Sistine Chapel readied for subsequent pope’s election

This photograph handout on Could 3, 2025 by The Vatican Media exhibits the establishing of the Sistine Chapel and set up of the chimney earlier than the beginning of the conclave on Could 7, 2025. — Agence France-Presse

In addition to its masterpieces by Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel is present process a makeover, involving the set up of a range for burning secret votes and a chimney which can billow smoke to announce to the world that the Catholic Church has a brand new pope.

Work is in full swing contained in the Apostolic Palace to equip the Thirteenth-century chapel for the vote to elect Pope Francis’s successor, in line with a video launched Saturday by the Vatican press workplace.

READ: Vatican chimney put in forward of papal conclave

The almost five-minute video exhibits builders laying beams on scaffolding to construct a raised picket ground, earlier than establishing giant tables for using the 133 cardinal electors casting their votes within the conclave.

Different builders are seen putting in the heavy range, the place the ballots are burnt, in a nook of the chapel.

The video, dated Friday, additionally exhibits firefighters climbing onto the chapel’s tiled roof to safe the chimney flue.

Smoke from the flue — eagerly watched for in St Peter’s Sq. under — will probably be black if no candidate has secured a two-thirds majority, or white if the Church has a brand new pontiff.

Silvio Screpanti, Vatican Metropolis’s deputy director of infrastructure, stated 5 electricians and 5 technicians would stay onsite during the conclave.

A technician “will stay all through the voting” in a small room close to the Sistine Chapel, “with a distant management for the range,” which is now electronically activated, he stated in an interview for the Vatican Metropolis State web site.

Forward of the vote, technicians are “blacking out all of the home windows” within the areas used through the conclave and deactivating “all of the technological gadgets and sensors put in lately within the Sistine Chapel.”

The day earlier than the conclave, they’ll set up “roughly 80 lead seals in any respect entrances to the perimeter.”

They’re additionally cleansing and repainting “round 200 rooms” for cardinals and their workers on the Santa Marta visitor home and a constructing subsequent door, together with blocking views from some home windows, he stated.

Furnishings is saved to a “obligatory minimal,” together with a “mattress, bedside desk, and wardrobe,” Screpanti stated.

A few of the technicians have already taken half in conclaves, whereas for others it’s their first time.

All these staying to assist nonetheless should take an oath of secrecy and sleep within the Vatican, “with out having the ability to contact with their households.”