Conclave

by Robert Harris

“Some are chosen to be shepherds, and others are needed to manage the farm. Yours is not a pastoral role. You are not a shepherd. You are a manager. Do you think it’s easy for me? I need you here. Don’t worry. God will return to you. He always does.”

Eternal rest grant unto him, Lord: And let perpetual light shine upon him…

wondered who would be the first to break the meditation. He guessed it would be Tremblay. The French Canadian was always in a hurry, a typical North American.

“Sede vacante,” Tremblay announced. “The throne of the Holy See is vacant.”

His war with the Vatican’s old guard had started right here, on that issue, on his first day.

Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics.

“Well, he didn’t want anyone to know. He said the moment word got out, they would start spreading rumours that he was going to resign.”

Lomeli’s surprise must have shown in his face, because Woźniak said quickly, “I would have called you sooner, but Cardinal Tremblay took charge of the situation.”

“It’s simply that when a Pope dies unexpectedly, any mistakes made in the initial shock and confusion can lead to all manner of malicious rumours afterwards. You only have to remember the tragedy of Pope John Paul I—we’ve spent the past forty years trying to convince the world he wasn’t murdered, and all because nobody wanted to admit his body was discovered by a nun. This time, there must be no discrepancies in the official account.”

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

“Who was the last to have a scheduled meeting with him?” “I believe, in fact, that may have been me,” said Tremblay. “I saw him at four. Is that right, Janusz? Was I the last?”

Reminding people of the immense burden of the papacy carried the obvious implication that it was an office best filled by a younger man—and Adeyemi, at just over sixty, was nearly a decade younger than the other two.

three cardinals were known to have factions of supporters

Bellini, the great intellectual hope of the liberals

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,

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.”

Lomeli that it would fall to him, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, to manage the election.

“What has he done to deserve courtesy? If any one man can be said to have killed the Holy Father, he did!”

all the late Pope’s critics, Tedesco had been the most savage, pushing his attacks on the Holy Father and on Bellini to the point, some thought, of schism.

“Of course he knew,” said Bellini. “This place is full of his supporters. He probably knew before we did. If we’re not careful, he will make the official announcement himself, in St. Mark’s Square.”

Holy Father would not have cared a fig about dignity. It was as one of the humble of the earth that he chose to live, and it is as one of the humble poor that he would wish to be seen in death.”

had never forgotten filing past Pope Paul VI’s body in St. Peter’s in 1978: in the August heat, the face had turned greyish-green, the jaw had sagged, and there was a definite whiff of corruption.

when Pope Pius XII’s body had fermented in its coffin and exploded like a firecracker outside the church of St. John Lateran.

“One of us should say something,” announced Tremblay, and without waiting for a response, he set off across the piazza.

“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.”

In the days since the Pope’s funeral, he had tried to meet every cardinal and memorise a few personal details. But there were so many new faces—the late Pope had awarded more than sixty red hats, fifteen in the last year alone—that the task had proved beyond him.

They had claimed that laser beams aimed at the windows set high in the upper gallery could detect vibrations in the glass caused by any words spoken, and that these could be transcribed back into speech.

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

the small sacristy known as the Room of Tears. This was where the new Pope would go immediately after his election to be robed.

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.

The cardinals were to be entirely sequestered from the world for as long as the election lasted, so that no person and no news could influence their meditation.

The threat of terrorism was considered serious and imminent, the minister had said.

There were nineteen Latin American cardinal-electors, and if they were to vote in a block they would be formidable.

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.

North Americans wielded nineteen votes, and it was widely assumed that Tremblay, as Archbishop Emeritus of Quebec, would pick up most of them.

Krasinski’s vote—the Chicagoan had already endorsed Tedesco,

Lomeli was sure that the Africans would vote as a solid block for Cardinal Adeyemi.

He might win votes in Africa by attacking, as he often did, “the Satan of global capitalism” and “the abomination of homosexuality,” but he would lose them in America and Europe.

still the cardinals of Europe—fifty-six in all—who dominated the Conclave.

The liberals had had such high hopes for the genial Archbishop of Florence. “A second Pope John XXIII,” they had called him.

once installed Guttuso had slowly revealed himself to be every bit as authoritarian as his predecessors, merely lazier.

want a Church that is poor,” the Pope had complained more than once in Lomeli’s hearing. “I want a Church that is closer to the people. Guttuso has a good soul but he has forgotten where he came from.” He had quoted Matthew: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Cardinal Tutino,

He had been exposed in the press for spending half a million euros knocking two apartments together to create a place big enough to house the three nuns and the chaplain he felt necessary to serve him.

If he wins, Lomeli promised himself as soon as the Canadian had passed, I shall be gone from Rome the very next day.

By general agreement, Bellini had emerged as the favourite to succeed to the throne of St. Peter.

No sane man could possibly want the papacy.”

Cardinal Goffredo Tedesco was the least clerical-looking cleric Lomeli had ever seen.

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.