The world held its breath Ð and RTƒ a little longer

The Catholic Church are still the best – at keeping secrets that is, as was proved again during the conclave to choose the new Pope.

Apparently a false floor was put down in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican so that mobile phone scramblers could be put down so that none of the cardinals could leak any information out via their mobile phones or iPads.

And the Six One News on RTE 1 on Wednesday unwittingly added to the suspense of the event with about a minute’s silence while we viewers waited with bated breath to find out the name of the new Pope.

Most people would have only read about five or six front runners so the name announced in Latin from the balcony of St Peter’s Church wouldn’t have meant anything to most of us, but apparently it didn’t to newsreader Bryan Dobson either.

As the 76 years old Argentinian was one of the older contenders and an outsider, there was a bit of a shuffle off-camera in the RTÉ studios in Rome as efforts were made to locate the background information.There was a Rome-based Irish priest on the news panel so he could interpret the Latin and the Italian but he too was silent and gobsmacked. I appreciate that Pope Francis was an outsider but he came second to Pope Benedict when he was elected eight years ago and I would have expected our RTÉ news team to have info on all of them on the off-chance they would be elected.

As I said, at the end of the day, most viewers wouldn’t know one contender from the other and it could be argued that to many the final choice makes little difference to their lives, us being so multicultural now in Ireland.

But whether you were Catholic or not, the pageantry of the event was exciting. The crowds gathering on St Peter’s Square in the light rain, the Swiss and Italian army lining up shortly after the white smoke was seen coming from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and then there was the hour long or more wait.

It was fortunate for RTÉ that it broke when it did and there was no question of them not sending their news anchor to Rome for the event, but there was no guarantee it would happen when it did, after just five ballots.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.