The cardinals gathering for the conclave hope to pick the very best among them to be the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Their culinary expectations are not so high.
“Food you could eat at a train station” was how Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, a conclave veteran from the Italian city of Genoa, famous for its pesto, described the fare at the Casa Santa Marta, a guesthouse in the Vatican where the cardinals will be staying during the conclave. By train station food, he said he meant pastas with “watery sauce,” simple cutlets and salads: “Not exciting.”
The ambience at Santa Marta isn’t much of a draw, either. Its cafeteria has pale green columns, utilitarian furniture and fan art in the hallway depicting Francis as a Jedi knight in “Star Wars.” But priests would angle for a reservation there because Santa Marta was the home of Pope Francis. Until he began ailing and taking his meals in his room, the pope often ate in the cafeteria at a table between the window and the refrigerator.
Among the residents of the guesthouse, Francis, with his emphasis on simple living and humility, bore some blame for the decline in the food. Some lamented bland vegetables, less-than-rich pastas and leftovers from gifts to the pope — a box of dates from the Middle East, for example.
Across the ideological spectrum, a consensus emerged.
“You don’t eat very well,” said Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi of Italy, a supporter of Pope Francis.
“It’s not so good,” said Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Germany, who was fired by Francis.
The food at the conclave isn’t supposed to be good.
The tradition of locking in the cardinals began in the 13th century, after residents of Viterbo, a town north of Rome where the election was being held, grew so frustrated with the process, which was taking years, that they ripped the roof off the building where the cardinals were meeting and reduced the menu to bread and water. The pope who came out of that election, Gregory X, decreed in 1274 that after three days of conclave, cardinals would get only one meal a day. The more days they took, the less food they got.
But election menus improved. Centuries later, conclave food deliveries were inspected for secret messages — easily stuffable pies and chickens were verboten — and passed to the cardinals through a revolving door.
When a 16th-century cardinal died during a conclave, some others claimed the food was poisoned. In the conclave that lasted from November 1549 to February 1550, the famed Vatican cook Bartolomeo Scappi noted that cardinals took turns acting as poison testers. Once it was clear the food was safe, they drank from carafes of wine and ate from hampers full of food.
Scappi doesn’t say exactly what he fed them, but Crystal King, the author of a novel about the chef, wrote that her research led her to conclude they ate “ravioli and rabbit pappardelle” and “cheesy breads, veal croquettes, roasted bear, grilled beef ribs, open-faced mushroom crostatas, pheasant in red-currant sauce and maybe even caviar omelets.”
Times have changed, and though Santa Marta is not exactly serving bread and water, the cardinals preparing to vote for the next pope know not to bring their appetites.
“We will eat whatever they give us,” Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Congo said on Sunday. When told by a reporter about a subpar dining experience at the Santa Marta mess hall, he joked, “And you’re not dead.” He said that one had to have “trust in the Holy Spirit.”
Jason Horowitz is the Rome bureau chief for The Times, covering Italy, the Vatican, Greece and other parts of Southern Europe.
Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome.
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