There goes that vow of silence

An unnamed Roman Catholic cardinal, risking excommunication, has revealed to an Italian magazine his diary accounts of the April conclave that elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. The magazine's report reveals that Ratzinger got 84 of the 115 votes on the final ballot -- fewer than his two immediate predecessors are thought to have received -- and that Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio of Argentina was the runner-up.

It's unclear why the anonymous cardinal chose to leak now, but one has to wonder if the recent leak of a proposed Vatican ban on gay seminary students had anything to do with it. Regardless, as a Vatican observer said, "It does seem that somebody wants to indicate that the conclave was a more complex process than was being depicted and that Benedict's mandate was not a slam dunk."