VATICAN CITY (The Borowitz Report)—A puff of white smoke over Vatican City today raised hopes among the faithful who jammed St. Peter’s Square until an official spokesman explained that the Vatican was “just burning some documents.”

“Wednesday is the day we traditionally burn documents and other legal evidence, and we totally forgot about the white smoke thing,” the Vatican spokesman said. “We apologize for any misunderstanding this might have caused.”

After cheers went up from the thousands gathered outside the Sistine Chapel, the spokesman said, “We were like, ‘Uh-oh.’ We stopped shovelling papers into the blast furnace immediately.”

“We still have thousands of documents to destroy this week, but we don’t want a replay of what happened today,” he said. “One of the cardinals is going to run out to Staples and get a shredder.”

As the conclave drags on to a third day with still no Pope, the spokesman acknowledged that the cardinals were having a harder time agreeing on a candidate than at the last conclave, in 2005: “This time around, we just don’t have a slam dunk with Hitler Youth experience.”

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Photograph by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty