Page 2 - Conclave With Key News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Peter's square, awaiting, perhaps a sign from this conclave on day number one. anderson cooper and chris cuomo are live in rome. gentlemen, hello. >> well, we are here, looking at about as you nunique a spectacl we have had. a chimney, but the significance is huge. on top of the sistine chapel, we're waiting to see if ballots are burned tonight, if the color is dark, we know there is no pope. if it is white, we know there is. as simple as that. we must wait, with all the technology in the world we have been talking about it here, this is still a simple antiquated ceremony that really does draw...

He reads out, scola, gives it to you. you mark down scola. there is three other cardinals that do the exact same thing and all the 115 are marking it on their own ballot, the intensity of getting it right is huge. think about what other process, what other election works that way? obviously we're talking about the smoke that just came out of the sistine chapel. it was black smoke here on the first day of the conclave. first vote, the cardinals chose to vote, but did not select a pope. welcome to all our viewers in america and around the world. we have ben wedeman with us. ben, in the expectati...

See the smoke. we will certainly be watching as we have crews there in rome. we'll bring that news to you as soon as we know from italy. meantime, cardinals, they have now officially cut off contact with the rest of the world. but for first time, social media playing a huge role here, trying to unveil some of the secrets of this papal conclave, so before heading into the sistine chapel, new york cardinal timothy dolan tweeted a link to his latest blog post, greetings again from rome. from the tweets to the facebook pages, smartphone apps and, oh, yes, go with me here, a fantasy conclave league...

It is the white smoke, then what you get is this enormous acclimation from the crowd, and then, of course, people are on pins and needles waiting for that moment when they step out on the central loga to not only give us the announcement, but also to give us the name of the new pope. >> we don't know for sure there will be a vote even today, but this being the first day of the conclave, but if there is a vote, and assuming it is as pretty safe to assume there wouldn't be an actual decision at this point, what happens after the conclave? what happens later tonight? as they -- if they have voted...

Now they have a tandem stove system with one stove that has these chemical packets in it and they join the main chimney of the stove that burns the ballots and that chemical is supposed to change the color of the smoke, but even that gets very difficult to decipher. then on top of that darkness, humidity, rain and hail and all the other things we have seen today makes it very confusing. then what we do, brooke, is we wait for bells. the problem is bells ring a lot in rome. you don't know if this is just a temporary appearance, when they ring, or the big bell that is supposed to announce it. so...