Studying for his doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University, he had read Canetti’s Crowds and Power. From it he had learnt to separate the various categories of crowd—the panicking crowd, the stagnant crowd, the crowd in revolt and so forth. It was a useful skill for a cleric. Applying this secular analysis, a papal Conclave could be seen as the most sophisticated crowd on earth, moved this way or that by the collective impulse of the Holy Spirit. Some Conclaves were timid and disinclined to change, such as that which elected Ratzinger; others were bold, like the one that
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