A spotter's guide to Monsignors

Prompted by Pope Francis' pruning of the Monsignori, Fr Christopher Smith at the Chant Café links to a series of articles from the 90s on the history of the rank by Duane L. C. M. Galles. They were published in Sacred Music, the journal of the Church Music Association of America.

Fall 1995 (pp. 16-21) Part I  [pdf]; Winter 1995 (pp.27-35) Part II [pdf]; Spring 1996 (pp. 13-17) Part III  [pdf].

Alas there are no pictures to explain the different forms of dress.

Galles concludes:

It remains to be seen if bishops will exercise their faculty to erect collegiate churches and create canons (and canonesses) to encourage the cultivation and preservation of the solemn liturgy and the treasury of sacred music. These have now languished for three decades in the American Catholic Church, but with encouragement they may once again be cultivated, preserved and honored in a manner hallowed — as we have seen — by the most venerable traditions of the local Church.

Fr. Smith remarks:

If the present desire for decentralization is real, then what is to prevent diocesan ordinaries from establishing their own forms of clerical honorifics?  What would prevent them from breathing life into an often defunct, but ancient, tradition of collegiate chapters of canons, which would lead an exemplary liturgical and common life, and also bring back some of the color and diversity of the Roman Church? 

Twerketai he Kyros.

Fr John Hunwicke, formerly an Anglican, now an Ordinariate priest, considers the task of Latinists turning Pope Francis' homilies into Latin for the Acta. It is just a fantasy. The Holy See has been happy for a while now to produce official documents in languages other than Latin.  St Pius X's Instruction on Sacred Music, Tra le Sollecitudini, was addressed to the Cardinal Vicar of the Diocese of Rome and so written in Italian. The current norms on translation of liturgical texts into the vernacular are contained in Liturgiam Authenticam, issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments in 2001. This replaced the decree of the Consilium for Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (which put together the new Liturgical books), Comme le Prévoit (1969) issued in French.

So it does not seem likely that gangs of Latinists are occupying the empty Papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace. But I was struck by Fr Hunwicke's suggestion of a Greek, and therefore Latin — the Romans often adopted Greek words — translation of "twerking" . (If you do not know what Twerking is, lucky you).

Fr. Hunwicke suggests the name of a salacious dance mentioned in various comedies: the kordax. It is mentioned in many places. Aristophanes has the chorus refer to it in Nubes 540 (English translation here). A scholiast says ἡ κόρδαξ δὲ κωμικὴ αἰσχρῶς περιδινοῦσα τὴν ὀσφῦν  the kordax is a comic dance of shamefully twirling the loins around. The New Pauly suggests (how astonishing that one can get such a book for free on the internet) that the Kordax might have been a solo dance. Twerking by definition requires a partner. Also the word twerking is a participle but κόρδαξ a noun. So a certain amount of, er, tweaking, is required.

 

Eating dust and ashes

I have a certain admiration for the vigorous anti-Catholic one-liners of Edward Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury (1883-1896). Here is another one.

In 1887, Leo XIII celebrated the Golden Jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood.  Archbishop Benson's friend, Canon Mason, suggested he might send the Pope a gift "in the hope that an act of personal kindness might smooth the way towards the healing of the schism ". Benson replied*:

It is the Pope's business to eat dust and ashes, not mine to decorate him. Therefore, my dear Mephibosheth†, hold thy peace.

 

 

*A. C. Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 volumes, (London: Macmilan, 1899), vol. 2, ch.11, p.586, letter of 27th November 1887.

† Mephibosheth was the son of David's friend Jonathan who appears in 2 Samuel 4, 9, 16, 19 & 21 (those are all chapter numbers) - Benson quotes 2 Sam 14:19 at the beginning of his letter to Mason. As a grandson of Saul Mephibosheth might be thought to have been a threat to David's rule. In 2 Sam 16 his servant Ziba tells David that Mephibosheth remains in Jerusalem expecting to be given the throne of his grandfather. It turns out in chapter 19 that this was a lie. Benson gives that name to Mason to say "I know you are loyal but you appear to be disloyal".

With all our heart, we deplore what has happened…

From all the 50th anniversary blither, the most interesting thing that I have seen has been this video of Pope Paul VI making a statement (note the Royal "we"!) on the death President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I found it at New Advent but there is a better transcript at This Week at Vatican II. 

The 450th Anniversary of the end of the Council of Trent is next month, but I haven't found the "This Week at Trent" site yet. The content of "This Week at Constance" has not all been ratified by the Pope. (That's the best Conciliarist joke you are going to read all year).

Immaculate Reception

See the young time traveller using an iPhone at 1:00 in this Pathé story about the proclamation of the Dogma of the Assumption on November 1st 1950.

THE ASSUMPTION PROCLAMATION

This is NOTHING like that other film from January 1928 at the premiere of a Charlie Chaplin film, showing a woman supposedly talking on a mobile telephone. There weren't any mobile phone towers back then. Obviously it is not proof of time travel. But you can use the camera function on an iPhone without needing the 3G to be working.

UPDATE: Apparently this woman visited the 1940s first. 

On re-translating Humanae Vitae

Just as the draftsmen of Papal documents are usually unknown – except in exceptional circumstances – so are the translators, although I noted an exception yesterday.

In 'On Retranslating Humanae Vitae' John Finnis talks about his experience preparing a new version of Paul VI's encyclical.  This is on p.344 of his Religion and Public Reasons  (Volume 5 of his collected works). You may be able to see this paper at the book's page on Google (it is blocked to me now, it was available earlier). But buy a copy anyway.

 

Now write it out 100 times

The Vatican website has a separate page for the table of contents of John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia Pastor Bonus, in all the the different languages (English, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish – plainly the French just don't need to know).  Only on the English page do we find anything like the following.

Copyright 1998 for the English-language translation of the Apostolic Constitution  "Pastor bonus" by Francis C.C.F. Kelly (Ottawa), James H. Provost (Washington) and Michel Thériault (Ottawa). Posted on the Vatican Web Site by permission of the copyright owners. The translation was first completed in 1993. In 1997, it was revised by Michel Thériault; subsequently, it went under a new revision by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Secretariat of State. After a final revision by Michel Thériault, the translation was considered to be faithful to the letter and spirit of the original text and its publication was authorized by the 
Secretariat of State.

I wonder what happened.  Perhaps in this trabslation, the CDF was mandated to come to its decisions only after informal bongo sessions.  The Internet Archive goes no further back than 1998 when only the Italians could know what "the Vatican" was up to.

 (For the title: Romans go home).

 

Lungs one and two

The Church must breathe with both her lungs, said John Paul II, East and West.  Well the present Pope seems to be doing fine.

Somewhere on the interwebs I discovered there is a lot of respect given to the writings of Hugh Barbour O.Praem. I think that means things like The Schism: Grounds for Division, Grounds for Unity.  It still does not help with working out what all the fuss is. Meanwhile here is some blogger with Ah, the East, which yields a few chuckles:

There is a part of me that wants to summarize (contemporary?) Orthodox readings of Aquinas with one word: Childish. But, of course, that accusation could be extended to most Orthodox readings of any Catholic theology that was penned after 1054. (Oh, heck, it could be extended to most Orthodox readings of St. Augustine, too.) Catholic (even Protestant) readings of Orthodox thought has been, to put it mildly, exponentially more sympathetic. Part of that could be attribute to the apparent “openness” of “the West” to other modes of thought. Part of it could just as easily be attributed to the near-constant boredom of Western Christian intellectual circles with their own tradition(s). The Christian East appears new and exciting, and nobody has promoted the “newness” and “excitingness” of Eastern theology more than the Orthodox themselves. When something doesn’t appear to follow in it, well, it’s “mystical.” When a Western Christian questions the premises of this-or-that mode of Eastern thought, they’re just stuck in “Latin rationalism”; they’ll never understand how 1,000 prostrations on an empty stomach can properly short circuit the brain in order to make it open to divine emanations (or what most scientists would call “hallucinations”).
That last is a dig at hesychasm.

On the usefulness of Latin (again)

The Public Orator at Oxford (and Cambridge) is responsible for the public Latin of the University: for speeches in Latin at the awarding of honorary degrees, for addresses by the University to people like the Queen or other members of the Royal Family and so on. At present the Public Orator at Oxford is Richard Jenkyns.

Back in April, Jenkyns published an article in Oxford Today (a puff magazine they send to graduates) prompted by that journalist who scooped the world on the Papal resignation because she knew Latin.

Having paid attention in class at school, she realised what he was saying; the rest of the press had to wait for translations. Judging from their blank faces, the cardinals present did not know what was going on either.

It is an interesting piece but that typically Oxford swipe against the Cardinals' Latinity is most unjust. Cardinal Arinze makes it plain that they understood what was happening (from 0:43).

Finding the answer I knew all along

More than ten years ago I read an introduction to the history of English law.   The following passage stuck with me.

The earliest canonists held marriage to be effected by the physical union of man and woman in carnal copulation.  They became one fled by commixtio sexuum .  But, since copulation could occur outside marriage, a mental element was also necessary.  There had to be an agreement to marry.  According to Gratian (c. 1140) marriage began by agreement but became complete and indissoluble only when the agreement had been sanctioned by a Church ceremony and consummated in a physical union.  There immediately arose difficulties with this approach.  The requirement of formality tended to increase the subjection of young couples to pressure from parents and lords, while the notion that physical union was essential led to embarrassing theological questions about the marital status of Christ's parents.

J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History , fourth edition
 (London: Butterworths Tolley, 2002), part two, ch. 28, p.479.

If Mary was perpetually a virgin (CCC 496-501 esp. 499) then the ideal of the Holy Family (CCC 1655) becomes ever more remote. I had wondered how this problem was resolved or if it had simply been quietly dropped.

Then Edward Peters (often mentioned in these parts) posted A caution re reading Bergoglio as a proto-Francis. He discusses an earlier Pope who had been involved in the debate between agreement and consummation as making a marriage.

The great canonist Rolandus Bandinelli lent his prestige to the Bologna interpretation. Coupled with Gratian and Hugh of St. Victor, Bandinelli was a powerful proponent of the consummation=marriage school. True, Bandinelli seemed to shift more toward the consent=marriage school later in his career as canonist, but even upon being elected Alexander III in 1159, he still vacillated between the two theories, and not for some time did he finally side with the Parisian interpretation that consent makes marriage (while consummation adds a technical type of indissolubility). Thus, even though it disagreed with a position Bandinelli had earlier strongly defended, Alexander firmly gave the Church an insight into marriage from which she has never retreated. Moral of the story: Something about being pope forces men to approach issues not as intellectual exercises, both sides of which can be argued, but as articulations of the doctrines and disciplines of the universal Church. Rather more weighty. I am, therefore, much more interested in what Francis says and does as pope than I am interested in what Bergoglio said and did as a bishop or priest or (good grief) as a seminarian. [emphasis added.]

Gosh I thought. There's the answer. So I came to write this post and found the following  in Baker immediately after the passage cited above.

After grappling with such problems, Pope Alexander III introduced, in the late twelfth century, a more sophisticated doctrine of marriage.  Under the new rules, marriage could be contracted by consent alone, without any ecclesiastical ceremony, parental consent or physical consummation, provided the consent was notified in words of the present tense (sponsalia per verba de praesenti ).  Such a marriage was irregular, in so far as the parties could be compelled for the sake of order and decency to solemnise the marriage publicly at the door of a church, and punished for any sinful connection theymay have had befofre so doing.  Yet it was valid and, before consummation, created an indissoluble bond which would be upheld even in preference to a subsequent church marriage with a different spouse.

Baker, op. cit. , pp.479-480.

I must have been asleep when I read that bit. 

 

From what you know to what you don't know

There are plenty of Catholic parishes totally allergic to the use of Latin.  You get the impression they would come out in hives if you just said "in nomine Patris…" Nevertheless, even in such parishes, the original language of the "Lord have mercy", the Greek "Kyrie eleison", is often used. 

 Kyrie eleison consists of a vocative, Kyrie, followed by an aorist imperative eleison. The vocative is the case for addressing someone.  "The Lord sits on high" – "the Lord" is in the nominative; but "Lord have mercy" – "Lord" is in the vocative since he is being addressed or called on (Latin voco I call).  In the indicative mood (the mood used for the verb in basic statements or questions – and for present purposes I am restricting this account to theGreek of the New Testament) the default tense is the present.  Outside of the indicative, for example in the imperative (where we give orders) the default tense is the aorist.  In the indicative the aorist is typically about past time, it is the equivalent of the English simple past (he went there). In Greek, the aorist indicative modifies the beginning of the verb with an augment (usually a short e) which shows that the verb is about the past. In the imperative the aorist has no reference to the time when something takes place or the length of time it takes to occur. For this reason the aorist imperative does not have an augment

We write "Kyrie eleison" in English texts because that is how it is spelt in Latin texts.  In Greek it is Κύριε ἐλέησον which might (I stress might) be more accurately transliterated "Kurïe eleēson".  The exigencies of Roman pronunciation of Greek led to the spelling we use.  The aorist imperative is a bit abrupt. It is the way one addresses a servant.  The possible rudeness of this construction when addressing the Almighty might be explained by remembering that each time we are asking for mercy, we do so because we actually need it right now – not that we are fine for the moment but keep the mercy coming just in case.

ἐλέησον looks like it has an augment (ἐ/e) which is confusing since the ending is an imperative. But don't (as I said above) aorist imperatives lack the augment? They do and in this case the ἐ is not an augment but part of the stem of the verb ἐλέεω "I have mercy on, show pity to". The aorist indicative "I had pity" is ἠλέησα ēleēsa. In this verb past time is indicated by "stretching" the initial "e" so that it becomes long.

When I was teaching Greek I pointed my students to the Eleemosynary Office(s) (search Eleemosynarius and see here) of the Holy See which carry out the Pope's charitable activities to help them remember that ἐλέησον comes from a verb that begins with an epsilon (ε).

Of course that depends on being familiar with that institution. (It is the source of Papal blessings which people give newly weds or couples on their major anniversaries and so on). To Dr Rod Decker (due respect, due respect) of the Baptist Bible Seminary it is an entirely new word. The article he links to is very interesting.

 

Believing Commie Nazi lies about Pius XII

I have already posted on the framing of Pius XII by the Communists, specifically the KGB:

Stalin took Pius XII’s encyclical [Orientales omnes ecclesias, on the Ukrainian Catholic Church] as a declaration of war, and he answered as was his wont: framing Pius XII as a Nazi collaborator. On June 3, 1945, Radio Moscow proclaimed that the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Pius XII, had been "Hitler’s Pope," mendaciously insinuating that he had been an ally of the Nazis during World War II. Radio Moscow’s insinuation fell flat as a pancake … The Kremlin’s attempt to frame Pius XII as Hitler’s Pope was rejected by that contemporary generation that had lived through the real history and knew who Pope Pius XII really was. The Kremlin tried again in the 1960s, with the next generation, which had not lived through that history and did not know better. This time it worked. 

It turns out it is a Nazi lie which is at the bottom of a claim that Pius XII was on their side.

The current charge claims that in a presentation Pius XII gave at an International Eucharistic Congress in Hungary in 1938—when he was still Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican Secretary of State—he referred to Jews as enemies of Christ and the Catholic Church.

Earlier attempts at smearing the Pope have been refuted, at least in the academy, but this looks like a smoking gun.

With the assistance of Vatican historian … Fr. Peter Gumpel, we reviewed the text of the speech as it was published in Discorsi e Panegirici. The quote as given by the critics does not appear therein. The ellipsis was used to link very diverse passages from different pages of Pacelli’s speech, producing a complete distortion of Pacelli’s words. … He referred to the masses that called for the Crucifixion and said they had been “deceived and excited by propaganda, lies, insults and imprecations at the foot of the Cross.” Those identified as enemies of Christ included Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Roman soldiers, the Sanhedrin, and their followers. He did not call out “all Jews” or “the Jews." About two pages later in the manuscript, Pacelli referred to those who were persecuting the Church at that time by doing things like expelling religion and perverting Christianity. Jews were not doing this, but Nazi Germany certainly was. The future pope was clearly equating the Nazis, not Jews, to those who persecuted the Church at earlier times.

It is not the KGB who are responsible for this one but some Nazi sympathisers in Hungary.

Where did the distorted quotation come from? The first use in English was by Herczl, in his Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry (1993).  … Herczl was not present at the speech and did not even look at Pacelli’s script which can be found in Discorsi e Panegirici, a collection of Pius’s early writings first published in 1939, or even the Italian version that appeared in the Vatican newspaper. In his book, he cited a Hungarian newspaper, Nemzeti Ujsag (National Journal), with a long and controversial history as a political outlet.

 … 

The evidence is against Herczl. As its name implies and as numerous articles in the newspaper itself attest, Nemzeti Ujsag was a political journal, not a religious one. It was, at least in the relevant years, overtly anti-Semitic and truly despicable. Randolph L. Braham, a noted scholar in the field, called it a voice of National Socialism. … 

It is likely that the newspaper manufactured the quotation to support its anti-Semitic position. Pacelli, after all, was criticizing the exact political position the paper held. Then as now, Vatican support was a very useful thing to claim.

People would rather believe Communists or Nazis than the truth.

A really bad week

On Sunday 11th July 2010 the Archbishop of Buenos Aires attacked the Bill, then before the Argentine Senate, to create homosexual marriage. The Archbishop described it as a "destructive attack on God's plan." The President of Argentina hit back the following day.
Mrs. Kirchner harshly criticized church leaders on Monday, saying that their discourse on the issue resembled “the times of the Crusades” and that they failed to acknowledge how socially liberal Argentina had become.
Another theme of Cristina Kirchner's presidency has been demanding that the UK hand over the Falkland Islands to Argentina, regardless of the wishes of the inhabitants.
Mrs Kirchner wants to open talks with the British over the sovereignty of the islands, ignoring the Falkland Islanders who are not recognised by the Argentinians.
In June 2012, she attended a meeting of a United Nations committee on decolonisation.
At the meeting she was addressed by a committee from the Falkland Islands. It is believed to be the first time representatives from the islands have been in the same room as the Argentine premier … Mrs Kirchner said she was "not going to say anything about those who have spoken defending their position," adding: "Our dispute is with the UK."
On 11th March 2013 99.8% of Falkland Islanders voted to remain a British overseas territory.  Two days later that Archbishop she despised so much was elected Pope.

Poor woman. She had a terrible week. She might be relieved that she has at least get rid of her opponent. If so, she should probably contact some old Polish communists.

Qui sibi novum nomen imposuit

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Papam: Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Georgium Marium Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Bergoglio qui sibi nomen imposuit Franciscum.
With these words did Jean Louis Cardinal Tauran announce the election of Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio SJ, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, about 8pm on 13th March 2013.

Round here I heard two channels (Fox News and Sky News) solemnly say – after the habemus Papam – "we had not yet been told" what name he would take. Come on! It is literally the very first question he is asked once he accepts the election (UDG n.87). It is written down in the Ordo Rituum Conclavis as part of the formula for the announcement. If they were going to diverge from that it would be (a) very hard to pull off in the time available and hence (b) very obvious. I had already switched off the ABC (that's the Australian government funded broadcaster, not the US network) on principle when they wheeled on an ex-priest, so I could not be sure, but certainly the news ticker did not contain the name.

Pace the media, he did not take the name "Francis I" and, unless you are travelling in time from the future and are a little confused, he will not be known as "Francis I" until there is a Francis II. John Paul I was announced as such – "Ioannis Pauli primi" – although the same Proto-Deacon a few months later announced that Cardinal Wojtyła had taken the name "Ioannis Pauli" without a numeral.

First Pope from the Jesuits. First Pope to take a name that did not exist in the first millennium. Apparently Pietro Bernadone gave his son the name Francesco (he had been baptised Giovanni; actually he had probably been baptised Ioannem, but you get the idea) because of mercantile connections with France.

First time in 50 years that the Proto-Deacon got the grammar right. Since Cardinal Ottaviani said "Paulum sextum" in 1963, this is probably the first time in 55 years that he got the grammar right and did not use an unnecessary numeral. I cannot find video of the announcement of John XXIII but Cardinal Canali probably avoided saying "vigesimum tertium". Mind you he might have made a point of it, to underline the rejection of Antipope John XXIII.

UPDATE: The last Pope to come from a religious order was Gregory XVI (1831-1846), the immediate predecessor to Blessed Pius IX (I am not suggesting that is his only distinction, just locating it in time for you). Gregory XVI was a Camaldolese monk.

UPDATE II: Of course what name the Pope will take is the first thing the Cardinal Dean asks. The Pope acts juridically, like every other sovereign, by signing his name. He cannot do anything until he has a name. Choosing a name is not something that can be postponed.

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: the word for blessed!

[The actual sedes vacans, courtesy of Charles Cole].

At the time of writing, the Vatican website still has a separate page on the election of Pope Benedict XVI (if that link dies you can go here).

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Papam: Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Josephum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictum XVI.

Now that is not what Jorge Cardinal Medina Estévez actually said.

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Papam: Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Josephum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedicti decimi sexti.

He clearly uses the genitive "Benedicti decimi sexti".

There are two things wrong with this. Firstly the Latin for "sixteenth" is sextus decimus not decimus sextus. If you search the Perseus database using Philologic you can use lemmas to show this. At Perseus under PhiloLogic put (without the angled brackets) into the "Search for:" field and click the "Proximity Search in: Sentence" radio button. This will allow you to find any form of sextus which is in the same sentence as any form of decimus. Click the button and you get 29 results, of which fifteen mean "sixteenth" (n.b. decumus is a variant spelling of decimus). There is no example of decimus sextus. It is worth noting that "sixteenth" in Spanish (Cardinal Medina Estévez' native tongue) is dieciséis, i.e. "ten" is followed by "six". (And in any case there is no need to include the numeral – see the video of the announcement of the election of Pius XII below).

The other thing wrong is indicated by the "official transcript". The Protodeacon should have used the accusative ending (-um) instead of the genitive (-i). The accusative is what was used in the past. It agrees with nomen, which is a neuter accusative (object of imposuit) and with which Benedictum is in apposition. When a noun is in apposition to another (typically a name as in "the orator Cicero", where Cicero is in apposition to orator) it agrees, so far as possible, in gender, case and number. Cicero, in his second speech against Verres, describes Syracuse in Sicily:

in hac insula extrema est fons aquae dulcis, cui nomen Arethusa est, incredibili magnitudine… (Ver. 2.4.118)
At the very end of this island is a fountain of sweet water, of which the name is Arethusa, incredible in size…

Arethusa agrees with nomen in case (nominative) and number (singular) . It does not agree in gender because there is no neuter form of Arethusa.

Camillo Cardinal Caccia Dominioni was Protodeacon at the conclave of 1939 when Pius XII was elected.

He clearly says "qui sibi nomen imposuit Pium". He also brings his hands together which strongly suggests (Italian stereotype) he has finished speaking and is not going on to say "duodecimum", although the video does immediately cut to a shot of the new Pope on the sedia gestatoria. It is somewhat nonsensical to mention the ordinal number. Papa Pacelli's name was not "Pius The Twelfth" but "Pius". The ordinal simply allows us to distinguish him from other popes of that name.

I cannot find footage of the relevant part of the announcement of John XXIII by Cardinal Canali in 1958. Here is Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani announcing the election of Paul VI in 1963 (beginning at 2:40):

He says "…qui sibi nomen imposuit Paulum sextum". The numeral creeps in (the name "Paulus V Burghesius" of course was inscribed straight above his head on the facade of St Peter's [large jpeg]) but he preserves the accusative.

Pericle Cardinal Felici got to announce a new Pope twice. Here he is announcing the election of John Paul I on 26th August 1978 (from 0:55):

"…qui sibi nomen imposuit Ioannis Pauli primi". It is clear that he uses the genitive.

(You can add a wrinkle to the "John Paul I was murdered" conspiracy theory by noting that Cardinal Felici used an ordinal – "the First" – when there was no need, since no other Pope had ever had that name…unless he knew that there would soon be another. Note the uploader inadvertently suggests this is the announcement of Pope St John I (523-526). One of the commentators in this video of the announcement of the election of John Paul II (at 4:14) says that John Paul I chose to have the numeral inserted.)

Cardinal Felici was back on the evening of 16th October 1978 to announce the election of John Paul II. The fullest coverage is from this capture of the live broadcast by ABC News in the United States. Some journalists like to insert themselves into any story (the BBC coverage of the funeral of John Paul II was egregious in this regard) but these blokes just manage not to obscure what he says. The Cardinal gets to the name at about 2:05.

"…qui sibi nomen imposuit Ioannis Pauli." Again he uses the genitive but this time he leaves out the ordinal (conspiracy!).

I have the Ordo rituum conclavis (you never know when you will need to run a Papal election) which at n.74 at the beginning of chapter 5 has the following for the Cardinal Protodeacon to say:

Annúntio vobis gáudium magnum;
habémus Papam:
Eminentíssimum ac Reverendíssimum Dóminum,
Dóminum N …… ,
Sanctæ Románæ Ecclésiæ Cardinálem N …… ,
qui sibi nomen impósuit N. ……

So that is no help on the case to put the name in. The text at the Vatican website suggests that someone with enough power over the website at least, thinks that the accusative to agree with nomen is correct.

So far as I can tell the formula used three times since 1978 – nomen + genitive – means, apart from the obvious (So-and-so's name), "a reputation for" or "the word for". For obvious reasons (a search for any form of nomen returns 1251 answers from the Perseus database, for Cicero alone) it is practically impossible to dig out every example of nomen taking the genitive. Somewhere I made a note of the fact that in Cicero nomen amicitiae (genitive) means "the word for friendship". In the De Natura Deorum i.122 he has:

carum ipsum verbum est amoris, ex quo amicitiae nomen est ductum.
There is something attractive in the very sound of the word 'love,' from which the Latin term for friendship [amicitiae nomen] is derived. (Loeb [facsimile]).

In the De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum ii.78:

quid autem est amare, e quo nomen ductum amicitiae est, nisi velle bonis aliquem affici quam maximis, etiamsi ad se ex iis nihil redundet?
What is the meaning of 'to love' — from which our word for friendship (nomen…amicitiae) is derived — except to wish some one to receive the greatest possible benefits even though one gleans no advantage therefrom oneself? (Loeb).

And again in De Amicitia 92:

…delet enim veritatem, sine qua nomen amicitiae valere non potest.
…it utterly destroys sincerity, without which the word friendship (nomen amicitiae) can have no meaning. (Loeb).

On the other hand, there are examples of nomen plus genitive of X meaning "the name X" in passages when someone adopts a new name. Famously Octavian (the Caesar Augustus of Luke 2:1) took the name Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus on 16th January 27 BC, an event which is taken as the start of the Imperial Rome. I don't have access to "Imperator Caesar: A Study in Nomenclature" by Ronald Syme which is the most important modern work on Augustus' name known to me. So far as I know the chief literary source for this event (Syme presumably also drew on inscriptions and coins) is Dio Cassius, a Roman who wrote in Greek. According to Wikipedia his Greek is full of Latinisms. Dio discusses the process in 53.16. Where necessary I quote the Greek and mention the grammatical form used.

And when Caesar had actually carried out his promises, the name Augustus [τὸ τοῦ Αὐγούστου ὄνομα – genitive] was at length bestowed upon him by the senate and by the people. For when they wished to call him by some distinctive title, and men were proposing one title and another and urging its selection, Caesar was exceedingly desirous of being called Romulus [Ῥωμύλος ὀνομασθῆναι – passive verb with a nominative], but when he perceived that this caused him to be suspected of desiring the kingship, he desisted from his efforts to obtain it, and took the title of "Augustus," [Αὔγουστος … ἐπεκλήθη – passive verb with a nominative] signifying that he was more than human; for all the most precious and sacred objects are termed augusta. (Loeb).

Suetonius mentions how the Emperor Caligula got his name in Caligula 9.

Caligulae cognomen castrensi ioco traxit, quia manipulario habitu inter milites educabatur.
He took the surname "Caligula" (genitive) from a joke in the camp, because he was brought up among the soldiers and dressed in a private soldier's uniform. 

I would like to think that Cardinals Felici and Medina Estévez had been reading the primary sources for the renaming of Caesar Augustus – even though one normally takes Cicero's Latin as an example above the Latin of Suetonius or the Greek of Dio Cassius – but I think they were simply mistaken.

Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran is the current Protodeacon. If he is elected Pope, presumably it will be the next deacon in precedence, Attilio Cardinal Nicer. Cardinal Tauran should use the form given on the Vatican website, putting the name in the accusative, and not in the genitive like his predecessors in 1978 and 2005.