Parolin’s Votes Did Not Shift En Masse to Prevost – Conclave
The number of votes Parolin received in the first ballot, held late on the evening of 7 May, remains uncertain. Some sources speak of around twenty votes, others of more than thirty, and a few even claim he came close to forty.
The one point on which nearly all accounts agree is that the only truly cohesive group from the outset was the conservative bloc, which voted unanimously in the first round for its standard-bearer, the Hungarian Cardinal Péter Erdő.
According to early testimonies, Cardinal Parolin’s supporters allegedly reached a nocturnal understanding summarized roughly as follows: the papacy for Cardinal Prevost, and the confirmation of the Venetian prelate as Secretary of State for at least two years. Whether such an agreement truly existed, however, is difficult to establish.
What Capozza states with greater confidence is that, out of the 133 electors, at least 25 did not vote for Cardinal Prevost in the decisive ballot. Depending on the source, the new Pope is said to have secured between 105 and 109 votes.
Parolin’s tally in the fourth scrutiny, however, is consistently placed between ten and fifteen. These were cardinals who, even once the direction of the election had become clear, chose to offer a final symbolic gesture of loyalty to Parolin - or who could not bring themselves, under any circumstances, to accept Prevost on the Chair of Peter.
While never stated outright, Capozza’s account implies that the "conservative" bloc first aligned with Erdő ultimately converged on Prevost.
Picture: © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk CC BY-NC-ND, #newsBbvmswakkm