Conclave

8 Momentum

LOMELI RODE BACK to the hostel in silence, his cheek pressed against the cold window of the bus. The swish of the tyres on the wet cobbles as they passed through the successive courtyards was oddly comforting. Above the Vatican Gardens the lights of a passenger jet descended towards Fiumicino airport. He promised himself that the next morning he would walk to the Sistine, whether it was raining or not. This airless seclusion was not merely unhealthy: it was unconducive to spiritual reflection.

When they reached the Casa Santa Marta, he strode past the gossiping cardinals and went straight to his room. The nuns had been in to clean while the Conclave was voting. His vestments had been neatly hung in the closet, the sheets on his bed turned down. He took off his mozzetta and rochet and draped them over the back of the chair, then knelt at the prie-dieu. He gave thanks to God for helping him perform his duties throughout the day. He even risked a little humour. And thank you, O Lord, for speaking to us through the voting in the Conclave, and I pray that soon You will give us the wisdom to understand what it is You are trying to say.

From the adjoining room emanated muffled voices occasionally punctuated by laughter. Lomeli glanced at the wall. He was sure now that his neighbour must be Adeyemi. No other member of the Conclave had a voice so deep. It sounded as if he was having a meeting with his supporters. There was another burst of hilarity. Lomeli’s mouth tightened in disapproval. If Adeyemi truly sensed the papacy might be closing in on him, he ought to be lying prone on his bed in the darkness in silent terror, not relishing the prospect. But then he rebuked himself for his priggishness. The first black Pope would be a tremendous thing for the world. Who could blame a man if he felt exhilarated at the prospect of being the vehicle of such a manifestation of the Divine Will?

He remembered the envelope O’Malley had given him. Slowly he raised himself on his creaking knees, sat at his desk and tore open the envelope. Two sheets of paper. One was the biographical note released by the Vatican press office:

Cardinal Vincent Benítez

Cardinal Benítez is 67 years old. He was born in Manila, Philippines. He studied at the San Carlos Seminary and was ordained in 1978 by the Archbishop of Manila, His Eminence Cardinal Jaime Sin. His first ministry was at the church of Santo Niño de Tondo and afterwards at Our Lady of the Abandoned Parish (Santa Ana). Well known for his work in the poorest areas of Manila, he established eight shelters for homeless girls, the Project of the Blessed Santa Margherita de Cortona. In 1996, following the assassination of the former Archbishop of Bukavu, Christopher Munzihirwa, Fr Benítez, at his own request, was transferred to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he undertook missionary work. He subsequently set up a Catholic hospital in Bukavu to assist female victims of the genocidal sexual violence perpetrated during the First and Second Congo Wars. In 2017 he was created monsignor. In 2018 he was appointed Archbishop of Baghdad, Iraq. He was admitted to the College of Cardinals earlier this year by the late Holy Father, in pectore.

Lomeli read it through twice just to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. The Archdiocese of Baghdad was tiny – if he remembered rightly, these days it numbered barely more than two thousand souls – but even so, Benítez appeared to have gone straight from missionary to archbishop with no intervening stage. He had never heard of such a meteoric promotion. He turned to O’Malley’s accompanying handwritten note:

Eminence,

From Cardinal Benítez’s file in the dicastery, it would appear that the late Holy Father first met him during his African tour in 2017. He was sufficiently impressed by his work to create him monsignor. When the Baghdad archdiocese fell vacant, the Holy Father rejected the three suggested nominations put forward by the Congregation for Bishops and insisted on appointing Fr Benítez. In January this year, following minor injuries sustained in a car-bomb attack, Archbishop Benítez offered his resignation on medical grounds, but withdrew it after a private meeting in the Vatican with the Holy Father. Otherwise, the file is remarkably scanty.

RO’M

Lomeli sat back in his chair. He had a habit of biting the side of his right forefinger when he was thinking. So Benítez was in delicate health, or had been, as the result of a terrorist incident in Iraq? Perhaps that accounted for his fragile appearance. All in all, his ministry had been served in some terrible places: such a life was bound to take its toll. What was certain was that the man represented the best that the Christian faith had to offer. Lomeli resolved to keep a discreet eye on him, and to mention him in his prayers.

A bell rang, to announce that dinner was served. It was 8.30 p.m.

‘Let us face facts. We did not do as well as we had hoped.’ The Archbishop of Milan, Sabbadin, his rimless lenses glinting in the light of the chandeliers, looked around the table at the Italian cardinals who formed the core of Bellini’s support. Lomeli was seated opposite him.

This was the night when the real business of the Conclave started to be done. Although in theory the papal constitution forbade the cardinal-electors from entering into ‘any form of pact, agreement, promise or commitment’ on pain of excommunication, this had now become an election, and hence a matter of arithmetic: who could get to seventy-nine votes? Tedesco, his authority enhanced by coming top in the first ballot, was telling a funny story to a table of South American cardinals, and dabbing his eyes with his napkin at his own hilarity. Tremblay was listening earnestly to the views of the South-East Asians. Adeyemi, worryingly for his rivals, had been invited to join the conservative archbishops of Eastern Europe – Wrocław, Riga, Lviv, Zagreb – who wanted to test his views on social issues. Even Bellini seemed to making an effort: he had been parked by Sabbadin on a table of North Americans and was describing his ambition to give greater autonomy to the bishops. The nuns who were serving the food could hardly help overhearing the state of play, and afterwards several of them were to prove useful sources for reporters trying to piece together the inside story of the Conclave: one even preserved a napkin on which a cardinal had jotted the voting figures of the first-round leaders.

‘Does that mean we cannot win?’ continued Sabbadin. Again he sought to look each man in the eye, and Lomeli thought unkindly how rattled he looked: his hopes of becoming Secretary of State under a Bellini papacy had taken a knock. ‘Of course we can still win! All that can be said for certain after today’s vote is that the next Pope will be one of four men: Bellini, Tedesco, Adeyemi or Tremblay.’

Dell’Acqua, the Archbishop of Bologna, interrupted. ‘Aren’t you forgetting our friend the dean here? He received five votes.’

‘With the greatest respect to Jacopo, it would be unprecedented for a candidate with so little support on the first ballot to emerge as a serious contender.’

But Dell’Acqua refused to let the subject drop. ‘What about Wojtyła in the second Conclave of ’78? He received only a scattering of votes in the first round yet went on to be elected on the eighth ballot.’

Sabbadin fluttered his hand irritably. ‘All right, so it’s happened once in a century. But let’s not distract ourselves – our dean does not exactly have the ambition of a Karol Wojtyła. Unless, that is, there’s something he’s not telling us?’

Lomeli looked at his plate. The main course was chicken wrapped in Parma ham. It was overcooked and dry but they were eating it nonetheless. He knew that Sabbadin blamed him for taking votes off Bellini. In the circumstances, he felt he should make an announcement. ‘My position is an embarrassment to me. If I find out who my supporters are, I shall plead with them to vote for someone else. And if they ask me who I’ll be voting for, I shall tell them Bellini.’

Landolfi, the Archbishop of Turin, said, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be neutral?’

‘Well, I can’t be seen to campaign for him, if that’s what you’re implying. But if I’m asked my view, I feel I have a right to express it. Bellini is unquestionably the best-qualified man to govern the Universal Church.’

‘Listen to that,’ urged Sabbadin. ‘If the dean’s five votes come to us, that takes us to twenty-three. All those hopeless candidates who have received one or two nominations today will fall away tomorrow. That means another thirty-eight votes are about to become available. We simply have to pick up most of them.’

‘Simply?’ repeated Dell’Acqua. His tone was mocking. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing simple about it, Your Eminence!’

Nobody could say anything to that. Sabbadin flushed pink and they resumed their melancholy chewing in silence.

If that force which the secular call momentum and the religious believe is the Holy Spirit was with any of the candidates that night, it was with Adeyemi. His rivals seemed to sense it. For example, when the cardinals rose for coffee and the Patriarch of Lisbon, Rui Brandão D’Cruz, went out into the enclosed courtyard to smoke his evening cigar, Lomeli noticed how Tremblay immediately hurried after him, presumably to canvass his support. Tedesco and Bellini moved from table to table. But the Nigerian simply went and stood coolly in the corner of the lobby and left it to his supporters to bring over potential voters who wanted to have a word with him. Soon a small queue began to form.

Lomeli, leaning against the reception desk, sipping coffee, watched him as he held court. If he were a white man, he thought, Adeyemi would be condemned by the liberals as more reactionary even than Tedesco. But the fact that he was black made them reluctant to criticise his views. His fulminations against homosexuality, for example, they could excuse as merely an expression of his African cultural heritage. Lomeli was beginning to sense that he had underestimated Adeyemi. Perhaps he was indeed the candidate to unite the Church. He certainly had the largeness of personality required to fill St Peter’s Throne.

He was staring too openly, he realised. He ought to mingle with the others. But he didn’t much want to talk to anyone. He wandered around the lobby, holding his cup and saucer like a shield in front of him, smiling and bowing slightly to those cardinals who approached him, but all the time keeping moving. Just around the corner, next to the door to the chapel, he spotted Benítez at the centre of a group of cardinals. They were listening intently to what he was saying. He wondered what the Filipino was telling them. Benítez glanced over their shoulders and noticed Lomeli looking in his direction. He excused himself, and came over.

‘Good evening, Your Eminence.’

‘And good evening to you.’ Lomeli put his hand on Benítez’s shoulder and gazed at him with concern. ‘How is your health bearing up?’

‘My health is excellent, thank you.’

He seemed to tense slightly at the question, and Lomeli remembered that he had only been told in confidence of his offer to resign on medical grounds. He said, ‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t intended to be intrusive. I meant have you recovered from your journey?’

‘Entirely, thank you. I slept very well.’

‘That’s wonderful. It’s a privilege to have you with us.’ He patted the Filipino’s shoulder and swiftly withdrew his hand. He sipped his coffee. ‘And I noticed in the Sistine that you found someone to vote for.’

‘Indeed I did, Dean.’ Benítez smiled shyly. ‘I voted for you.’

Lomeli rattled his cup against its saucer in surprise. ‘Oh, good heavens!’

‘Forgive me. Am I not supposed to say?’

‘No, no, it’s not that. I’m honoured. But really I’m not a serious candidate.’

‘With respect, Your Eminence, isn’t that for your colleagues to decide?’

‘Of course it is. But I fear that if you knew me better, you would appreciate that I’m in no way worthy to be Pope.’

‘Any man who is truly worthy must consider himself unworthy. Isn’t that the point you were making in your homily? That without doubt there can be no faith? It resonated with my own experience. The scenes I witnessed in Africa especially would make any man sceptical of God’s mercy.’

‘My dear Vincent – may I call you Vincent? – I beg you, in the next ballot, give your vote to one of our brothers who has a realistic chance of winning. Bellini would be my choice.’

Benítez shook his head. ‘Bellini seems to me – what was the phrase the Holy Father once used to me to describe him? – “brilliant but neurotic”. I’m sorry, Dean. I shall vote for you.’

‘Even if I plead with you not to? You received a vote yourself this afternoon, didn’t you?’

‘I did. It was absurd!’

‘Then imagine how you would feel if I insisted on voting for you, and by some miracle you won.’

‘It would be a disaster for the Church.’

‘Yes, well that is how it would be if I became Pope. Will you at least think about what I’m asking?’

Benítez promised that he would.

After his conversation with Benítez, Lomeli was sufficiently troubled to try to seek out the main contenders. He found Tedesco alone in the lobby, lying back in one of the crimson armchairs, his plump and dimpled hands folded across his capacious stomach, his feet up on a coffee table. They were surprisingly dainty for a man of his girth, shod in scuffed and shapeless orthopaedic shoes. Lomeli said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that I’m doing all in my power to withdraw my name from the second ballot.’

Tedesco regarded him through half-open eyes. ‘And why would you do that?’

‘Because I don’t wish to compromise my neutrality as dean.’

‘You rather did that this morning, didn’t you?’

‘I’m sorry if you took it that way.’

‘Ah, don’t worry about it. As far as I’m concerned, I hope you continue as a candidate. I want to see the issues aired: I thought Scavizzi answered you well enough in his meditation. Besides. . .’ he wiggled his little feet happily and closed his eyes, ‘you’re splitting the liberal vote!’

Lomeli studied him for a moment. One had to smile. He was as cunning as a peasant selling a pig at market. Forty votes, that was all the Patriarch of Venice needed: forty votes, and he would have the blocking third he needed to prevent the election of a detested ‘progressive’. He would drag the Conclave out for days if he had to. All the more urgency, then, for Lomeli to extricate himself from the embarrassing position in which he was now placed.

‘I wish you a good night’s sleep, Patriarch.’

‘Goodnight, Dean.’

Before the evening was over, he had managed to speak in turn to each of the other three leading candidates, and to each he repeated his pledge to withdraw. ‘Mention it to anyone who brings up my name, I implore you. Tell them to come and see me if they doubt my sincerity. All I wish is to serve the Conclave and to help it arrive at the right decision. I can’t do that if I’m seen as a contender myself.’

Tremblay frowned and rubbed his chin. ‘Forgive me, Dean, but if we do that, won’t we simply make you look like a paragon of modesty? If one was being Machiavellian about it, one could almost say it was a clever move to swing votes.’

It was such an insulting response, Lomeli was tempted to raise the issue of the so-called withdrawn report into the Camerlengo’s activities. But what was the point? He would only deny it. Instead he said politely, ‘Well that is the situation, Your Eminence, and I shall leave you to handle it as you see fit.’

Next he talked to Adeyemi, who was statesmanlike. ‘I consider that a principled position, Dean, exactly as I would have expected from you. I shall tell my supporters to spread the word.’

‘And you certainly have plenty of supporters, I think.’ Adeyemi looked at him blankly. Lomeli smiled. ‘Forgive me: I couldn’t help overhearing the meeting in your room earlier this evening. We’re next-door neighbours. The walls are very thin.’

‘Ah, yes!’ Adeyemi’s expression cleared. ‘There was a certain exuberance after the first ballot. Perhaps it wasn’t very seemly. It won’t happen again.’

Lomeli intercepted Bellini just as he was about to go upstairs to bed and told him what he had told the others. He added, ‘I feel very wretched that my meagre tally may have come at your expense.’

‘Don’t be. I’m relieved. There seems to be a general feeling that the chalice is slipping away from me. If that is the case – and I pray that it is – I can only hope that it passes to you.’ Bellini threaded his arm through Lomeli’s, and together the two old friends began to climb the stairs.

Lomeli said, ‘You are the only one of us with the holiness and the intellect to be Pope.’

‘No, that’s kind of you, but I fret too much, and we cannot have a Pope who frets. You will have to be careful, though, Jacopo. I’m serious: if my position weakens further, much of my support will probably switch to you.’

‘No, no, no, that would be a disaster!’

‘Think about it. Our fellow countrymen are desperate to have an Italian Pope, but at the same time most of them can’t abide the thought of Tedesco. If I fade, that leaves you as the only viable candidate for them to rally behind.’

Lomeli stopped, mid-step. ‘What an appalling thought! That must not be allowed to happen!’ When they resumed climbing he said, ‘Perhaps Adeyemi will turn out to be the answer. He certainly has the wind behind him.’

‘Adeyemi? A man who has more or less said that all homosexuals should be sent to prison in this world and to hell in the next? He is not the answer to anything!’

They reached the second floor. The candles flickering outside the Holy Father’s apartment cast a red glow across the landing. The two most senior cardinals in the electoral college stood for a moment contemplating the sealed door.

‘What was going through his head in those final weeks, I wonder?’ Bellini said, almost to himself.

‘Don’t ask me. I didn’t see him at all for the last month.’

‘Ah, I wish you had! He was strange. Unreachable. Secretive. I believe he sensed his death was approaching and his mind was full of curious ideas. I feel his presence very strongly, don’t you?’

‘I do indeed. I still speak to him. I often sense he is watching us.’

‘I’m quite certain of it. Well, this is where we part. I am on the third floor.’ Bellini studied his key. ‘Room 301. I must be directly above the Holy Father. Perhaps his spirit radiates through the floor? That would explain why I am so restless. Be sure that you sleep well, Jacopo. Who knows where we’ll be this time tomorrow?’

And then, to Lomeli’s surprise, Bellini kissed him lightly on either cheek before turning away and continuing on up the staircase.

Lomeli called after him: ‘Goodnight.’

Without turning round, Bellini raised his hand in response.

After he had gone, Lomeli stood for another minute, staring at the closed door with its barrier of wax and ribbons. He was remembering his conversation with Benítez. Could it really be true that the Holy Father had known the Filipino well enough, and trusted him enough, to criticise his own Secretary of State? Yet the remark had the ring of authenticity. ‘Brilliant but neurotic’: he could almost hear the old man saying it.

Lomeli’s sleep that night was also restless. For the first time in many years he dreamt of his mother – a widow for forty years, who used to complain that he was cold towards her – and when he woke in the early hours, her plaintive voice still seemed to be whining in his ears. But then, after a minute or two, he realised the voice he could hear was real. There was a woman nearby.

A woman?

He rolled on to his side and groped for his watch. It was almost 3 a.m.

The female voice came again: urgent, accusatory, almost hysterical. And then a deep male response: gentle, soothing, placatory.

Lomeli threw off his bedclothes and turned on the light. The unoiled springs of the iron bedstead creaked loudly as he put his feet to the floor. He tiptoed cautiously across the room and put his ear to the wall. The voices had fallen silent. He sensed that on the other side of the plasterboard partition they too were listening. For several minutes he held the same position, until he began to feel foolish. Surely his suspicions were absurd? But then he heard Adeyemi’s unmistakable voice – even the cardinal’s whispers had resonance – followed by the click of a door closing. He moved quickly to his own door and flung it open, just in time to see a flash of the blue uniform of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul disappearing around the corner.

Later, it would be obvious to Lomeli what he should have done next. He should have dressed immediately and knocked on Adeyemi’s door. It might still have been possible, at that early moment, before positions were fixed and when the episode was undeniable, to have a frank conversation about what had just happened. Instead, the dean climbed back into his bed, drew the sheet up to his chin, and contemplated the possibilities.

The best explanation – that is to say, the least damaging from his point of view – was that the nun was troubled, that she had concealed herself after the other sisters had left the building at midnight and had come to Adeyemi to seek guidance. Many of the nuns in the Casa Santa Marta were African, and it was entirely possible she had known the cardinal from his years in Nigeria. Obviously Adeyemi was guilty of a serious indiscretion in admitting her to his room unchaperoned in the middle of the night, but an indiscretion was not necessarily a sin. After that came a range of other explanations, from nearly all of which Lomeli’s imagination recoiled. In a literal sense, he had trained himself not to deal with such thoughts. A passage in Pope John XXIII’s Journal of a Soul had been his guiding text ever since his tormenting days and nights as a young priest:

As for women, and everything to do with them, never a word, never; it was as if there were no women in the world. This absolute silence, even between close friends, about everything to do with women was one of the most profound and lasting lessons of my early years in the priesthood.

This was the core of the hard mental discipline that had enabled Lomeli to remain celibate for more than sixty years. Don’t even think about them! The mere idea of going next door and talking man to man with Adeyemi about a woman was a concept that lay entirely outside the dean’s closed intellectual system. Therefore he resolved to forget about the whole incident. If Adeyemi chose to confide in him, naturally he would listen, in the spirit of a confessor. Otherwise he would act as if it had never happened.

He reached over and switched off the light.