VATICAN CITY (AP) – This time there was no doubt. There was no new pope yet, and the mystery of who – and when – was as thick as the unmistakable heavy black smoke billowing from the Sistine Chapel chimney.

As thousands waited in a cold night rain in St. Peter’s Square, the cardinals signaled Tuesday they had failed on their first attempt to find a leader for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics and their troubled church.

“It’s black, it’s black, it’s waaay black!” screamed Eliza Nagle, a 21-year-old Notre Dame theology major on an exchange program in Rome, as the smoke poured from the 6-foot-high copper chimney at 7:41 p.m.