Papal Conclave 2013: Witness to a new era

"I don't know anything about him," said the pious young American next to me, "but I love him already". We were crushed together beneath the balcony of St Peter's, waiting to see the new head of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics for the first time. His name had just been announced - in Latin, of course - and most of those around us had had, until that moment, no idea who he was or where he came from. But they cheered themselves hoarse none the less. There can be few public events that generate quite such intense, largely benign and sometimes slightly bonkers emotion.

The conclave system was introduced in the 13th century to meet the political realities of the day. Cardinals gathered in Viterbo, outside Rome, took so long to make up their minds about a new pope that, in 1271, the people of the town locked them in, put them on a diet of bread and water and, eventually, tore their roof off. Nearly 750 years later, standing with a microphone in my hand and gazing up at the banks of television cameras trained on St Peter's, I marvelled at the way this eccentric and really rather brutal electoral system (this week's rainstorms over the Vatican were a reminder of how uncomfortable the Viterbo cardinals must have been at times) had become one of the great spectacles of the modern media age.

Having Michelangelo and Bernini as your set designers does of course help. The television lights revealed how wonderfully well Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescos have scrubbed up, and their Eminences' gorgeous scarlet offset the colours a treat. Bernini's colonnade around St Peter's Square creates a space that is at once awe-inspiringly grand and strangely intimate; when you are standing within its embrace, you feel both a spectator of and a participant in the drama unfolding around you.

Wednesday was miserably wet, but I spent as much time as I could smoke-watching in the square with the pilgrims, priests, nuns and tourists who had been drawn by the occasion. There was enough time during the long hours of waiting to forget about being a journalist and to soak up the experience as a Catholic.

A man dressed in old hessian sacks, with battered bare feet and a wooden staff, knelt in silent prayer for much of the day; no one bothered him, and even the press photographers who snapped him gave him plenty of space. My BBC producer spotted the flags of Cuba, Brazil, Argentina and Hungary flying above the crowds (he confessed a misspent youth of competitive general knowledge swotting). We chatted to nuns and priests from Kerala in India, from Madagascar and Malawi, and listened to a group of Brazilian children singing.

It was a powerful reminder of what it means to be part of the wider Catholic family - enough to make me forget, for a while at least, the dreadful crimes that have brought such shame on us all. And the idea of a universal family, with a pope as father, makes a little more sense of those comments from my young American neighbour in the crowd beneath the balcony of St Peter's.

For a journalist, Catholic or not, a conclave is simply tremendous fun. Everyone who is anyone in the Catholic world passes through St Peter's Square; you simply stand there and let the commentators, clergy and cardinals (the ones too old to vote) come within microphone range. The gossip is wonderfully lively and almost entirely fanciful. On Wednesday morning I was told that "very good sources" suggested that Cardinal Scola, the Archbishop of Milan and widely tipped as a favourite, had scored 50 votes on the first ballot, but had withdrawn because he had peaked too early. Half an hour later, another equally "reliable" source suggested he had scored 50 votes and was forging on towards the necessary two-thirds majority.

If you look at the record of the last three conclaves, you can only conclude that most journalistic speculation about the runners and riders, however well-informed and thoughtful it may sound, is rather less useful than the commentators' chat before a football match. No one outside the conclave expected Pope John Paul II's election in 1978, and although Cardinal Ratzinger was certainly the most prominent figure in the Sacred College in 2005, the conventional wisdom then held that he was too divisive a figure to be elected pope.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio's name was on a few long-lists of papabili, but he was certainly not among the favourites. One of my journalist colleagues pocketed a tidy sum on Wednesday evening, after putting a couple of quid on Bergoglio to win, at 120-1. The unpredictability of it all just makes it more fun as a great sporting occasion.

I suspect that some of the cardinals enjoyed the tease of springing a surprise choice on us all; the media has been a source of misery to many of them over the past few years, and they are human. And there was something splendid about their refusal to make concessions to the 24-hour news culture. Information from within the Sistine Chapel really did stop - bar the occasional puff of smoke - at the moment the key was turned in its doors. I pitied those reporters under pressure to provide constant "updates".

But there were also reminders this week that the deliberate other-worldliness which the conclave system reflects has been the source of so many of the Church's troubles.

At the pre-conclave mass on Tuesday, Cardinal Sodano, a former Secretary of State, or Vatican Prime Minister, talked defiantly about the Church's "glorious" past and "indefectibility" - a grand way of saying that it will endure until the end of time. The following morning brought the less than glorious news that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had paid out $10 million to settle four abuse cases. The cardinals knew nothing of this as they made their choice - the conclave system is designed to keep our news out as well as keeping their news in. It will be another difficult dossier waiting in Pope Francis' in-tray.

And that lunchtime the papal spokesperson, Fr Lombardi, cited the crowds in St Peter's Square as evidence of the Church's continued good health. Yes, they were inspiring, but an answer to plummeting numbers in Europe's pews? Hardly.

With the white smoke and the announcement of the new pope's name, the news cycle resumed its relentless spinning; the first hard questions about Francis' beliefs and past - especially about his role during the years of the military dictatorship in Argentina - have begun to surface. But at the end of this week of high drama and grand spectacle, the surprise of his election still warms the Vatican in an after-glow.

Father Lombardi has been dishing out choice morsels to demonstrate the new pope's humility and simplicity of life. The morning after his election, Francis went to pray in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and on the way back to the Vatican - we were told at that day's briefing - he stopped at his hotel to pick up his suitcase and pay his bill himself.

And there is more than spin to the idea that Pope Francis likes to operate without the usual paraphernalia of power. He is the first ever Jesuit pope, and on Friday afternoon I visited the museum dedicated to St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the order. I picked up a rather charming piece of gossip: Francis had telephoned that morning hoping to speak to the Order's General, and the man running the reception desk refused to believe who he was.

We got a first-hand glimpse of his informality of style at an audience for the press yesterday morning. It was a smart move to hold his first Audience for journalists. Hundreds of us queued cheerfully for an hour and more in the sun - displaying a patience we hacks are not generally known for - and when he stepped onto the stage in the vast Hall of Paul VI, he was greeted with applause.

The style was informal - he cracked a couple of jokes (including a rather obscure one about the pope who suppressed his order, the Jesuits), and ad libbed in a way that must have terrified his aides.

It was in the course of one of these asides - a story about the way the name "Francis" came to him during the conclave - that he dropped his bombshell: "How I would like," he said, "a church that is poor, and a church for the poor." He did not elaborate, but as we stepped out into all that Renaissance splendour basking in the spring sunshine, many of us wondered what that might mean.

Could he really be proposing that the Church strip itself of its treasures? If he is, his will be not just a reforming pontificate, it would be a revolutionary one.

At the end of his address, he greeted selected journalists individually. A couple of women kissed him on the cheek, which he did not seem to mind. One of the chosen few was blind; Pope Francis had the wit to pat the guide dog. And after the impeccably dressed Benedict, he looked very slightly - and rather appealingly - scruffy; his cassock was definitely too short.

Francis is 76, just two years younger than Pope Benedict was at the time of his election. Despite having only one lung - he lost the other to an infection years ago - he is said to be in good health. But there must be a chance that, within the next five to 10 years, he will follow his predecessor's example and resign.

If this becomes the practice, will conclaves lose their lustre, becoming more routine, like general elections? And if the Church is choosing popes for a relatively brief time in office, and not for life, does it make sense to continue with all the carry-on that has marked the election of popes in the past? The pageantry we have seen this week would seem to sit uneasily with Francis's much-vaunted love of the simple life.

If this conclave does mark the passing of the old order, I am glad - as a Catholic and as a journalist - that I was here this week to see it in all its glory.