allowed to cast the deciding vote for himself. A procedure called accession gave electors who had not voted for the possible new pope the opportunity to change their votes and make the election unanimous (or nearly so), except for the vote of the possible new pope. This is how Cardinal Borgia was elected pope Alexander VI in 1492. Faced by the mortal challenge to the papacy emanating from Protestantism, and fearing schism due to several stormy conclaves in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Gregory XV established the procedure of signed ballots to prevent any cardinal from casting the deciding vote for himself. The accession was not ended, but seldom used until Pius XII abolished it in 1945. Since 1945, a cardinal can cast the deciding vote for himself without the accession, though the two-thirds majority rule has always been continued, except when John Paul II had modified that rule in 1996 (after 33 ballots, a simple majority was sufficient), with the two-thirds majority rule restored in 2007 by Benedict XVI. Prior to 1621, the only oath taken was that of obedience to the rules of the conclave in force at that time, when the cardinals entered the conclave and the doors were locked, and each morning and afternoon as they entered the Sistine Chapel to vote. Gregory XV added the additional oath, taken when each cardinal casts his ballot, to prevent cardinals wasting time in casting "courtesy votes" and instead narrowing the number of realistic candidates for the papal throne to perhaps only two or three. Speed in electing a pope was important, and that meant using an oath so as to get the cardinals down to the serious business of electing a new pope and narrowing the number of potentially electable candidates. The reforms of Gregory XV in 1621 and reaffirmed in 1622 created the written detailed step-by-step procedure used in choosing a pope; a procedure that was essentially the same as that which was used in 2013 to elect Pope Francis. The biggest change since 1621 was the elimination of the rule that required the electors to sign their ballots resulting in the detailed voting procedure of scrutiny making use of simple verbal oaths. Beginning in 1945, an elector could vote for himself and then call on God via the oath taken when the vote is dropped into the receptacle, to declare himself to be the