ROME (AP) — Rome is bustling with jasmine blooming and tourists swarming. But behind closed doors, these are the days of dinner parties, coffee klatches and private meetings as cardinals in town to elect a successor to Pope Francis suss out who among them has the stuff to be next.
It was in this period of pre-conclave huddling in March of 2013 that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the retired archbishop of Westminster, and other reform-minded Europeans began pushing the candidacy of an Argentine Jesuit named Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Their dinner table lobbying worked and Pope Francis won on the fifth ballot.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols may have inherited Murphy-O’Connor’s position as archbishop of
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