How does the Holy Spirit act on the cardinals during the conclave?

After the death of a Pope, it is common to hear expressions that invite you to have patience and confidence before the choice of the new successor of St. Peter, appealing to the action of the Holy Spirit over the cardinals during the conclave.

This has, for example, Cardinal Adalberto Martínez, Archbishop of Asunción (Paraguay) Before leaving for Rome: “The Holy Spirit can illuminate us to choose the successor of Peter.”

Something similar He has expressed the archbishop of Santiago de ChileCardinal Santiago Chomalí: “Let’s avoid the frivolities pre -conclave and we pray that the Holy Spirit enlighten us. Great responsibility.”

The question about how the Holy Spirit exerts that influence on the Cardinal College – or the possibility that the sloping ignore that inspiration – is present in media and social networks, sometimes with a burning tone.

A “spark” that spreads through the Vatican halls

In 1997, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, explained on Bavaria’s television that the parraclite “acts as a good teacher, who leaves a lot of space, a lot of freedom, without abandoning us.” He added: “It is not that you dictate the candidate for which you have to vote. Probably, the only guarantee it offers is that we do not totally ruin things.”

A few years before, in 1985, Cardinal Ratzinger himself –Remember Eduard Habsburg, Hungary ambassador to the Holy See – said that general congregations are “very important” for the conclave, because here the cardinals “freely discuss everything related to the Church.”

“You observe and listen. Then, you receive a spark. And then, this spark spreads in the gloomy halls of the Vatican,” said the purple, who would become years later in Pope Benedict XVI.

“The Holy Spirit does not speak dictating the voter”

Fr. Eduardo Toraño, director of the Higher Institute of Religious Sciences of the Ecclesiastical University of San Dámaso and national spiritual advisor of the Spanish Catholic charismatic renewal, explained to ACI Press that “the Holy Spirit can be heard, but for this a pure heart that seeks the truth and good is required, avoiding personal, partisan or ideological interests”.

Starting from that base, understanding that God speaks of many ways and that “the instance where we can listen to him is the conscience, agrarian of man,” Father Toraño affirms that “the choice of the Pontiff comes from the Holy Spirit when he is focused on truth and good, from consciousness.”

Who makes the decision? The cardinals or the Holy Spirit?

Father Toraño states that, analogously to the writing of the Scriptures “the Holy Spirit does not speak to the voter the name of which he must be voted, but he will give him signs that move his mind and heart.”

Therefore, every cardinal that is within the Sistine Chapel since May 7 to participate in the conclave should be “permanently to the listening of the signs that the spirit will put, open to go beyond its criteria or prejudices,” said Fr. Toraño.

In short, “it is not a direct action of the Holy Spirit, but mediated by man. The action of the Spirit of God and human action concur, but are not on the same plane.”

In this sense, Fr. Toraño points out that, despite being diverse planes, there must be a unit of action “similar to the one that occurred in the Council of Jerusalem”, so that the cardinals can, at the end of the conclave, affirm how the apostles did in the 1st century: “We have decided the Holy Spirit and us” (Acts 15, 28).

The role of the gifts of the Holy Spirit

How does that inspiration about the sloping happen? “The cardinals have, like all the baptized, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and are called to get carried away by them,” recalls Father Toraño.

Therefore, the usual, is that “the Spirit enlightens his mind with his gifts and grants them the moral certainty of who is the best candidate to be a successor of Peter”, as long as, “the cardinals” are “docile to their action.”

Among the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, Fr. Toraño stands out three of special relevance for this mission: the gift of science, to “know what is in the mind of God and see reality from his eyes”; that of understanding, “to understand with your human mind the divine designs” and the advice, “to discern according to the will of God.”

A similar opinion has the Spanish Jesuit priest Salvador Pié-Ninot, theologian and professor of the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome: “The Spirit communicates his gift of grace to the cardinals voters, with a function that purifies their human limitations.”

“Even more decisively, the gift of the Spirit has a function that strengthens all the best values, Christians and human, that they have to exercise in their choice. It is here that the place of the necessary and constant prayer is located by the cardinals voters so that they open as much Interview with ACI Press.

Can the cardinals ignore the Holy Spirit?

Beyond the role that the Holy Spirit plays in the choice of a new pontiff and the way in which Fr. Toraño emphasizes that “the cardinals have the great responsibility of deciding the vote with these gifts of the Holy Spirit, but God has granted them freedom”, and that they must do it “with straight consciousness and pure heart, without determining their judgment by merely human or ideological criteria”.

Consequently, he concludes, “consciousness must be in tune with the apostolic tradition, faith and customs of the Church from its origins, updated according to the needs of the Church and the contemporary world, but not admonished to changing socio-cultural fashions or a certain ideology.”

Also, Fr. Pié-Ninot recalls that the action of the Holy Spirit is present “directly and own” in the life of the Church that, as expressed by the Vatican Council II in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium “It is a complex reality, made of a double element, human and divine,” hence all of it “is holy, but in turn has a need for purification.”

The Spanish theologian also states that the third person of the Holy Trinity only “assists as the main cause” in the central acts of the Catholic Church, the sacraments, “ensuring its effectiveness and truth.” Here, the ordered ministers act “as pure mediators and instruments” since the effectiveness of these acts depends directly on the Holy Spirit.

In the case of the conclave, the cardinals participate in the election “as second and mediator human causes, that is, with direct and own responsibility and freedom over their actions, always illuminated by the same spirit,” adds Fr. Pié-Ninot.

The Jesuit priest, finally, calls “pray with constancy” so that the Holy Spirit in the conclave “invades the heart of the cardinals” and thus can “use better of their freedom, straight and responsible, to discern the greatest good of the Church in the choice of the new bishop of Rome and successor of St. Peter.”