
What happens when the Cardinals take nearly 3 years to elect a Pope? You get conclave chaos, a roofless meeting hall, and a man named Teobaldo Visconti summoned home from Crusade to become Pope Gregory X. In this offbeat episode, I read from Archibald Bower’s vivid 1750 account of how one Pope cleaned up the mess with a decree that still governs papal elections today.
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