of the current issues that plague, even threaten the Church.  

In an age of transparency, imagine the difference it might make if all was bared before those who still believe and those who still want to believe but have drifted away because of the controversies. If the cardinals met in public session, spoke to the challenges the Church faces, talked openly about who and why certain men could help guide them on a new path, would the world be impressed?

That won't happen of course, and maybe it shouldn't. Perhaps it's all just a journalist's natural desire to know with certainty what happened and why.  

But whatever happens, you can be sure of one thing - the decision the cardinals will make, always a momentous one, is especially so this time, almost certainly the most important one made in the Sistine Chapel in their lifetimes. It will deeply affect the 1.2 billion Catholics around the world who look to their pope for spiritual and moral leadership, but also to non-Catholics who are wondering about the future of a religion that has played such a pivotal role in the world as we know it today.  

And that is a story worth covering.