A new plume of black smoke over the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday indicated that Catholic cardinals had failed, after three rounds of voting, to elect a new leader for their 1.2 billion-strong Church

A new plume of black smoke over the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday indicated that Catholic cardinals had failed, after three rounds of voting, to elect a new leader for their 1.2 billion-strong Church.
 
The 115 cardinals had gone into seclusion on Tuesday to find a successor to Benedict XVI, with all eyes on a chimney that will signal when there is a new leader for the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

The crowd cheered as black smoke billowed into the night air above the Vatican from a thin copper chimney on the chapel's roof, indicating that no pope had been elected.  

The 115 cardinals Cardinals held a first inconclusive vote in the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday as they began the process of electing a successor to Benedict XVI, with tens of thousands of people packed into St Peter's Square to watch the time-honored tradition.

White smoke -- produced by mixing the smoke from burning ballots with special flares -- would indicate that a new head of the Roman Catholic Church has been chosen.
 
Among the cardinals Italy's Angelo Scola, Brazil's Odilo Scherer and Canada's Marc Ouellet -- all conservatives like Benedict -- are the three favourites but there is no clear frontrunner and conclaves are notoriously difficult to predict.
  
Some analysts suggest that Benedict's dramatic act -- the first papal resignation in over 700 years -- could push the cardinals to take an equally unusual decision and that an outsider could emerge as a compromise candidate.