Conclave

by Robert Harris

He closed his eyes. If it is Your will, O Lord, that I should have to discharge this duty, I pray that You will give me the wisdom to perform it in a manner that will strengthen our Mother the Church…

The children of the Son of Man were all equal at the last, he reflected; all were dependent on God’s mercy for the hope of resurrection.

“The Pope had doubts about God?” “Not about God! Never about God!” And then Bellini said something Lomeli would never forget. “What he had lost faith in was the Church.”

hovered somewhere nearby; again the faint sounds of demonstrators carried on the cold air.

of the Lord has been given to me). The second was

In other words, we should have no fear of diversity, because it is this variety that gives our Church its strength. And then, says Paul, when we have achieved completeness in truth and love, ‘we shall not be children any longer, or tossed one way and another and carried along by every wind of doctrine, at the mercy of all the tricks men play and their cleverness in deceit.’

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.

We do not need a Church that will move with the world but a Church that will move the world.

There was a set prayer for every garment—cassock, cincture, rochet, mozzetta, zucchetto—and he recited them as he put on each item.

But he did so mechanically, with no more feeling than if he were giving out a telephone number.

But he had learnt long ago not to babble into a silence.

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.” It wasn’t until just after 9 a.m. that Tremblay