Mel Gibson on religion: what the evidence says · JRE #2254
SUBJECT: RELIGION
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
And everybody cheered and they went crazy. And then about a half an hour later, black smoke came out. That never in history has that happened, that the white smoke came out and then the black smoke
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
During the 1958 conclave that elected Pope John XXIII, contemporaneous reporting confirms that smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney appeared white before turning black on at least one occasion on October 26, 1958, the conclave's first day of balloting, causing crowds and Vatican Radio to briefly believe a pope had been elected before the mistake was corrected. The New York Times reported this directly under the headline "Crowds and Vatican Radio Misled Twice by Smoke... Signal White at First... Puff Shows Intended Black," describing confusion consistent in scale with Gibson's account of roughly half an hour. However, this ambiguous smoke occurred during an inconclusive early ballot, not the final ballot that actually elected Cardinal Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) two days later on October 28, whose white smoke was unambiguous. Gibson's claim that this had "never in history" happened before cannot be confirmed or refuted from available sources, and the incident is widely cited specifically because it was a notable anomaly of this particular conclave rather than a documented singular first. The core event Gibson describes, white smoke followed by black smoke with a period of public confusion, is corroborated by contemporaneous news coverage, but his framing implies it happened at the decisive vote and was a unique first in papal history, both of which are misleading simplifications of the actual, more complicated sequence of events.