Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane?! It’s white smoke indicating a new pope! And he is American! Exciting? Kind of? I can’t really feign patriotism at this current political moment, but a Chicagoan pope will certainly please my Catholic mother-in-law, which is good enough for me.
Robert Francis Prevost is the first American cardinal to ever be elected pope, and he’s chosen the name Pope Leo XIV. Though not the shortest conclave (Pope Julius, who was elected in 10 hours in 1503, owns that achievement), the decision to elect Prevost in just two days and four rounds of votes was shockingly fast. What that tells me is that there was a disappointing lack of drama and not nearly the amount of intrigue the 2024 film Conclave promised would occur behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel. It seems like it just went pretty smoothly and there were no Stanley Tucci monologues whispered in echoey stairwells or secretive copy machine antics handled by a terse nun played by Isabella Rossellini. Fine. Whatever. Their loss.
I almost accepted that the election was drama-free…until I learned about the Room of Tears. There’s that Catholic melodrama I crave! Bellissima! The Room of Tears also known as the Crying Room is a small antechamber in the Sistine Chapel that the new pope is ushered into where he changes into his new threads aka a papal cassock and gets to chill out for one moment before he steps out onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and his life changes forever. Basically, it’s where all of the adrenaline probably hits them and they let out some “omg omg omg” tears. That or they break down weeping, realizing how cruel the church’s regressive stances on homosexuality, transgender rights, and women’s bodily autonomy (to just name the hits!) are! Who’s to say!?
The modest room got its name when Pope Leo XIII was elected pope in 1878 and burst into tears, thinking he was too old to be pope. Eighty years later, in 1968, Pope John XXIII glimpsed his rotund figure in the papal cassock in the small room’s mirror and joked that “This man will be a disaster on television!” I don’t see any sources saying he necessarily cried, but I certainly wouldn’t blame him if he did. Let he without dressing room anxiety cast the first stone!
Basically, The Room of Tears is both a big closet and a panic room, and while I believe in the separation of church and mostly everything, maybe more workplaces could be inspired by this? What I’d give to have a designated crying room I could shuffle into before (or let’s be real, after) a big meeting. I hear that activity-specific rooms—nap pods, lactation rooms, phone booths—are all the rage at big companies, so why not turn one of the empty storage closets into an elected crying space? It can be called The Sob Space, The Wail Den, or in honor of our emotional holy fathers, The Room of Tears.
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
