For more than an hour, confusion reigned in St. Peter's Square. When the smoke first began to curl out of a temporary rooftop chimney from the Vatican's Sistine Chapel at 6:24 p.m. on Saturday, it looked white—the traditional color to signal that the secret conclave within had elected a Pope. But could it be true? Not likely—not on the opening day of the largest, most complex gathering of Cardinal electors in the long pageant of papal elections. Sure enough, with dusk beginning to enfold the splendid statues and pillars of the Bernini colonnade, the smoke turned blacker, then gray. Exasperated, the Vatican Radio announcer said, "There is still uncertainty about the color of the smoke." The crowd in St. Peter's Square swelled from 10,000 to 25,000 and then to 50,000 on the off-chance that history was about to be made.
Suddenly, more than an hour after the puzzling signals began to billow forth, the Vatican's Pericle Felici, ranking Cardinal-deacon in the Sacred College, appeared at the opened Window of the Benediction in the center of St. Peter's Basilica. His Latin words boomed out over loudspeakers: "Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam!" (I announce to you a great joy. We have a Pope!) The crowd was hushed as Felici went on: "He is the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Cardinal Albino Luciani, who has taken the name of John Paul the First [in Latin, Joannes Paulus Primus]."
The name was unusual—and unprecedented. No Pope had ever adopted a double name; none had selected a first-of-its-kind name in a millennium. Apparently, the new Pontiff wanted to signal originality and also a bond of continuity with his two immediate predecessors: the reformer, John XXIII, and the moderator, Paul VI. Or was he evoking their New Testament forebears?
If the election's speed was surprising, so was the identity of the 263rd Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. In the first days after Paul's death, Luciani, 65, Patriarch of Venice, had been mentioned only as a remote compromise candidate if the conclave reached a deadlock. Now he was in the window, a frail-looking, slight, bespectacled figure in ponifical vestments, lifting his hands gingerly in the papal salute, offering blessing with a brisk gesture of his right hand, nodding smilingly at the excited crowd below.
Master of Ceremonies Virgilio Noé held a large scroll before him as John Paul I read out his first apostolic blessing, the traditional benediction, urbi et orbi (to the city and to the world). His high voice quavered a bit as he chanted the Latin in lilting Gregorian style. Before the blessing, the new Pope made an unusual gesture, granting "to all" who heard the words—either in person or by broadcast—a plenary indulgence. In Catholic belief, all sins, though forgiven, must be atoned for—either here on earth or, after death, in purgatory. For those truly repentant, a plenary indulgence cancels the debt for all past sins.