Secrets of Leo XIV’s Election: Smuggled Phones, Double Votes, and a Terrified Papabile

A major insider account of the conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV has arrived — in Spanish — spilling jaw-dropping anecdotes from the Sistine Chapel.

Dear friends —

Happy Friday! Today’s piece is a subscriber-only deep dive into the first real insider account of Pope Leo XIV’s stunning election — and yes, it’s just as wild as the rumors suggested.

The English edition of Elisabetta Piqué and Gerard O’Connell’s El último cónclave doesn’t hit shelves until March. But I didn’t think you should have to wait that long to read about conclave cardinals smuggling phones, casting double ballots, or recoiling at the prospect of actually being elected pope.

So I did what any impatient American would do — I read the Spanish edition myself.

(Gracias eternas to Señora Knox and the patient saints of the foreign language departments who endured my butchering of Spanish for nearly a decade. I owe this dispatch to your long-suffering perseverance.)

Today’s essay brings you the most astonishing details from the book, including the moment conservative favorite Cardinal Péter Erdő realized he might win — and reportedly looked like he’d seen a ghost.

We also trace how the momentum quietly shifted behind a little-known bishop from Chicago — and how the Spirit, through human drama, gave us Leo.

If you’re already a subscriber, thank you. You make this work possible.

If you’re not subscribed yet, I hope you’ll consider joining us. Subscriptions start at $8/month and unlock our full archive — including our ongoing series on Pope Leo’s life, formation, and the forces reshaping the Church in America.

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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.

The conclave that made history by electing Robert Francis Prevost as Pope Leo XIV had no shortage of behind-the-scenes gossip.

According to El último cónclave — a new book by renowned Vatican reporters Elisabetta Piqué and Gerard O’Connell — the normally secretive proceedings were spiced with anecdotes inside the Sistine Chapel that prove truth is stranger than fiction.

O’Connell even boasts that their real-life account is “better than the film ‘Conclave’ because reality is better than fiction.”

Indeed, reality intruded in comical ways.

For one, Spanish Cardinal Carlos Osoro accidentally cast two ballots at once, when two voting slips stuck together in his hand.

This mistake went unnoticed until the count showed 134 votes cast, even though only 133 cardinals were present. The miscount halted everything. A sheepish Osoro apologized, and that entire ballot had to be scrapped and re-run.

On top of that, some cardinals overslept that morning — they’d surrendered their cellphones (and thus their alarms) before the conclave, so Vatican staff had to knock on doors to wake a few dozing princes of the Church.

The Vatican even gifted them old-fashioned alarm clocks afterward as a tongue-in-cheek remedy.

Then there’s the forbidden phone. Here’s what happened.