Conclave

by Robert Harris

An excess of simplicity, after all, was just another form of ostentation, and pride in one’s humility a sin.

it. I won’t utter a word of entreaty to win even one vote. If our colleagues don’t know me by now, after all these years, there’s nothing I can say in the space of a single evening that will convince them.”

“I take it then you don’t believe our friend is sincere when he says he doesn’t want to be Pope.” “Oh, he’s perfectly sincere—that’s one of the reasons I support him. The men who are dangerous—the men who must be stopped—are the ones who actively desire it.”

Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.

Lomeli sensed that he was expected to speak first. But he had learnt long ago not to babble into a silence.

How many of our colleagues failed to take the complaints of the victims seriously, but simply moved the priests responsible to a different parish? It wasn’t that those who turned a blind eye were evil; it was simply that they didn’t understand the scale of the wickedness they were dealing with, and preferred a quiet life. Now we know differently.”

“No one who follows their conscience ever does wrong, Your Eminence. The consequences may not turn out as we intend; it may prove in time that we made a mistake. But that is not the same as being wrong. The only guide to a person’s actions can ever be their conscience, for it is in our conscience that we most clearly hear the voice of God.”

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made…The Church was built of crooked timber—how could it not be? But by the grace of God it fitted together. It had endured two thousand years; if necessary it would last another two weeks without a Pope. He felt suffused by a deep and mysterious love for his colleagues and their frailties.