c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ It isn’t exactly the Ritz-Carlton or the luxurious Lord Byron Hotel, but the Domus Sancta Martha inside the Vatican’s walls sure beats the cot and chamber pot treatment of conclaves past.

The conclave that begins Monday (April 18) to elect the next pope requires absolute seclusion for the 115 cardinals who will cast a vote. There are no cell phones, no newspapers, no e-mail, no outside communication whatsoever.

To ensure the electors are sequestered from any outside influence, all voting cardinals will be housed in the Domus Sancta Martha (St. Martha’s House), a plain but capable $20 million hotel built just for this purpose by Pope John Paul II in 1996.

Some church observers wonder, however, whether the accommodations might be too comfortable _ allowing the cardinals to drag out the process longer than if they had been subjected to the spartan conditions designed to speed up the process in the past.

“In very human terms, the pressures felt in previous conclaves to get the job done expeditiously will not be felt in the next conclave,” papal biographer George Weigel said in a speech in Washington earlier this year. “Call it the absence of the `chamber pot factor.”’

The five-story stucco building is nestled just west of St. Peter’s Basilica, overlooking an Esso gas station behind a high stone wall. It includes all the basic amenities of a standard hotel, including meeting rooms and a dining hall _ plus a small chapel.

The site previously housed a hospice built by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. During World War II, the building housed Jews, refugees and foreign ambassadors whose countries had cut ties with Italy.

The 23 single rooms and 106 suites, which include a bedroom, private bath and sitting room, will be assigned to the cardinals by lot. The building’s regular residents _ mostly Vatican employees of the secretary of state _ will be forced to find temporary housing until the cardinals emerge with a new pope.

A video released by the Vatican shows a plain but comfortable facility with a marble-floor reception area, simple furnishings and a dining room with large round tables, according to The Associated Press.

Two doctors will be on call for medical emergencies, and several priests will be provided to the cardinals to hear confessions, but will not be allowed to stay on site. The Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who run the building, will also presumably provide meals and housekeeping.

“It’s not luxurious, but maybe a three- or four-star hotel,” said Archbishop John Foley, a Philadelphia native who oversees the Vatican’s communications agency. “It’s not a five-star, it’s not deluxe, but it’s nice.”

It’s a far cry from the conditions imposed on cardinals in the past. Frustrated by some conclaves that dragged on for weeks or months, church officials decided to keep the cardinals uncomfortable in hopes of quickening the election process.

In previous conclaves, cardinals were housed in the Apostolic Palace on cots separated by temporary partitions. John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter, recalled that the late Cardinal Basil Hume of London once said the beds were borrowed “from a seminary for very short people.”

Things got particularly bad in the August 1978 conclave that elected Pope John Paul I in the middle of a Roman heat wave.

“We were dying of heat, asphyxiation seemed to be getting the upper hand, and I noticed that some cardinals were on the verge of collapse,” Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Siri told the newspaper La Stampa in 1992, according to Allen’s book, “Conclave.”

“Then I rebelled, and with the authority of a member of the supervising committee, I said, `I order you to open the windows.’ Some responded, `Eminence, it is not permitted to open the windows. They could hear the applause in the Secretariate of State (when the new pope is elected).’ I responded: `What if they hear?’ They opened the windows. Color began to return to the faces of the moribund.”

Perhaps after living through the two conclaves of 1978, John Paul decided thing had gone too far. He ordered the building to “offer hospitality in a spirit of authentic priestly fraternity” and set it aside for “the exclusive use” of cardinals during the conclave.

Monsignor Charles Burns, a former Vatican archivist, seemed skeptical that the cardinals’ creature comforts alone would prolong the conclave. More likely, he said, it would take time for the most internationally diverse group of cardinals to get to know each other.

“The cardinals don’t know each other all that well,” he said. “It could mean the conclave could last a little bit longer as they walk through all of this.”

MO/PH END ECKSTROM