Conclave

by Robert Harris

“This is true,” said Bellini. “Once, God explained all mysteries. Now He has been usurped by conspiracy theorists. They are the heretics of the age.”

All three cardinals were known to have factions of supporters inside the electoral college: Bellini, the great intellectual hope of the liberals for as long as Lomeli could remember, a former rector of the Gregorian University and former Archbishop of Milan; Tremblay, who as well as serving as Camerlengo was Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, a candidate therefore with links to the Third World, who had the advantage of seeming to be an American without the disadvantage of actually being one; and Adeyemi, who carried within him like a divine spark the revolutionary possibility, endlessly fascinating to the media, that he might one day become “the first black Pope.”

“You know,” he said, raising his voice to make himself heard above the noise of an electric drill, “when I was a boy in ’58—when I was still at the seminary in Genoa, in fact—and then again in ’63, before I was even ordained, I used to love looking at the pictures of those Conclaves. They had artists’ impressions in all the newspapers. I remember how the cardinals used to sit in canopied thrones around the walls during the voting. And when the election was over, one by one they’d pull a lever to collapse their canopies, apart from the cardinal who’d been chosen. Can you imagine that?

Nevertheless, the memories moved him. The thrones had been abandoned in 1965 after the Second Vatican Council, like so much else of the Church’s old traditions. These days the College of Cardinals was felt to be too large and too multinational for such Renaissance flummery. Still, there was a part of Lomeli that rather hankered after Renaissance flummery, and privately he thought the late Pope had occasionally gone too far in his endless harping on about simplicity and humility. An excess of simplicity, after all, was just another form of ostentation, and pride in one’s humility a sin.

For example, Pope John the Twenty-third was too large to fit into the biggest cassock, so they had to button up the front and split the seam at the back—they say he stepped into it arms-first, like a surgeon into his gown, and then the papal tailor sewed him into it.”

The entire apparatus was archaic, absurd and oddly wonderful.

Lomeli never failed to be disappointed by the dull dun brickwork of the chapel’s exterior. Why had every ounce of human genius been poured into that exquisite interior—almost too much genius, in his opinion: it gave one a kind of aesthetic indigestion—and yet seemingly no thought at all had been given to the outside? It looked like a warehouse, or a factory. Or perhaps that was the point. The treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in God’s mystery—

They had barely gone a dozen paces before Lomeli’s self-reproaches set in. He had spoken too harshly. It was vain of him. It was uncharitable. He was becoming puffed up with his own importance. He would do well to remember that in a few days the Conclave would be over and then no one would be interested in him either. No longer would anyone have to pretend to listen to his stories about canopies and fat Popes. Then he would know what it felt like to be Woźniak, who had lost not only his beloved Holy Father but his position, his home and his prospects, all at the same instant. Forgive me, God.

Before the Casa Santa Marta had been built, more than twenty years earlier, the cardinal-electors were housed for the duration of a Conclave in the Apostolic Palace. The powerful Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Siri, a veteran of four Conclaves and the man who had ordained Lomeli a priest in the 1960s, used to complain that it was like being buried alive. Beds were jammed into fifteenth-century offices and reception rooms, with curtains slung between them to provide a rudimentary privacy. Washing facilities for each cardinal consisted of a jug and a basin; sanitation was a commode. It was John Paul II who had decided that such quaint squalor was no longer tolerable on the eve of the twenty-first century and who had ordered the Casa to be built in the south-western corner of the Vatican City at a cost to the Holy See of twenty million dollars. It reminded Lomeli of a Soviet apartment building: a grey stone rectangle lying on its side, six storeys high.

To reach it he had to pass the late Pope’s suite. It had been sealed since the morning after his death, in accordance with the laws of the Holy See, and to Lomeli, whose guilty recreation was detective fiction, it looked disturbingly like one of the crime scenes he had often read about.

In all of these positions, however nominal, he had played an active part: had preached sermons and celebrated Mass and heard confessions. But one could be the grandest prince of the Universal Church and still lack the most basic skills of the commonest country priest. If only he had experienced life in an ordinary parish, just for a year or two! Instead, ever since his ordination, his path of service—first as a professor of canon law, then as a diplomat, and finally, briefly, as Secretary of State—had seemed only to lead him away from God rather than towards Him. The higher he had climbed, the further heaven had receded. And now it fell to him, of all unworthy creatures, to guide his fellow cardinals in choosing the man who should hold the Keys of St. Peter. Servus fidelis. A faithful servant. It was on his coat of arms. A prosaic motto for a prosaic man. A manager… After a while he went into the bathroom and poured himself a glass of water. Very well then, he thought. Manage.

They were wearing their everyday long black cassocks with red piping, with wide red silk sashes tied at their waists and red skullcaps on their heads. They climbed the slope from the direction of the Palace of the Holy Office. A member of the Swiss Guard in his plumed helmet walked with them, carrying a halberd. It might have been a scene from the sixteenth century, except for the noise of their wheeled suitcases, clattering over the cobbles.

There were nineteen Latin American cardinal-electors, and if they were to vote in a block they would be formidable. But one had only to observe the body language of the Brazilian and the Chilean, the way they refused even to look at one another, to realise that such a common front was impossible. They’d probably struggled even to agree on which restaurant to meet in.

Americans, thought Lomeli, they always stick together: they had even given daily press conferences together until he put a stop to it. He guessed they would have shared a taxi over from the American clergy house, the Villa Stritch.

His companions hung back, embarrassed, as if they had been obliged to bring to a family wedding an elderly relative for whose behaviour they could not vouch.

And in an odd way Lomeli did feel almost nostalgic for the old brute. They were survivors together.

What an extraordinary variety of races they represented—what a testament to the breadth of the Universal Church that men born so different should be bound together by their faith in God!

And although Lomeli greeted them just as warmly as he did the others—they were his neighbours, after all—he couldn’t help noticing that they lacked the precious gift of awe he had detected in those who had travelled from across the world. Good men though they were, they were somehow knowing; they were blasé. Lomeli had recognised this spiritual disfigurement in himself. He had prayed for the strength to fight it. The late Pope used to rail against it to their faces: “Be on your guard, my brothers, against developing the vices of all courtiers down the ages—the sins of vanity and intrigue and of malice and gossip.”

Yet it was the Pope who had appointed them all. Nobody had made him pick them.

Bill Rudgard, for example, who arrived soon after Guttuso: he might come from New York and look like a Wall Street banker, but he had failed entirely to gain control over the financial management of his department, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (“Between you, me and the bedpost, I should never have given the job to an American. They are so innocent: they have no idea how bribery works. Did you know that the going rate for a beatification is said to be three quarters of a million euros? The only miracle is that anyone pays it…”).

“But I’m not merely God’s passive instrument, Jacopo. I have some say in the matter. He gave us free will.”

He came from a peasant family in Basilicata, right down in the south, the youngest of twelve children—the kind of huge family that used to be so common in Italy but had almost vanished since the end of the Second World War. His nose had been broken in his youth and was bulbous and slightly bent. His hair was too long and roughly parted. He had shaved carelessly. In the fading light he reminded Lomeli of a figure from another century: Gioachino Rossini, perhaps. But the rustic image was an act. He had two degrees in theology, spoke five languages fluently, and had been a protégé of Ratzinger’s at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he had been known as the Panzer Cardinal’s enforcer.

He smiled at them as he passed. Who were they? His memory was going. When he was a Papal Nuncio, he could remember the names of all his fellow diplomats, and of their wives and even their children. Now every conversation came freighted with the threat of embarrassment.

Lomeli drew back slightly. After a lifetime spent listening to secrets, he had developed an instinct for such matters. The vulgar always assumed it was best to try to know everything; in his experience it was often better to know as little as possible.

In pectore (“in the heart”) was the ancient provision under which a Pope could create a cardinal without revealing his name, even to his closest associates: apart from the beneficiary, God alone would know.

To this day no one knew who the man was—the assumption had always been that he was Chinese, and that he had had to remain anonymous to avoid persecution.

Bellini said coldly, “I doubt neither your courage nor your faith, Archbishop. But your return will have diplomatic repercussions and therefore it won’t necessarily be your decision.” “Nor will it necessarily be yours, Eminence. It will be a decision for the next Pope.” He was tougher than he looked, thought Lomeli. For once Bellini seemed at a loss for a reply.

He thought of all the tasks that lay ahead. Give me strength, O Lord, to face this trial. He turned over carefully, sat up, placed his feet on the floor and rocked himself forward several times, building the momentum to stand. This was old age: all these movements one had once taken for granted—the simple act of rising from a bed, for example—that now required a precise sequence of planned manoeuvres. At the third attempt he gained his feet and walked stiffly the short distance to the desk.

The din of voices bouncing off the hard surfaces was convivial and anticipatory, like the first night of a business convention.

They had heard of him, obviously. They even revered him. But his work had been done in remote places, and often outside the traditional structure of the Church.

Ah yes, he could see exactly why this missionary-priest would have appealed to the Holy Father, who had so often stated his belief that God was most readily encountered in the poorest and most desperate places on earth, not in the comfortable parishes of the First World, and that it took courage to go out and find Him.

Tedesco was the only one who laughed. “Yes, well, I confess that my Latin is poor, but I would inflict it on you all nonetheless, simply to make a point.

“Look around this dining room, Dean. Observe how unconsciously, how instinctively, we have arranged ourselves according to our native languages. We Italians are here—closest to the kitchens, very sensibly.

Yet when you and I were boys, Dean, and the Tridentine Mass was still the liturgy of the entire world, the cardinals at a Conclave were able to converse with one another in Latin. But then in 1962, the liberals insisted we should get rid of a dead language in order to make communication easier, and now what do we see? They have only succeeded in making communication harder!” “That may be true of the narrow instance of a Conclave. The same hardly applies to the mission of the Universal Church.” “The Universal Church? But how can a thing be considered universal if it speaks fifty different languages? Language is vital. Because from language, over time, arises thought, and from thought arises philosophy and culture. It has been sixty years since the Second Vatican Council, but already what it means to be a Catholic in Europe is no longer the same as what it means to be a Catholic in Africa, or Asia, or South America. We have become a confederation, at best. Look around the room, Dean—look at the way language divides us over even such a simple meal as this, and tell me there is not truth in what I say.” Lomeli refused to respond. He thought the other man’s reasoning was preposterous. But he was determined to be neutral. He was not going to be drawn into an argument. Besides, one could never tell whether Tedesco was teasing or being serious.

If anything forces this Conclave to a swift conclusion, thought Lomeli, it will be the food.

How can a woman instruct a bishop, let alone select a bishop, when she isn’t even allowed to celebrate Communion? The College will see it as ordination by the back door.”

The Archbishop of Milan’s father had been a prominent Christian Democrat senator; he had learnt how to count votes in the cradle.

Lomeli pressed his hand to his heart and bowed his head slightly in apology. “I quite understand. Forgive me.” The Canadian was lying, of course. They both knew it. Lomeli stood aside. Tremblay opened the door. In silence they walked back together along the corridor and at the staircase went their separate ways, the Canadian down to the lobby to resume his conversations, the dean wearily up another flight to his room and his doubts.

He tried counting the snores in the hope that the repetition would lull him to sleep. When he reached five hundred, he gave up.

He saved others; himself he cannot save—the jeer of the scribes and elders at the foot of the cross. The paradox at the heart of the Gospel. The priest who celebrates Mass and yet is unable to achieve Communion himself.

You are not a shepherd, a familiar voice whispered in his head. You are a manager. He had a sudden urge to give it back, to tear off the vestments, to confess himself a fraud and disappear. He smiled and nodded. “It feels good,” he said. “Thank you.”

Once, in his youth, Lomeli had enjoyed a modest fame for the richness of his baritone. But it had become thin with age, like a fine wine left too long.

Here and there he registered the leading contenders—Bellini, Tedesco, Adeyemi, Tremblay—sitting far apart from one another, each preoccupied with his own thoughts, and it struck him what an imperfect, arbitrary, man-made instrument the Conclave was. It had no basis in Holy Scripture whatsoever. There was nothing in the reading to say that God had created cardinals. Where did they fit into St. Paul’s picture of His Church as a living body? …If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength… The reading ended. The Gospel was acclaimed. Lomeli sat motionless on his throne. He felt he had just been granted an insight into something, but he was not sure what.

Suddenly he was facing the dead eyes of the television cameras and the great magnitude of the congregation, too huge to take in, roughly arranged in blocks of colour: the black of the nuns and the laity in the distance, just inside the bronze doors; the white of the priests halfway up the nave; the purple of the bishops at the top of the aisle; the scarlet of the cardinals at his feet, beneath the dome.

Paul tells the Ephesians—who were, let us remember, a mixture of Gentiles and Jews—that God’s gift to the Church is its variety: some are created by Him to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and others teachers, who ‘together make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ.’ They make a unity in the work of service. These are different people—one may suppose strong people, with forceful personalities, unafraid of persecution—serving the Church in their different ways: it is the work of service that brings them together and makes the Church. God could, after all, have created a single archetype to serve Him. Instead, He created what a naturalist might call a whole ecosystem of mystics and dreamers and practical builders—managers, even—with different strengths and impulses, and from these He fashioned the body of Christ.”

“I take this idea of the body and the head to be a beautiful metaphor for collective wisdom: of a religious community working together to grow into Christ. To work together, and grow together, we must be tolerant, because all of the body’s limbs are needed. No one person or faction should seek to dominate another. ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,’ Paul urges the faithful elsewhere in that same letter.

He felt closer to God than he had for many months—closer perhaps than he had ever felt before in his life. He closed his eyes and prayed. O Lord, I hope my words have served Your purpose, and I thank You for granting me the courage to say what was in my heart, and the mental and physical strength to deliver it.

He felt a great surge of spiritual energy, and the power stayed with him, so that in every stage of the Eucharist that followed he was aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

He sensed astonishment. Lomeli—the smooth, the reliable, the competent Lomeli; Lomeli the lawyer; Lomeli the diplomat—had done something they had never expected. He had said something interesting. He had not expected it of himself, either.

What did I call for? Three things: unity; tolerance; humility.