VATICAN CITY — Following the passing of Pope Francis, the College of Cardinals have assembled in Vatican City to elect a new supreme pontiff. The cardinals are to hold a daily conclave in the Sistine Chapel, voting on the candidates every day until they reach a two-thirds consensus. However, reports from the Vatican say that the conclaves have been facing delays as the cardinals struggle to work their way through the Sistine Chapel’s ancient and mysterious puzzle rooms.
“People assume we just put our votes in a basket or something,” said Cardinal Tagle of the Phillipines in a statement to the Vatican News, “Nothing could be further from the truth. We each have to enter the underground trial chambers, two at a time, then vote using the Holy Ballots of Saint Peter, which are all made from stone and locked securely inside the subterranean tomb of Pope Julius II.”
When asked to elaborate on this subterranean tomb, Cardinal Tagle explained, “The history books say that Michelangelo never completed the elaborate tomb of Pope Julius, which was to be flanked by statues called The Dying, The Rebellious Slave, and Moses. The truth is, the tomb actually was completed in secret under the Sistine Chapel, but the statues all face east, and in order to retrieve the tablets, you have to pull a series of chains to make them all face west, and each chain is at the end of a different hallway, and…” then Tagle trailed off, sighed, and threw up his hands in a “what-can-you-do” gesture.
Emerging from the Sistine Chapel on the first day of the conclave, covered in soot and scars, Cardinal Gumbert of Rhode Island spoke of his experience to a journalist from First Things magazine.
“So it turns out, just to get to the tomb, we have to undergo an agility test. I’m not in the best shape, so I was, in fact, badly burned by flamethrower traps,” coughed Gumbert, “I may also have been nicked by a swinging saw blade. Since that blade was installed under instruction of Giovannino de Dolci in 1483, I am almost certainly infected with something horrible.”
“Oh, and I found the Holy Grail down there,” continued Gumbert, “But I needed to fill it with molten metal and place it on a pedestal to make a shield rotate in place. It’s…hard to explain.”
In a statement on their official website, the Holy See reported that the conclave was expected to continue meeting until “at least one cardinal gets really good at swinging across gaps with a bullwhip.”
