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I was back in my hotel room when the smoke went up, changing my wet shoes (it's been raining all week in Rome). I heard the roar of the crowd, turned on the TV. And there was the famous chimney. And, curling up from it, a series of white clouds.
With more smoke expected in the next few hours, excitement levels are rising here in Rome. In so far as there is any wisdom around this impenetrable event, it goes like this. The big divide in the conclave lies not between the traditionalists and the liberals - most of the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel were elected in Pope Benedict's time as pontiff and liberals are very few and far between. No: rather, the big split is between those cardinals who want to see major reform at the Curia, or civil service of the Vatican, and those who believe things are broadly fine as they are.
We saw it first on the giant screen erected in the centre of St Peter's Square; and then we saw it curling up towards the sky from a rooftop just to the right of the great basilica roof. Black smoke, unmistakably black, the same this morning as it was last night. Someone at the Vatican has done a pyrotechnic course since 2005, when there were complaints that the smoke wasn't obviously black or obviously white. This time, there's no doubt.
The world has come to Rome. That's how it feels, walking across the cobbled streets towards St Peter's Square. It's always a bustling area, with pilgrims thronging to the best-known church in Christendom; but today the crowds are sometimes so thick that we just have to stop, and wait, before we can move on.
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We are the Easter people, as Pope John Paul used to say, and across the world we unite to celebrate the greatest feast in the calendar in an astonishing range of colourful ways. Faith Today looks at the traditions that mark Easter, and tells the stories behind them.
The Apostleship of The Sea has an amazing ministry to seafarers around the world. Greg Watts speaks to Father Colin Sammut about taking the Gospel onto the high seas.
Archbishop Bernard Longley, Archbishop of Birmingham, launched Doorway to Faith - a day by day journey through the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a way of coming to know the Catechism better during the Year of Faith.
The resource has been marketed nationally and internationally and the response has been overwhelming with over 200,000 being distributed so far. Archbishop Bernard explains:
Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, is the editor of the hugely popular Walk with Me prayer and scripture resource and explains why this Eastertide, in the Year of Faith, presents us with a wonderful opportunity to grow in faith.
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