INFO:

While Catholic cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel for the secret conclave to elect a new pope, their meals are far from grand. According to the BBC, the cafeteria at Casa Santa Marta serves basic dishes like spaghetti, boiled vegetables, minestrone soup, and lamb skewers. Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, from Italy’s pesto region, compared it to “food you’d eat at a train station,” and others described watery sauce and bland pasta. Pope Francis has insisted on simple meals during his tenure. But the strict secrecy of the conclave extends even to food. Certain items like roast chicken, stuffed ravioli, pies, and rigatoni have historically been banned or carefully inspected — seen as potential tools for smuggling secret messages. In earlier centuries, these rules also eased fears of poisoning during political conflicts. In the 1200s and 1300s, food rations were even reduced to pressure cardinals into speeding up long conclaves. Every dish is still inspected by Vatican guards and passed into the chamber through a rotating contraption in the wall to prevent outside contact.