Puffs of White Smoke ~ 2:09 p.m.

"And when the choice is made, the camerlengo asks the candidate:  "Do you accept?"  A heavy question that can turn ambition into anguish.  Some men must have wanted to refuse.  But when a candidate answers, "I accept," in that instant of assent he becomes the successor to the See of St. Peter.
The pope-elect is then escorted to an adjoining room.  There he finds white papal cassocks in three sizes.  He chooses one, changes from the colorful garb of a cardinal ~ and spends some moments alone.  What is it like, this historic room?
...down the dark hall behind the Sistine altar...enter a small room of irregular shape, built long ago, perhaps for storage, certainly not for ceremony.
"The name of the room says everything:  the Room of Tears."
"Once the new pontiff is dressed, it is time to burn the ballots and send the puffs of white smoke up the chimney ~ the signal of resolution to the expectant crowds in St. Peter's Square.  The camerlengo then appears on a balcony and shouts "Habemus papam!  We have a pope!"

~ Bart McDowell, Inside the Vatican

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.  It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.  The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows."  ~ Henry D. Thoreau, Walden.

Exerpt from Inside the Vatican*

"Through the centuries, the form of pontifical elections has varied.  Temporal rulers ~ even mobs ~ have tried to influence the selection;  sometimes they have succeeded.  But no longer.  The isolated cardinals now elect a pope by one of three procedures:  by inspiration (acclamation), by compromise (negotiation), or by scrutiny (secret balloting requiring a two-thirds majority).  Scrutiny has been by far the most common recent method.  In centuries gone by, the deliberations have included not only persuasion, but also threats and even bribery.  But always, always prayer.

The saying is simple:  "Cardinals have elected, but God has chosen."

Source:  Inside the Vatican, Bart McDowell, National Geographic Society, The Book Division, 1991.

Forks of the Credit Ontario

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; not did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to tout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..."

~ Walden, Henry D. Thoreau (1817 - 1862) American author, poet, philosopher.
Photo:  lbw

"Just one good man..."

"We church-going Roman Catholics participate in a pattern of discrimination against women that is illegal everywhere except in the church.   The federal and provincial governments ~ which rightly insist other Canadian institutions address gender issues in hiring, promotion, and pay equity ~ say nothing to the Church, whose discrimination is the most blatant."

~ Philip Milner, author and academic, The Yankee Professor's Guide to Life in Nova Scotia (1993)

Source:  Famous Lasting Words/ Great Canadian Quotations,  J. R. Colombo, Douglas & McIntyre, 2000.

Toronto Star Headline Monday, March 11 ~ VATICAN CONCLAVE:  New pope requires Church to find just one good man by Rosie DiManno.

The world awaits either black or white smoke signals ...

Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] ~ ancient Roman poet 70 - 19 B.C. His tombstone reads in part, "I sang of pastures, countrysides, leaders."

Quotations:

"As long as rivers shall run down to the sea, or shadows touch the mountain slopes, or stars graze in the vault of heaven, so long shall your honor, your name, your praises endure."

"O, farmers pray that your summers be wet and your winters clear."

"Let us go singing as far as we go:  the road will be less tedious."

"They can because they think they can."

"Time bears away all things."

"Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to Love."

Major works:  Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid.

~ Source: BARTLETT's Familiar Quotations, John Bartlett, Little, Brown and Company, 1992 (16th ed.)