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The Catholic Church is still without a Pope on the second day of voting at the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.
The 115 cardinals continue to deliberate in a secret meeting on Wednesday afternoon to find a successor for Benedict XVI.
Black smoke over the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday morning showed that the ballots taken in the morning were inconclusive.
After the first vote on Tuesday night, the cardinal electors should hold another two ballots Wednesday afternoon following lunch and prayers.
Having spent the night closeted in a nearby guesthouse, the cardinals attended Mass in the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace and returned to the Sistine Chapel to hold the two morning ballots.
When a pope is elected, white smoke will emerge from the chapel and the bells of St Peter's will peal.
Only one vote was held on Tuesday night with black smoke billowing from a chimney above the chapel to signal no pope had been elected.
No modern conclave has reached a decision on the first day,so the lack of an outcome on Tuesday's single vote was no surprise.
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Before the doors of the chapel were shut, all the cardinals below the age of 80, when the papal seat was declared vacant on February 28, made an oath of secrecy in Latin before the voting started.
The cardinals will now vote four times daily until two-thirds can agree on a candidate. If after 33 or 34 ballots no pope is elected, the two candidates with the highest votes will go into a runoff in which only a simple majority is required.
Flexible changes
Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from the Vatican City on Tuesday, said there was a perception, particularly in Europe, that the church needed to be more flexible with changes in the modern world.
She said there was no clear frontrunner but about a dozen names had emerged as likely candidates to be the next pope.
Al Jazeera's Barbara Serra, reporting from St Peter's Square in Rome on Tuesday, said Archbishop Angelo Scola of Milan was a favourite.
"He is seen as a safe pair of hands," she said.
But she had said the fact that he is Italian would count against him as there was a large push within the church to elect a non-European as pope.
Possible candidates from the developing world include Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, Argentina-born Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, and Cardinal Odilo Scherer, the archbishop of Sao Paulo in Brazil who is of German descent.
All the "Princes of the Church" were appointed by Benedict or his predecessor and ideological soulmate John Paul II.
Inevitably, comparisons have been made with the conclave that produced Benedict XVI in 2005.
"We went into the Sistine Chapel better prepared" after John Paul II's death following his protracted decline with Parkinson's disease, noted retired cardinal Paul Poupard.
This time, "the cardinals have had to deal with the shock" of Benedict's abrupt abdication, the French prelate told the Italian daily La Repubblica.
In interviews given before the conclave, voting cardinals pointed to new job requirements arising from the problems facing a Church that is struggling in many parts of the world with scandals, indifference and conflict.
"Managerial skills will surely be useful," Vienna Archbishop Christoph Schoenborn told La Stampa.
And in an indication of a faultline between Vatican insiders and those running far-flung dioceses, Nigeria's John Onaiyekan spoke of "new and innovative methods to boost collegiality".
"In this regard there is a lot of room for development," said Onaiyekan, the archbishop of the Nigerian capital Abuja.
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