A cardinal was found in possession of a phone during the papal conclave to elect Pope Leo XIV, a book has revealed

Secret complex Who elected Pope Leo The head of the Catholic Church was subjected to a boycott last May when one of the 133 cardinals involved was found carrying a mobile phone, a major security breach, a book released on Sunday revealed.

While the clergy were preparing to take their first vote Inside the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, Which was equipped with jamming equipment to block external communications, security officials picked up the signal of an active mobile phone connection.

The cardinals looked at each other suspiciously, then one of the older clerics discovered that he had a phone in his pocket and handed it over, according to the Times of India website. “The Election of Pope Leo XIV” A new book by two longtime Vatican correspondents.

The book did not mention the cardinal by name or suggest that he had any motive for keeping his phone, saying that the moment left him “confused and disturbed.”

Security breach was ‘better than fiction’

Authors Gerard O’Connell and Elisabetta Piquet wrote that the scene was “unimaginable even for a movie and unprecedented in the history of modern secret meetings.”

One of these movies, 2024 hit song “Conclave”Imagine a tangled web of conspiracies during the fictional selection of the Supreme Pontiff. O’Connell told Reuters that the unprecedented discovery of the phone last year was in its own way more surprising than anything captured in that film.

“Reality (was) better than fiction,” he said.

The clerics participating in the secret meeting pledge not to communicate with the outside world and to hand over their phones and all other communication devices for the duration of the proceedings, which could last for several days.

The Vatican press office did not respond to a request for comment on the new book, which provides behind-the-scenes details of one of the world’s most secret elections.

Only two major candidates for pope

The cardinals met for a two-day conclave from May 7-8 under intense global spotlight to elect a successor to Pope Francis, who died in April after 12 years leading the 1.4 billion-member church.

Much speculation at the time focused on the possibility that the cardinals would elect a new pope from Asia or Africa, given that the conclave was the most geographically diverse in history, with clerics from 70 countries participating.

But no candidate from those regions received much support, according to the book, which details the cardinals’ votes for the first time based on information from interviews with participating clergy.

While it is strictly forbidden for cardinals to reveal details of secret ballots in the conclave without permission from the future pope, it is common for journalists to slowly extract information from the clergy in the following years.

Two candidates immediately emerged The book said they were among the front runners within the conclave.

One of them was Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a longtime Vatican official who has been identified by several media outlets as everyone’s favorite.

The other was American Cardinal Robert Prevost, a figure who was mostly unknown outside church circles, but who became Pope Leo, the first pope from the United States.

In the first conclave vote, held on the evening of May 7, Prevost actually received between 20 and 30 votes, an unusually large number, according to the book.

Philippine Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who was also seen as the favorite in the election, received less than 10 votes in the conclave.

On the fourth ballot on the afternoon of May 8, Prevost won by 108 votes. Tagle was sitting next to Prevost while the final votes were being counted and offered the future pope a cough drop to soothe his throat, the book said.