VATICAN CITY

Four hundred miles to the south, on a hillside in the heart of Rome, an old man strolled through the cold shadows of a walled garden, dressed in an ivory cassock and cloak. At seventy-two years of age, he no longer moved quickly, though he came to the gardens each morning and made a point of walking for at least an hour along the pine-scented footpaths. Some of his predecessors had cleared the gardens so they could meditate undisturbed. The man in the ivory cassock liked to see people--real people, not just the fawning Curial cardinals and foreign dignitaries who came to kiss his fisherman's ring each day. A Swiss Guard always hovered a few paces behind him, more for company than protection, and he enjoyed stopping for a brief chat with the Vatican gardeners. He was a naturally curious man and considered himself something of a botanist. Occasionally, he borrowed a pair of pruning shears and helped trim the roses. Once, a Swiss Guard had found him on his hands and knees in the garden. Assuming the worst, the guard had summoned an ambulance and rushed to his side, only to find that the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church had decided to do a bit of weeding.

Those closest to the Holy Father could see that something was troubling him. He had lost much of the good humor and easy charm that had seemed like a breath of spring breeze after the dour final days of the Pole. Sister Teresa, the iron-willed nun from Venice who ran his papal household, had noticed a distinct loss of appetite. Even the sweet biscotti she left with his afternoon coffee went untouched lately. She often entered the papal study on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace and found him lying face-down on the floor, deep in prayer, eyes closed as though he were in agony. Karl Brunner, the head of his Swiss Guard detail, had noticed the Holy Father frequently standing at the Vatican walls, gazing across the Tiber, seemingly lost in thought. Brunner had protected the Pole for many years and had seen the toll the papacy had taken on him. It was part of the job, he counseled Sister Teresa, the crushing burden of responsibility that falls on every pope. "It is enough to make even the holiest of men lose their temper from time to time. I'm certain God will give him the strength to overcome it. The old Pietro will be back soon."

Sister Teresa was not so sure. She was among the handful of people inside the Vatican who knew how much Pietro Lucchesi had not wanted this job. When he had arrived in Rome for the funeral of John Paul II, and the conclave that would choose his successor, the elfin, soft-spoken patriarch of Venice was not considered remotely papabile, a man possessed with the qualities necessary to be pope. Nor did he give even the slightest indication that he was interested. The fifteen years he had spent working in the Roman Curia were the unhappiest of his career, and he had no desire to return to the back-biting village on the Tiber, even as its lord high mayor. Lucchesi had intended to cast his vote for the archbishop of Buenos Aires, whom he had befriended during a tour of Latin America, and return quietly to Venice.

But inside the conclave, things did not go as intended. As their predecessors had done time and time again over the centuries, Lucchesi and his fellow princes of the church, one hundred thirty in all, entered the Sistine Chapel in solemn procession while singing the Latin hymn Veni Creator Spiritus. They gathered beneath Michelangelo's Last Judgment, with its humbling depiction of tormented souls rising toward heaven to face the wrath of Christ, and prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide their hand. Then each cardinal stepped forward individually, placed his hand atop the Holy Gospels, and swore an oath binding him to irrevocable silence. When this task was complete, the master of papal liturgical ceremonies commanded, "Extra Omnes"--Everyone out--and the conclave began in earnest.

The Pole had not been content to leave matters solely in the hands of the Holy Spirit. He had stacked the College of Cardinals with prelates like himself, doctrinaire hardliners determined to preserve ecclesiastical discipline and the power of Rome over all else. Their candidate was an Italian, a consummate creature of the Roman Curia: Cardinal Secretary of State Marco Brindisi.

The moderates had other ideas. They pleaded for a truly pastoral papacy. They wanted the occupant of the throne of St. Peter to be a gentle and pious man; a man who would be willing to share power with the bishops and limit the influence of the Curia; a man who could reach across the lines of geography and faith to heal those corners of the globe torn by war and poverty. Only a non-European suitable to the moderates. They believed the time had come for a Third World pope.

The first ballots revealed the conclave to be hopelessly divided, and soon both factions were searching for a way out of the impasse. On the final ballot of the day, a new name surfaced. Pietro Lucchesi, the patriarch of Venice, received five votes. Hearing his name read five times inside the sacred chamber of the Sistine Chapel, Lucchesi closed his eyes and blanched visibly. A moment later, when the ballots were placed into the nero for burning, several cardinals noticed that Lucchesi was praying.

That evening, Pietro Lucchesi politely refused an invitation to dine with a group of fellow cardinals, adjourning to his room at the Dormitory of St. Martha instead to meditate and pray. He knew how conclaves worked and could see what was coming. Like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, he pleaded with God to lift this burden from his shoulders--to choose someone else.

But the following morning, Lucchesi's support built, rising steadily toward the two-thirds majority necessary to be elected pope. On the final ballot taken before lunch, he was just ten votes short. Too anxious to take food, he prayed in his room before returning to the Sistine Chapel for the ballot that he knew would make him pope. He watched silently as each cardinal advanced and placed a twice-folded slip of paper into the golden chalice that served as a ballot box, each uttering the same solemn oath: "I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge that my vote is given to the one whom before God I think should be elected."

The ballots were checked and rechecked before the tally was announced. One hundred fifteen votes had been cast for Lucchesi.

The camerlengo approached Lucchesi and posed the same question that had been put to hundreds of newly elected popes over two millennia.

 "Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?" After a lengthy silence that produced much tension in the chapel, Pietro Lucchesi responded: "My shoulders are not broad enough to bear the burden you have given me, but with the help of Christ the Savior, I will try. Accepto."

"By what name do you wish to be called?"

"Paul the Seventh," Lucchesi replied.

The cardinals filed forward to embrace the new pontiff and offer obedience and loyalty to him. Lucchesi was then escorted to the scarlet chamber known as the camera lacrimatoria--the crying room--for a few minutes of solitude before being fitted with a white cassock by the Gammarelli brothers, the pontifical tailors. He chose the smallest of the three ready-made cassocks, and even then he seemed like a small boy wearing his father's shirt. As he filed onto the great loggia of St. Peter's to greet Rome and the world, his head was barely visible above the balustrade. A Swiss Guard brought forth a footstool, and a great roar rose from the stunned crowd in the square below. A commentator for Italian television breathlessly declared the new pope "Pietro the Improbable." Cardinal Marco Brindisi, the head of the hard-line Curial cardinals, privately christened him Pope Accidental I.

The Vaticanisti said the message of the divisive conclave was clear. Pietro Lucchesi was a compromise pope. His mandate was to run the Church in a competent fashion but launch no grand initiatives. The battle for the heart and soul of the Church, said the Vaticanisti, had effectively been postponed for another day.