The choice of name took Lomeli by surprise. To derive one’s papal title from a virtue—innocence, piety, clemency—rather than from a saint was a tradition that had died out generations ago. There had been thirteen Popes named Innocent, none of them in the last three centuries. But the more he considered it, even in those first few seconds, the more he was struck by its aptness—by its symbolism at such a time of bloodshed, by the boldness of its declaration of intent. It seemed to promise both a return to tradition and yet a departure from it—exactly the sort of ambiguity the Curia relished. And
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