After a lengthy wait, black smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney on Wednesday evening, indicating that the cardinals have not been able to choose a new pontiff.
Crowds gathered in their tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square for the first vote of the conclave — the results of which took more than three hours to announce.
Due to the secrecy of the process, experts have pointed out that we might never know what caused the delay, and we definitely won’t until after the conclave concludes.
But the absence of a new Pope means that cardinals will return on Thursday to the closed-door Sistine Chapel for more rounds of voting.