Cardinals set to renew effort to choose pope

VATICAN CITY -- With a puff of black smoke that at first appeared to be white, the 115 voting-age cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church yesterday ended their first day in conclave without settling on a successor to Pope John Paul II.

A crowd of tens of thousands, many of whom had been waiting in St. Peter's Square for hours staring at the chimney pipe above the Sistine Chapel, gasped in shock at 8:04 p.m., when the first tendrils of smoke seemed white against a dusky Rome sky.

Because white smoke would signal the election of a new pope, some of those toward the back of the piazza began running toward St. Peter's Basilica, before the hopeful cries of ''bianco," meaning white, were drowned out by the shouts of ''nero," as the thickening smoke became indisputably black.

The cardinals, having completed the first and only ballot of the day without giving anyone the required two-thirds majority, returned without comment to the Domus Sanctae Marthae. That is the new Vatican residence where they are staying, barred from any communication with the outside world, until they choose a 265th leader of the 1-billion-member church. They are scheduled to resume voting today.

The princes of the church, from 52 countries on five continents, began their day with a strongly-worded reminder of concerns held by the church's conservative wing about the threats posed by modern society. In his homily at a morning preconclave Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, John Paul's chief enforcer on doctrinal matters, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, denounced what he described as an impending ''dictatorship of relativism" in society and defended the absolute truth of the church's central teachings.

After a five-hour lunch break, the cardinals lined up in order of seniority and filed from the Hall of Blessings, above the atrium of St. Peter's Basilica, to the Sistine Chapel, following a crucifix and the Gospel and chanting the Litany of Saints. The cardinals were vested in full choir: red cassocks, white rochets, and red birettas for most, but black and gold robes for the handful of cardinals from Eastern Rite dioceses, located in India, Syria, and Ukraine.

The Vatican granted the world an unprecedented window into the opening of the conclave, transmitting live video images of the first hour on large television screens in St. Peter's Square, and through an electronic feed to broadcast media.

In a stately procession shown live, the cardinals entered the Sistine Chapel single file, while a choir sang ''Veni Creator," calling for the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Ratzinger, standing in front of Michelangelo's famous depiction of the Last Judgment, led the group in a collective oath of secrecy, and then stepped to the center of the room, placed his right hand on a Bible kept open with a golden ribbon, and read a pledge of compliance with the election proceedings. Then, one by one, the cardinals, some hobbled by age, stepped up to the Bible and swore the same oath, a process that took a full 30 minutes.

As a Vatican official ordered the cameras and staffers out of the Sistine Chapel with the prescribed Latin words of eviction: ''Extra Omnes," the crowd outside on St. Peter's Square cheered.

An 85-year-old cardinal, Tomas Spidlik of the Czech Republic, then delivered a meditation to the cardinals, and he, too, departed, leaving only those under age 80, who are eligible to vote. Under the rules of the conclave, the cardinals could vote only once yesterday; today they may vote up to four times, and a pope will be elected if any baptized Catholic male garners support from two-thirds of the cardinals, 77 votes.

The viewers were treated to a spectacle of color and ritual and tradition, as the cardinals filed in past a battery of Swiss Guards, in full dress uniforms of blue, red, and yellow, with white collars and gloves and high-crested gray helmets topped with red ostrich-feather plumes. The cardinals sat at 12 tables, six on each side of the chapel, facing the open Bible on a lectern; some gazed up toward perhaps the most famous ceiling in the world, Michelangelo's painted depictions of the creation of the world.

There was no word yesterday about which cardinals were garnering the most support in the closed-door conclave, and analysts offered varying assessments of whether Ratzinger's homily might be viewed as a campaign speech or a swan song.

''The little ship bearing the thoughts of many Christians has frequently been shaken by these waves, thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertarianism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so on," Ratzinger said.

Ratzinger said that in modernity, the prevailing culture ''recognizes nothing as definitive and . . . has as its measure only the self and its desires." He declared ''an 'adult' faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties; an adult and mature faith is profoundly rooted in friendship with Christ."

Church scholars said the homily was vintage Ratzinger, in keeping with his writings over several decades. ''His point is that all sorts of ideologies have battered the faithful over the past decades, but the truth is secure," said Monsignor Robert Sheeran, president of Seton Hall University. Sheeran said that in criticizing relativism, Ratzinger is criticizing ''the idea that I can belong to the Catholic Church on Sunday and go to a 'new age' meeting on Tuesday, that I'll define my faith and whatever works for me is the answer."

The crowd in St. Peter's Square gave a taste of the extraordinary interest in this election. The last two elections were so long ago -- 1978, when both Paul VI and John Paul I died -- that only two of today's cardinals were participants, and much of the world's Catholic population was not alive.

''We have come to pray for the church in the special moment, and we will come every day," said Sister Marie-Paul, a French nun who lives in Poland as a member of the Community of the Lamb, an order of Dominicans.

The Vatican offered no explanation for the confusion over the smoke color, but has promised that, because of similar confusion in 1978, when a pope is actually elected this time, not only will white smoke emerge from the chimney but also the bells of St. Peter's will ring.

According to the Vatican, the smoke is created by burning the ballots in an iron stove first used in the conclave of 1939. This year, for the first time, an ''electronically controlled auxiliary stove" is being employed to create extra smoke. Chemicals are being added to the burned ballots to help ensure that the signal is clear.

''Nobody really expected it tonight," said Rodrigo Abascal, a 27-year-old seminarian from Mexico City, who said he plans to return to St. Peter's Square every day until a pope is named. ''But we will have a pope, and it will be the person the Holy Spirit wants."

Stephen Heuser of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Sofia Celeste contributed to this report. Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.