Conclave

by Robert Harris

It was one thing to dread becoming Pope; it was another altogether to confront the sudden reality that it was never going to happen—that after years of being regarded as the heir apparent, your peers had looked you over and God had guided their choice elsewhere.

And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in great perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken…

Adeyemi 57 Tedesco 32 Tremblay 12 Bellini 10 Lomeli 5 Benítez 2

Few cardinals would wish to risk a schism in the Church by obstructing such a dramatic manifestation of the Divine Will. Nor, to be practical about it, would they wish to make an enemy of the incoming Pope, especially one with as powerful a personality as Joshua Adeyemi.

Observing it, the Vatican experts on the main television news channels continued confidently to predict a victory for Bellini.

“I noticed, Dean, that you spent nearly an hour this morning examining Michelangelo’s ceiling.” “I did—and what a ferocious work it is, when one has time to study it. So much disaster bearing down upon us—executions, killings, the Flood. One detail I hadn’t noticed before is God’s expression when He separates light from darkness: it is pure murder.”

Lomeli whispered, “Don’t forget there will also be great excitement at the prospect of the first African pontiff.” “Oh yes! Very good! A Pope who will permit tribal dancing in the middle of the Mass but will not countenance Communion for the divorced!”

when he heard the sound of raised voices behind him, followed by the crash of a tray hitting the marble floor, glass shattering, and then a woman’s scream. (Or was scream the right word? Perhaps cry would be better: a woman’s cry.) He swivelled round to see what was happening. Other cardinals were rising from their seats to do the same; they obscured his view. A nun, her hands clasped to her head, ran across the dining room and into the kitchen. Two sisters hurried after her. Lomeli turned to the cardinal nearest him—it was the young Spaniard, Villanueva. “What happened? Did you see?” “She dropped a bottle of wine, I think.”

This is suspicious

In a moment of terrible clarity, he knew what must have happened. But still—how he reproached himself for this afterwards!—still his instinct was to ignore it. The discretion and self-discipline of a lifetime guided his feet towards the nearest empty chair, and then commanded his body to sit, his mouth to smile a greeting at his neighbours, his hands to unfold a napkin, while in his ears all he could hear was a noise like a waterfall.

A nun, her gaze modestly averted, came and stood at his shoulder to offer him wine. He looked up to refuse, and for a fraction of a second she looked back at him—a terrible, accusing look: it made his mouth go dry.

“One of the nuns serving our table started talking to Joshua. He tried to ignore her at first. She dropped the tray and shouted something. He got up and left.”

“We have waited a long time for an African Pope, Jacopo, and if God wills it to be Joshua, I am happy. But he must be pure in heart and conscience—a truly holy man. Anything short of that would be a disaster for all of us.”

Catholics shouldn't even care about the race of the Pope. if the next Pope is a good Pope who just happened to be black, then so be it! I am asian and if Asian Cardinal is elected as the next Pope and he turns out to be progressive then i would disdain it. Pray for the Mother Church!!

It was then that he had an inspiration. Afterwards he would always believe that God had come to his aid. “Would you like me to hear your confession?”

The priest during sacrament of Confession has an oath of secrecy to never disclose any confessional hearings from the penitent outside the room, no matter what! Whatever Cardinal Lomeli was hearing from the nun he shouldn't disclose it in public!!!

“I am the victim of a disgraceful plot to ruin my reputation, Jacopo. Someone brought that woman here and staged this entire melodrama solely to prevent my election as Pope. How did she come to be in the Casa Santa Marta in the first place? She’d never left Nigeria before.”

“But I have no relationship with her! I hadn’t set eyes on her for thirty years—not until last night, when she turned up outside my room! I didn’t even recognise her. Surely you can see what’s happening here?”

“My soul is full of love for God and His Church. I sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit this morning—you must have felt it too—and I am ready to take on this burden. Does a single lapse thirty years ago disqualify me? Or does it make me stronger? Allow me to quote your own homily from yesterday: ‘Let God grant us a Pope who sins, and asks forgiveness, and carries on.’ ”

“Yes! Yes, I confessed my sin at the time, and my bishop moved me to a different parish, and I never lapsed again. Such relationships were not uncommon in those days. Celibacy has always been culturally alien in Africa—you know that.”

Adeyemi broke the vows of Chastity ??? this is wild wow

“The child?” Adeyemi flinched, faltered. “The child was brought up in a Christian household, and to this day he has no idea who his father is—if indeed it is me. That is the child.”

She was guilty of so many sins, she insisted, she barely knew where to begin—lust, anger, pride, deceit.

“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. But most of all because I have offended You, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen.”

“It is not you who has sinned, my child, it is the Church.” He made the sign of the cross. “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.”

Wow what a terrible statement, the nun still sinned by commited fornication (along with Adeyemi). The Church, or Christ's Church: never sinned, it's the men inside the Church who sinned. Christ's promise to the Church is eternal.

After a while, Adeyemi said in a low voice, “We were both very young.” “No, Your Eminence, she was young; you were thirty.”

And so the two men got down on their knees under the electric light in the sealed room that was sweet with the scent of aftershave—got down easily in Adeyemi’s case, stiffly in Lomeli’s—and prayed together side by side.

“I don’t understand why you agreed to come. Why would you leave your home in Africa and travel all this way?” Her answer pierced him almost more than anything else she said: “Because I thought it might be Cardinal Adeyemi who had sent for me.”

Tedesco 36 Adeyemi 25 Tremblay 23 Bellini 18 Lomeli 11 Benítez 5

The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happen to all…

The late Holy Father, for example, had got it on the fifth, and Lomeli could picture him now, resolutely refusing to sit on the papal throne but insisting on standing up to embrace the cardinals as they queued to congratulate him.

This is so Pope Francis-like

Ratzinger had won it one ballot earlier, when they voted for the fourth time; Lomeli remembered him, too—his shy smile as his tally reached two-thirds and the Conclave burst into applause.

John Paul I had also been a fourth-ballot victor. In fact, apart from Wojtyła, the fifth-ballot rule held true at least as far back as 1963, when Montini had defeated Lercaro and had famously remarked to his more charismatic rival, “...