Cardinal Bergoglio apparently went through the first round of voting, which took place on Tuesday evening, into the conclave as a leading vote-getter, but a number of other eminences garnered some votes, which were handwritten on Latin ballots with Pilot gel pens. Carlo Marroni, who covers the Vatican for Il Sole 24 Ore, reported that Cardinal Bergoglio, Cardinal Scola and Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Canada were the leaders. 
 
 Ignazio Ingrao, the Vatican expert for the newsweekly Panorama, said that at the beginning cardinals voted for a number of individuals as a “courtesy vote.” But, “Then they went fairly quickly to Bergoglio,” he said. Private conversations in the evening helped put the focus on him, analysts said. 
 
 In the final round of voting, the future Francis hit 77 — the required two-thirds minimum — before all the votes were counted. Applause broke out, several cardinals said, but the counting continued for completeness. He ended up with “more than sufficient” votes to win, the Brazilian cardinal, Geraldo Majella Agnelo, said. The final tally was kept secret. 
 
 Cardinal Scola went into the conclave with a solid block of votes, including many of the Americans and Europeans, who saw in him an Italian who was nevertheless at a distance from the intrigues of the Vatican. But it quickly became apparent this was not going to be enough, particularly given what news reports said was the opposition of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the powerful secretary of state under Benedict. 
 
 “The rapidity with which the choice of Bergoglio was arrived at confirms that the votes that Scola could count on immediately became insufficient,” wrote Massimo Franco, the Vatican expert for the daily Corriere della Sera. The numbers also tell a tale: Latin America had 19 electors, second only to Europe’s 61, and Cardinal Bergoglio may have gotten strong support from the region. 
 
 While Cardinal Bertone failed to give him support, Cardinal Scola certainly had his share of believers in the Italian Bishops Conference — it sent out a message congratulating him on becoming pope 20 minutes after Francis was named. The conference later blamed a technical glitch. 
 
 “The Argentine archbishop was elected after the third balloting when Angelo Scola had sent his votes toward him,” wrote Paolo Rodari, La Repubblica’s Vaticanista. 
 
 Another source of surprise was Bergoglio’s age, 76. A number of cardinals had suggested that a younger man was needed — in the early 60s range — especially after a pope resigned because of waning strength in old age. 
 
 Cardinal Bergoglio’s age may have cut both ways, said Mr. Ingrao, the Vatican expert for Panorama. Reformers may have believed it would motivate him to act quickly, while cardinals favoring the status quo may have hoped his papacy would be too short to effect much change. 
 
 “So there were thoughts about looking to someone much younger,” said Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, archbishop of Bordeaux. “But there were two reasons” to choose Cardinal Bergoglio, he said. “First it was his personality that was the determiner. The other thing was that we remembered that we had popes like John XXIII who was old but he was decisive for the evolution of the church. So the question of age wasn’t such a big factor.” 
 
 The first public view of Francis was on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, where he asked the crowd in the piazza for their blessing and then wished them a good rest, earning praise from many Catholics for his humble bearing and choice to name himself after the beloved St. Francis of Assisi. 
 
 On Thursday, his first full day as pope, he prayed at the St. Mary Major Basilica and passed by the clergy residence — where he stayed before the conclave — to pick up his luggage and pay the bill. 
 
 “I think this is the style of our new pope,” Cardinal Ricard said. ||||| VATICAN CITY—It took Jorge Mario Bergoglio four minutes to convince fellow cardinals he was their leader. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Associated Press Cardinal Bergoglio, right, with Canada's Cardinal Ouellet on March 6. 
 
 Speaking in the Paul VI grand hall of the Vatican, the Argentine cardinal warned the Catholic Church against focusing too much on matters close to home—advice that came against the backdrop of a papacy that had been consumed by infighting among Vatican officials, a dwindling flock in Europe and secular trends in the West. 
 
 The 76-year-old Father Jorge, as he is known back home, said Roman Catholicism needed to shift its focus outward, to the world beyond Rome—rather than being "self-referential," he said. Its core mission was humility, dignity and justice. It should help the poor. 
 
 It was a week before the secret conclave to elect the new pontiff would begin. But the speech sowed the seeds of one of Catholicism's boldest moves—the election of a pope from the New World, a man likely to steer the church's focus toward social justice and the problems of the world's periphery, rather than on the intrigue and controversy of its central administration. 
 
 What's News: The Vatican speaks out about allegations against Pope Francis. Inventors rushing to get patent applications filed before new changes go into effect. Carnival Corp announces plans to spend $800 million to get its fleet in ship shape. Photo: AP 
 
 This account, based on interviews with four cardinals, lifts the curtain on the dynamic that led the church's highest officials to shun the European basin from which Catholicism has drawn most of its leaders. Just before his speech, at a dinner of English-speaking cardinals, the future pope's name had come up over a meal of soup and wine but hadn't generated a buzz. "The speech was decisive," said one voting European cardinal. 
 
 "He spoke of the need for catechesis and the need to address the poor…the question of justice and the dignity of the human person," said a voting U.S. cardinal. 
 
 The call to project the church outward, not inward, propelled the Argentine prelate into contention in the first round of voting with two of Catholicism's most prominent cardinals. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Reuters A puff of smoke announced the Argentinian's selection as pope. 
 
 The other two—Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan and Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican's office for appointing bishops—were longtime acolytes of Benedict XVI, giving them what many cardinals thought was an inside track to the papacy. By the fifth and decisive round, Cardinal Bergoglio had surpassed both. 
 
 The election of Cardinal Bergoglio, known now as Pope Francis, doesn't mean the church will change its doctrine. Pope Francis is expected to uphold church teachings, ranging from its opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage to its requirement of priestly celibacy. But he is likely to create a new narrative for the church, one less focused on the inner workings of the Vatican and more on social justice. 
 
 "Sometimes when you're dealing with a crisis, you kick the ball in a different direction. And that's what this pope has done. It's to say: What I stand for is a particular gospel way of life and witness," British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, archbishop emeritus of Westminster, said in an interview. 
 
 Benedict's resignation on Feb. 28 opened the door to a flurry of unusually frank discussions among cardinals in the week that followed. Unlike the conclave that followed Pope John Paul II's death in 2005, cardinals didn't spend time in mourning. Instead, their deliberations could turn immediately to the biggest challenges facing the church—the rise of secular trends, management of the scandal-plagued Vatican bank and the need to address a shift Catholicism's demographics toward the southern hemisphere. 
 
 After hours, the cardinals met in private to home in on candidates. On March 5, after they had spent the day in the talks known as the General Congregation, a group of them from around the English-speaking world gathered inside North American College, a school nestled on a hill above the Vatican, where U.S. bishops send seminarians to train for the priesthood. A banquet table was set up beneath a chandelier inside the Red Room, which is trimmed with red marble pilasters and oil canvases depicting cardinals. 
 
 Sitting down to saucers of soup, the cardinals discussed "five or six" names of papal candidates, said one U.S. cardinal. That roster included two of the names that were most frequently being mentioned by the media: Cardinal Ouellet, a former Archbishop of Quebec, and Cardinal Scola of Milan. The future pope's name was also dropped into the conversation, the U.S. cardinal said. 
 
 A spokesman for Cardinal Scola declined to comment. Reached by phone Friday evening, Cardinal Ouellet said, "I have nothing to say about the conclave. I have a very serious oath about what was going on inside." A Vatican spokesman declined to comment on conclave proceedings. 
 
 Cardinal O'Connor, who was among the invitees of the dinner, declined to say who first mentioned Cardinal Bergoglio as a papal candidate. But he added: "His name began to be thrown into the ring: Maybe this is the man?" 
 
 Many cardinals initially believed Cardinal Bergoglio, 76, was probably too old to become pope, especially coming in the wake of Benedict XVI, who cited his age and frailty as reasons for his resignation. "We came into this whole process thinking: The next pope has to be vigorous and therefore probably younger. So there you have a man who isn't young. He's 76 years old. The question is does he still have vigor?" said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. 
 
 American cardinals are heavily courted for support in papal elections. As a potential bloc of votes inside the conclave, the Americans are "very powerful" because they are outnumbered only by cardinals from Italy, Cardinal O'Connor said. 
 
 American cardinals also run archdioceses that are among the biggest donors to the Catholic church and to the papacy. Another asset that would have worked in the U.S. cardinals' favor is a lack of unity among Italians that has manifested itself in past conclaves, said the U.S. cardinal. 
 
 But as evening wore on, and glasses of red and white wine began to flow, it became clear that this time, the Americans, too, fostered diverging views. "I thought the American cardinals were quite divided about where to go," said Cardinal O'Connor, who didn't enter the conclave because he is above the voting-age limit of 80 years. 
 
 "Americans are particularly rugged individualists. We get along, but we all have our own point of view," the U.S. cardinal said. 
 
 Cardinal George of Chicago said he couldn't remember the evening but said it was "entirely possible" that Cardinal Bergoglio came up in conversations over a meal at the college. "Every night it's something different. So there are different conversations going on," the cardinal said in an interview in the Red Room on Friday. He declined to discuss the conclave. 
 
 Later that week, it was Cardinal Bergoglio's time to address his peers. Unlike the speeches before him, the Argentine kept his address short—less than four minutes, several cardinals said. That got him noticed. 
 
 It hadn't been the first time that Cardinal Bergoglio had mentioned the inward-looking nature of the church. 
 
 "We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of self-referential church," the cardinal said in an interview to an Italian journalist last year. "It's true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that's sick because it's self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former." 
 
 "He speaks in a very straightforward way. And so perhaps—more than the content—it was simply a reminder that here is someone who has authenticity in such a way that he's a wonderful witness to the discipleship," said Cardinal George about the speech. 
 
 On March 12, the cardinals filed into the Sistine Chapel and cut themselves from outside communication. In the first ballot that night, the cardinals who garnered significant votes were Cardinals Bergoglio, Scola and Ouellet. Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston also drew votes. Black smoke rose from the chapel's smokestack, signifying no choice had been made, and the cardinals adjourned for the day. 
 
 On Wednesday, Cardinal Scola's support began to erode. Though Italian, the Milan cardinal was struggling to draw support from his countrymen, one European cardinal said. That left Italian cardinals divided among a range of candidates, with some starting to coalesce around Cardinal Bergoglio. 
 
 Members of another potential voting bloc—"Ratzingerian" cardinals who are close to Benedict XVI—were also divided between cardinals Scola and Ouellet, both of whom have deep ties with the former pope and are considered theological and intellectual admirers of his. 
 
 By the final round of voting, the opposition blocs had dissolved, with many of its voters joining into to push Cardinal Bergoglio past the 77-vote threshold needed to become pope. 
 
 Corrections & Amplifications 
 
 An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as Cormack Murphy O'Connor. 
 
 Write to Stacy Meichtry at stacy.meichtry@wsj.com 
 
 A version of this article appeared March 16, 2013, on page A6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: With a Speech, Cardinal Set Path to Papacy.
– Insiders are beginning to open up about how they chose Jorge Bergoglio as the new pope. For one thing, he wasn't part of the Vatican's troubled Curia hierarchy, but it was believed he could help heal it, the New York Times reports. It also helped that he didn't stake out a high public profile and project himself as a candidate beforehand, which can backfire in the world of Vatican politics. "He is not part of the Italian system, but also at the same time, because of his culture and background, he was Italo-compatible," says the archbishop of Paris. "If there was a chance that someone could intervene with justice in this situation, he was the man who could do it best." Among the questions cardinals asked themselves: "'Is he a man of the faith who connects us to Christ?'" said Chicago's archbishop. "Next, 'Can he govern?'" Lastly, he won points for "the fact that he has a heart for the poor." Bergoglio's pre-vote speech to the private conclave helped his selection, the Los Angeles Times notes; he offered a succinct call for a streamlined church free of corruption. But his selection was by no means a foregone conclusion; indeed, Cardinal Angelo Scola, described as a favorite of reformers, received a mistaken email of congratulations from Italian bishops shortly after Bergoglio's selection. Bergoglio reportedly led after the first round of voting, with Scola and Canada's Marc Oullet behind him. He gradually built his lead in subsequent rounds until reaching the threshold of 77 votes.