The Doors are Closed.

Image captured from FoxNews

The doors to the Sistine Chapel have been closed and the Conclave has commenced!

Fortunately, I am on Spring Break from teaching so I was able to watch as the Cardinals entered the Sistine Chapel, took their oaths and then watch live as the doors were closed. I was alerted on my iPhone by the PopeApp. I began watching the live feed on my phone and then went to CatholicTV to watch their live video stream. I was not able to get EWTN's feed to work.

I recently wrote a review of good resources to follow the conclave entitled Tools for the Toolbox. If you are on the go, I recommend the Conclave App and the PopeApp. You still have time to Adopt a Cardinal and to sign up for the FOCUS Pope Alarm which will email and/or text you upon the election of the new pope.

If you were not as fortunate as me to watch the scenes live, I have included a video from Rome Reports covering the aforementioned events:

There's a Conclave App!

The folks who created Verbum have put together a nifty little app to follow the Conclave. The app is available in iOS (Apple) and Android platforms and it is FREE. You can download the app at the iTunes store or Google play.

The opening screen menu looks like this:

The app has five (5) pages of resources. Here is how the pages are organized:

• Live Video - The first contains live video from the Conclave. Right now the video that appears on the app is one from the last press conference. 
• News - This page includes links to a number of websites and news outlets like National Catholic Register, Jimmy Akin, Catholic Answers and Zenit. I am a little disappointed that they felt the need to include the National Catholic Reporter. I suspect they included this source, which Fr. Z calls FishWrap, because of the great writing from John Allen. I only recommend reading Allen's articles on the NC Reporter.
• Twitter - tweets following #pope and #conclave. Be warned that you will have to sift through all sorts of stuff if you choose to follow the conclave this way.
• Bios - This contains bios on all the cardinals as ranked by NewAdvent. Their ranking is based on Google search activity, not on the likelihood of their election.
• Resources - This includes a number of documents related to papal selection and the conclave.

One final cool feature about the app site is that you can register to have an email sent to you to alert you the moment a new pope has been elected.