No pope was elected after a third round of balloting in the Sisteen Chapel produced another heavy plume of black smoke Wednesday morning. If no Roman Pontiff is elected by Friday, the cardinals will rest on Saturday and resume voting on Sunday after Mass. Several Vatican sources have spoken anonymously with EWTN and Catholic News Agency before the conclave began, and if those sources have any accuracy at all, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York may have entered the Sisteen Chapel with a considerable number of votes, and may have been backed by other Americans encouraging their brothers to consider Dolan.
It is impossible to know (and rightly so) what is happening in the conclave, but if these sources had any ring of reality to them, the emergence of Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan as the new Pontiff might be seen as a compromise if the cardinals cannot agree on a non-Italian candidate. Scola is a close confidante of Benedict XVI and was a regular contributor to the theological journal Communio which Joseph Ratzinger helped to found.
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