No New Pope Elected Yet After Black Smoke Pours Out Of Sistine Chapel's Chimney
HuffPost
The cardinals will have lunch and then return for the afternoon voting session.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Cardinals failed again Thursday morning to find a successor to Pope Francis, sending black smoke billowing up through the Sistine Chapel chimney after two more inconclusive rounds of conclave voting.
The black smoke poured out at 11:50 a.m. (0950 GMT) after the second and third ballots to elect a pope to lead the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church.
With no one securing the necessary two-thirds majority, or 89 votes, the 133 cardinals will return to the Vatican residences where they are being sequestered. They will have lunch and then return to the Sistine Chapel for the afternoon voting session. Two more votes are possible Thursday.
The cardinals had returned to the Sistine Chapel on Thursday to resume voting for a new pope and crowds flocked back to St. Peter’s Square to await their decision, after the first conclave ballot failed to find a winner during a longer-than-expected voting session Wednesday afternoon.
The billowing black smoke poured out of the chapel chimney just after 9 p.m. Wednesday (1900 GMT), about 4½ hours after the cardinals filed into the chapel. That prompted speculation about what took so long for the 133 electors to cast and count their ballots.
