"In the fourth vote, the ballots overwhelmingly shifted" to Cardinal Prevost, Cardinal You of South Korea said.

Cardinal Müller sat behind the American front-runner in the Sistine Chapel and noticed that he seemed calm. Cardinal Tagle, who sat next to Cardinal Prevost, noticed him taking deep breaths as votes amassed in his favor.

"I asked him, 'Do you want a candy?' and he said, 'Yes'," Cardinal Tagle said.

During one of the votes, Cardinal Tobin, as he held his ballot high and put it in the urn, turned and saw Cardinal Prevost, whom he had known for about 30 years.

"I took a look at Bob," Cardinal Tobin said, "and he had his head in his hands."

-- A fascinating inside-the-Sistine-Chapel look at the Conclave that elected Cardinal Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV, via the New York Times.

I would not say so, in the sense that the Spirit picks out the Pope . . . I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather, like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit's role should be understood in a more elastic sense — not that He dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance He offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined . . . There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!

- the future Pope Benedict XVI, in a 1997 interview with a Bavarian newscast, quoted in translation in the article cited below.

Benedict's notion of elasticity is wise and compelling. It combines the light touch of love with the firm grip of connection. God will never let us go, never abandon us — but nor will He control us if we choose to wander. Benedict reassures us that God will not allow the Church to be utterly ruined. But He will allow us the scope to spoil it by our own willfulness if we insist. […] The Holy Spirit will whisper His preference into the ears of the cardinals as they sleep, eat, walk, and pray. But just as the Children of Israel, having grown weary of prophets, demanded a king to imitate the nations around them, so too will God lengthen the elastic if the Church insists on imposing its own preferences over His invitation.