Enter Cardinal Mamberti?

An 11th hour candidate is emerging amid a divided field

In the final 24 hours before the papal conclave begins, conversations around the prospective candidates have risen to fever pitch.

After a week of gathering momentum, the swell of support behind Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost appears to have stalled, with Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga reportedly leaving Rome in frustration after failing to secure unanimous backing for him among Latin American cardinals — with some even said to be favoring the African Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo.

Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, too, appears to have hit a ceiling in the pre-conclave general congregations, with solid support among other Asian cardinals, but failing to make a decisive breakthrough among the global body and convince them he could govern with the same strength with which he preaches.

European cardinals appear to be splitting their votes several ways, with “conservatives” mostly gravitating towards Hungarian Cardinal Péter Erdő, and more liberal voices increasingly giving France’s Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline consideration.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, long pitched as the natural centrist compromise candidate, has seen his support ebb amid reflections on his record as both a curial administrator and Vatican diplomat.

In short, contrary to the expectations of received wisdom, the more the cardinals have tried to get to know each other over their two weeks in Rome, the farther they seem to have moved from any kind of consensus on who should be the next pope.

That kind of uncertainty is sitting unwell with many in the college, some of whom fear a long conclave projecting uncertainty and division to the world waiting outside — though, it should be noted, some others are saying it would be no bad thing for the conclave to take a while.

Amid the uncertainty, though, an eleventh hour new candidate has begun to be discussed, with a growing number of backers among the curial cardinals most familiar with his quiet resumé — increasingly seen among cardinals as quietly impressive.

Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, 73, was on few cardinals’ minds, and fewer conclave-watchers’ radar, in the days following the death of Pope Francis. Born in Africa but of French nationality, he served for years as a career Vatican diplomat, including at the United Nations in New York and in conflict zones like Sudan.

Under Benedict XVI, Mamberti was made head of the Secretariat of State’s diplomatic section, and charged with trying to keep order amid the often chaotic tenure of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as Secretary of State.

In 2014, Pope Francis named him prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, installing him as effectively chief justice of the Church’s highest canonical court. It was a significant change of pace, but one Mamberti’s colleagues and fellow judges say he took to with diligence.

One person close to the general congregations told The Pillar that Mamberti “actually has better preparations to be pope than most,” pointing to his work as a global diplomat familiar with internal Vatican dysfunction.

“He did an impossible job [under Bertone], and now spent 10 years reading every appeal by a diocese against every dicastery in the Vatican. It is a professorship in bad and good governance. The Church does need such things, and a period of quiet, responsible stewardship can be attractive.”

His supporters point out, he has stayed out and away from some of the more contentious issues and major scandals which have dogged other candidates. Though he served as the Vatican’s chief diplomat and in the Secretariat of State, he departed before the scandals of the London property deal, and the controversial Vatican-China agreement.

“He is, in that sense, [Cardinal] Parolin without the baggage,” as one supporter put it.

Perhaps just as importantly, he is of no obvious tribe or ideological clique within the college. In his homily in St. Peter’s on Sunday, at which he presided over the final Mass of the nine days of mourning for Pope Francis, he paid tribute to the late pope, whom he said “we have all admired” for his witness to “the love of the Lord.”

“He warned the powerful that we must obey God rather than men and proclaimed to all humanity the joy of the Gospel,” Mamberti said.

“The mission is love itself, which becomes a service to the Church and to all humanity,” Mamberti said, while rooting the outward proclamation of the Gospel in adoration of God, which he called “an essential dimension of the mission of the Church and of the life of the faithful.”

One cardinal apparently remarked after the Mass that he’d not previously noticed Mamberti, but that he “looked the part” of a pope.

Among the small number of cardinals apparently now pressing Mamberti’s case are said to be a number of senior Vatican cardinals, both those in the conclave and those over 80, who are especially concerned that the voting does not become deadlocked and acrimonious.

Of course, there is a long distance between the quiet support of a handful of cardinals and a two-thirds majority in a conclave. But, according to those floating Mamberti’s name, he could emerge as a consensus candidate if several rounds of voting produce no clear results — a pontifex in the literal sense of a “bridge builder.”

It seems like an improbable outcome, and the expected favorites are expected for good reasons. But if all the more obvious and likely candidates find it impossible to achieve a breakthrough majority, stranger things have happened.