Conclave

by Robert Harris

  ‘Yes, Dean, thank you. On the top floor.’ He held out his hand and showed his key with a kind of wonder that he should find himself in such a place. ‘It is said to have a marvellous view over the city, but the shutters won’t open.’

  ‘That is to prevent your betraying our secrets, or receiving information from the outside world,’ said Lomeli; then, noticing Benítez’s puzzled expression, he added, ‘A joke, Your Eminence. It’s the same for all of us. Well, you mustn’t just stand on your own all night. This will never do. Come with me.’

  ‘I’m really perfectly happy here, Dean, observing.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’m going to introduce you.’

  ‘Is it necessary? Everyone is talking to someone . . .’

  ‘You are a cardinal now. A certain confidence is demanded.’

  He took the Filipino by the arm and propelled him towards the middle of the dining room, nodding affably to the nuns who were waiting to begin serving the meal, squeezing between the tables until he found them a space. He took up a knife and rapped on the side of a wine glass. Quiet fell over the room, apart from the elderly Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas, who continued to talk loudly until his companion waved at him to be quiet and pointed at Lomeli. The Venezuelan peered around and fiddled with his hearing aid. A piercing howl caused those nearest him to wince and hunch their shoulders. He raised his hand in apology.

  Lomeli bowed towards him. ‘Thank you, Eminence. My brothers,’ he said, ‘please be seated.’

  He waited while they found their places.

  ‘Your Eminences, before we eat, I should like to introduce a new member of our order, whose existence was not known to any of us and who only arrived at the Vatican a few hours ago.’ There was a stir of surprise. ‘This is a perfectly legitimate procedure, known as a creation in pectore. The reason why it had to be done this way is known only to God and to the late Holy Father. But I think we can guess well enough. Our new brother’s ministry is a most dangerous one. It has not been an easy journey for him to join us. He prayed long and hard before setting out. All the greater reason therefore for us to welcome him warmly.’ He glanced at Bellini, who was staring fixedly at the tablecloth. ‘By the Grace of God, a brotherhood of one hundred and seventeen has now become one hundred and eighteen. Welcome to our order, Vincent Benítez, Cardinal Archbishop of Baghdad.’

  He turned to Benítez and applauded him. For an embarrassing few seconds his were the only hands clapping. But gradually others joined until it became a warm ovation. Benítez looked around him in wonder at the smiling faces.

  When the applause ended, Lomeli gestured to the room. ‘Your Eminence, would you care to bless our meal?’

  Benítez’s expression was so alarmed that for an absurd moment it passed through Lomeli’s mind that he had never said grace before. But then he muttered, ‘Of course, Dean. It would be an honour.’ He made the sign of the cross and bowed his head. The cardinals followed suit. Lomeli closed his eyes and waited. For a long time, there was silence. Then, just as Lomeli was beginning to wonder if something had happened to him, Benítez spoke. ‘Bless us, O Lord, and these Your gifts, which we are about to receive from Your bounty. Bless, too, all those who cannot share this meal. And help us, O Lord, as we eat and drink, to remember the hungry and the thirsty, the sick and the lonely, and those sisters who prepared this food for us, and who will serve it to us tonight. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.’

  ‘Amen.’

  Lomeli crossed himself.

  The cardinals raised their heads and unfolded their napkins. The blue-uniformed sisters who had been waiting to serve the meal started coming through from the kitchen carrying soup plates. Lomeli took Benítez by the arm and looked around to see if there was a table where he might receive a friendly welcome.

  He led the Filipino over towards his fellow countrymen, Cardinal Mendoza and Cardinal Ramos, the archbishops of Manila and Cotabato respectively. They were sitting at a table with various other cardinals from Asia and Oceania, and both men rose in homage at his approach. Mendoza was especially effusive. He came round from the other side of the table and clasped Benítez’s hand. ‘I am so proud. We are proud. The whole country will be proud when it hears of your elevation. Dean, you do know that this man is a legend to us in the diocese of Manila? You know what he did?’ He turned back to Benítez. ‘How long ago must it be now? Twenty years?’

  Benítez said, ‘More like thirty, Your Eminence.’

  ‘Thirty!’ Mendoza began to reminisce: Tondo and San Andres, Bahala Na and Kuratong Baleleng, Payatas and Bagong Silangan . . . Initially the names meant nothing to Lomeli. But gradually he gathered they were either slum districts where Benítez had served as a priest, or street gangs he had confronted while building rescue missions for their victims, mostly child prostitutes and drug addicts. The missions still existed, and people still spoke of ‘the priest with the gentle voice’ who had built them. ‘It really is such a pleasure for us both to meet you at last,’ concluded Mendoza, gesturing to Ramos to include him in the sentiment. Ramos nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Wait,’ said Lomeli. He frowned. He wanted to make sure he had understood correctly. ‘Do you three not actually know one another?’

  ‘No, not personally.’ The cardinals shook their heads and Benítez added, ‘It is many years since I left the Philippines.’

  ‘You mean to say you’ve been in the Middle East all this time?’

  A voice behind him cried out, ‘No, Dean – for a long while he was with us, in Africa!’

  Eight African cardinals were seated at the neighbouring table. The cardinal who had spoken, the elderly Archbishop Emeritus of Kinshasa, Beaufret Muamba, stood, beckoned Benítez to him, and clasped him to his chest. ‘Welcome! Welcome!’ He conducted him around the table. One by one the cardinals put down their soup spoons and stood to shake his hand. Watching them, it became apparent to Lomeli that none of these men had ever met Benítez either. They had heard of him, obviously. They even revered him. But his work had been done in remote places, and often outside the traditional structure of the Church. From what Lomeli could pick up – standing nearby, smiling, nodding, and all the while listening keenly, just as he had learnt to do when he was a diplomat – Benítez’s ministry in Africa had been like his street work in Manila: active and dangerous. It had involved setting up clinics and shelters for women and girls who had been raped in the continent’s civil wars.

  The whole business was becoming clearer to him now. Ah yes, he could see exactly why this missionary-priest would have appealed to the Holy Father, who had so often stated his belief that God was most readily encountered in the poorest and most desperate places on earth, not in the comfortable parishes of the First World, and that it took courage to go out and find Him. If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it . . . Benítez was precisely the sort of man who would never rise through the layers of Church appointments – who would not even dream of trying to do so – and who would always be awkward socially. How else then was he to be catapulted into the College of Cardinals except by an extraordinary act of patronage? Yes, all of that Lomeli could understand. The only aspect that mystified him was the secrecy. Would it really have been so much more dangerous for Benítez to have been publicly identified as a cardinal than as an archbishop? And why had the Holy Father not taken anyone into his confidence?

  Someone behind him politely asked him to move out of the way. The Archbishop of Kampala, Oliver Nakitanda, was holding a spare chair and a handful of cutlery he had retrieved from a neighbouring table, and the cardinals were all shifting round to make room for Benítez to join them. The new Archbishop of Maputo, whose name Lomeli had forgotten, beckoned to one of the sisters to bring an extra serving of soup. Benítez refused a glass of wine.

  Lomeli wished him bon appétit and turned to go. Two tables away, Cardinal Adeyemi was holding fo
rth to his dinner companions. The Africans were laughing at one of his famous stories. Even so, the Nigerian seemed distracted, and Lomeli noticed how from time to time he would glance over at Benítez with an expression of puzzled irritation.

  *

  Such was the disproportionate number of Italian cardinals in the Conclave, it required more than three tables to seat them. One was occupied by Bellini and his liberal supporters. At the second, Tedesco presided over the traditionalists. The third was filled with cardinals who were either undecided between the two factions or who nursed secret ambitions of their own. At all three tables, Lomeli noted with dismay, a place had been saved for him. It was Tedesco who saw him first. ‘Dean!’ He indicated he should join them with a firmness that made refusal impossible.

  They had finished their soup and had moved on to antipasti. Lomeli sat down opposite the Patriarch of Venice and accepted half a glass of wine. For the sake of politeness, he also took a little ham and mozzarella, even though he had no appetite. Around the table were the conservative archbishops – Agrigento, Florence, Palermo, Perugia – and Tutino, the disgraced Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who had always been considered a liberal but who no doubt hoped that a Tedesco pontificate might rescue his career.

  Tedesco had a curious way of eating. He would hold his plate in his left hand and empty it with great rapidity using a fork in his right. At the same time, he would glance frequently from side to side, as if fearful that someone might be about to steal his food. Lomeli presumed it was the result of coming from a large and hungry family.

  ‘So, Dean,’ said Tedesco, through a full mouth, ‘your homily is prepared?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And it will be in Latin, I hope?’

  ‘It will be in Italian, Goffredo – as you well know.’

  The other cardinals had broken off their private conversations and were all listening. One never knew what Tedesco might say.

  ‘Such a pity! If I were delivering it, I would insist on Latin.’

  ‘But then no one would understand it, Your Eminence. And that would be a tragedy.’

  Tedesco was the only one who laughed. ‘Yes, well, I confess that my Latin is poor, but I would inflict it on you all nonetheless, simply to make a point. Because what I would try to say, in my simple peasant Latin, is this: that change almost invariably produces the opposite effect to the improvement it is intended to bring about, and that we should bear that in mind when we come to make our choice of Pope. The abandonment of Latin, for example . . .’ He wiped the grease from his thick lips with his napkin and inspected it. For a moment he seemed distracted, but then he resumed. ‘Look around this dining room, Dean. Observe how unconsciously, how instinctively, we have arranged ourselves according to our native languages. We Italians are here – closest to the kitchens, very sensibly. The Spanish-speakers are sitting there. The English-speakers are over towards the reception. Yet when you and I were boys, Dean, and the Tridentine Mass was still the liturgy of the entire world, the cardinals at a Conclave were able to converse with one another in Latin. But then in 1962, the liberals insisted we should get rid of a dead language in order to make communication easier, and now what do we see? They have only succeeded in making communication harder!’

  ‘That may be true of the narrow instance of a Conclave. The same hardly applies to the mission of the Universal Church.’

  ‘The Universal Church? But how can a thing be considered universal if it speaks fifty different languages? Language is vital. Because from language, over time, arises thought, and from thought arises philosophy and culture. It has been sixty years since the Second Vatican Council, but already what it means to be a Catholic in Europe is no longer the same as what it means to be a Catholic in Africa, or Asia, or South America. We have become a confederation, at best. Look around the room, Dean – look at the way language divides us over even such a simple meal as this, and tell me there is not truth in what I say.’

  Lomeli refused to respond. He thought the other man’s reasoning was preposterous. But he was determined to be neutral. He was not going to be drawn into an argument. Besides, one could never tell whether Tedesco was teasing or being serious. ‘All I can say is that if those are your views, Goffredo, you will find my homily a grave disappointment.’

  ‘The abandonment of Latin,’ persisted Tedesco, ‘will lead eventually to the abandonment of Rome. Mark my words.’

  ‘Oh come now – this is too much, even for you!’

  ‘I am perfectly serious, Dean. Men will soon be asking openly: why Rome? They’ve already started to whisper it. There’s no rule in doctrine or Scripture that says the Pope must preside in Rome. He could set up the Throne of St Peter anywhere on earth. Our mysterious new cardinal is from the Philippines, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, you know he is.’

  ‘So now we have three cardinal-electors from that country, which has – what? – eighty-four million Catholics. In Italy we have fifty-seven million – the great majority of whom never take Communion in any case – and yet we have twenty-six cardinal-electors! You think this anomaly will continue for much longer? If you do, you are a fool.’ He threw down his napkin. ‘Now I have spoken too harshly, and I apologise. But I fear this Conclave may be our last chance to preserve our Mother the Church. Another ten years like the last ten – another Holy Father like the last one – and she will cease to exist as we know her.’

  ‘So in effect what you are saying is that the next Pope must be Italian.’

  ‘Yes, I am! Why not? We haven’t had an Italian Pope for more than forty years. There’s never been such an interregnum in all of history. We have to recover the papacy, Dean, to save the Roman Church. Surely all Italians can agree on that?’

  ‘We Italians might well agree on that, Your Eminence. But as we can never agree on anything else, I suspect the odds may be stacked against us. Well, now I must circulate among our colleagues. Good evening to you.’

  And with that Lomeli rose, bowed to the cardinals, and went to sit on Bellini’s table.

  *

  ‘We won’t ask you to tell us how much you enjoyed breaking bread with the Patriarch of Venice. Your face tells us all we need to know.’

  The former Secretary of State was sitting with his praetorian guard: Sabbadin, the Archbishop of Milan; Landolfi of Turin; Dell’Acqua of Bologna; and a couple of members of the Curia – Santini, who was not only Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education but also Senior Cardinal-Deacon, which meant that he would be the one who proclaimed the name of the new Pope from the balcony of St Peter’s; and Cardinal Panzavecchia, who ran the Pontifical Council for Culture.

  ‘I will give him this, at least,’ replied Lomeli, taking another glass of wine to calm his anger. ‘He plainly has no intention of tempering his views to win votes.’

  ‘He never has. I rather admire him for that.’

  Sabbadin, who had a reputation for cynicism, and who was the nearest Bellini had to a campaign manager, said, ‘It was shrewd of him to keep away from Rome until today. With Tedesco, less is always more. One outspoken newspaper interview could have finished him. Instead, he will do well tomorrow, I think.’

  ‘Define “well”,’ said Lomeli.

  Sabbadin looked over at Tedesco. His head rocked slightly from side to side, like a farmer appraising a beast at market. ‘I should say he’s worth fifteen votes in the first ballot.’

  ‘And your man?’

  Bellini covered his ears. ‘Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Between twenty and twenty-five. Certainly ahead on the first ballot. It’s tomorrow night that the serious work will start. Somehow we have to get him to a two-thirds majority. That requires seventy-nine votes.’

  A look of agony passed across Bellini’s long pale face. Lomeli thought he looked more than ever like a martyred saint. ‘Please let’s not talk of 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.’

  They fell silent as the nuns moved around the table, serving the main course of veal scallopini. The meat looked rubbery, the sauce congealed. If anything forces this Conclave to a swift conclusion, thought Lomeli, it will be the food. After the sisters had set down the last plate, Landolfi – who at sixty-two was the youngest present – said in his usual deferential manner, ‘You don’t have to say anything, Eminence. Naturally you must leave that to us. But if we have to tell the uncommitted what you stand for, how would you like us to answer?’

  Bellini nodded towards Tedesco. ‘Tell them I stand for everything he does not. His beliefs are sincere, but they are sincere nonsense. We are never returning to the days of Latin liturgy, and priests celebrating Mass with their backs to the congregation, and families of ten children because Mamma and Papà know no better. It was an ugly, repressive time, and we should be joyful that it has passed. Tell them that I stand for respecting other faiths, and for tolerating differing views within our own Church. Tell them I believe the bishops should have greater powers and that women should play more of a role within the Curia—’

  ‘Wait,’ Sabbadin interrupted him. ‘Really?’ He made a face and sucked his teeth. ‘I think we should keep off the subject of women entirely. It will only give Tedesco an opening for mischief. He’ll say you secretly favour female ordination – which you don’t.’

  Perhaps it was Lomeli’s imagination, but there seemed to be the tiniest flicker of hesitation before Bellini said, ‘I accept that the issue of female ordination is closed for my lifetime – and probably for several lifetimes to come.’

  ‘No, Aldo,’ replied Sabbadin firmly, ‘it is closed for all time. It has been decreed on papal authority: the principle of an exclusively male priesthood is founded on the written word of God—’