The eyes of the entire world will be focused on one place this week – the Sistine Chapel where 133 cardinals will be together, locked up until they decide who the next Pope will be. They may be there a few days, or much longer, depending when one cardinal gets two-thirds majority of the votes, that is 89 votes in his favor. On Wednesday there will be only one vote in the evening, but from Thursday onward, there will be 4 voting sessions. We will know when a Pope is elected when we see the white smoke coming out of the famous chimney. But while they wait, and ponder who to vote for, the cardinals have plenty of time to pray, to reflect and to make that one solitary decision that choose one cardinal over another. The Cappella Sistina is situated in the Apostolic Palace, and was named after Pope Sixtus IV, who had it built between 1473 and 1481, later to be magnificently adorned with the paintings by Michelangelo, both in the ceiling and the large Last Judgment fresco, above the main altar.
So the cardinals will be reviewing the beginning of creation if they look upwards with a series of frescoes from the creation of Adam to the expulsion from Eden. And looking forward they will meditate on the end of life and the judgment we all have to face at the end of times. On the sides there are other paintings by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, di Cosimo, Signorelli and Rosselli.
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