Conclave (26 page)

It was many years since the Dean of the College of Cardinals had used a photocopier. Indeed, now that he looked at one, he was not sure he ever had. He studied the array of settings, then began pressing buttons at random. A small screen lit up and displayed a message. He bent to read it:
Error
.

He heard a sound behind him. Sister Agnes was standing in the doorway. Her unwavering gaze intimidated him. He wondered how long she had been watching his fumbling efforts. He raised his hands helplessly. ‘I am trying to make some copies of a document.’

‘If you give it to me, Your Eminence, I’ll do it for you.’

He hesitated. The top sheet was headed:
Report prepared for the Holy Father into the alleged offence of simony committed by Cardinal Joseph Tremblay. Executive Summary. Strictly confidential
. It was dated 19 October, the day of the Holy Father’s death. Finally, he decided he had no choice and handed it to her. She glanced at it without comment. ‘How many copies does Your Eminence require?’

‘One hundred and eighteen.’

Her eyes widened slightly.

‘And one other thing, Sister – if I may. I would like to preserve the original document untouched, yet at the same time I wish to obscure certain words in the copies. Is there a way of doing that?’

‘Yes, Your Eminence. I believe that should be possible.’ There was a trace of amusement in her voice. She lifted the lid of the machine. After she had made a copy of each page, she gave them to him. ‘You can add your changes to this version, and then this will be the one we copy. The machine is excellent. There will be very little deterioration in quality.’ She found him a pen and pulled out a chair so that he could sit at the desk. Tactfully, she turned away and opened a cupboard to take out a new packet of paper.

He went through the document line by line, carefully inking out the names of the eight cardinals to whom Tremblay had given cash.
Cash!
he thought, tightening his mouth. He remembered how the late Holy Father always used to say that cash was the apple in their Garden of Eden, the original temptation that had led to so much sin. Cash sluiced through the Holy See in a constant stream that swelled to a river at Christmas and Easter, when bishops and monsignors and friars could be seen trooping through the Vatican carrying envelopes and attaché cases and tin boxes stuffed with notes and coins from the faithful. A papal audience could raise 100,000 euros in donations, the money pressed discreetly into the hands of the Holy Father’s attendants by his visitors as they took their leave while the Pope pretended not to notice. The money was supposed to be taken straight to the cardinals’ vault in the Vatican Bank. The Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples in particular, obliged to send money to its missions in the Third World, where bribery was rife and banks unreliable, liked to deal in large sums of cash.

When he reached the end of the report, Lomeli went back to the beginning, to make sure he had removed every name. The redactions made it look even more sinister, like some classified file released by the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act. Of course, the thing would reach the press eventually. Sooner or later, everything
did. Had not Jesus Christ Himself prophesied, according to Luke’s Gospel, that
nothing is hid that shall not be made manifest, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light
?
It was a fine calculation as to whose reputation would be the more damaged, Tremblay’s or the Church’s. He gave the amended report to Sister Agnes, and watched as she began to make one hundred and eighteen copies of each page. The blue light of the machine moving back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, seemed to Lomeli to have the rhythm of a scythe.

He muttered, ‘God forgive me.’

Sister Agnes glanced at him. She must have known by now what she was printing: she could hardly have avoided seeing it. ‘If your heart is pure, Your Eminence,’ she said, ‘He will forgive you.’

‘Bless you, Sister, for your generosity. I believe my heart
is
pure. But how can any of us say for sure why we act as we do? In my experience, the basest sins are often committed for the highest motives.’

It took twenty minutes to print the copies and another twenty to collate the pages and staple them together. They worked alongside one another in silence. At one point a nun came in to use the computer, but Sister Agnes told her sharply to leave. When they were done, Lomeli asked if there were enough envelopes in the Casa Santa Marta to enable each report to be individually sealed and delivered.

‘I’ll go and find out, Your Eminence. Please sit down. You look exhausted.’

While she was gone, he sat at the desk with his head bowed. He could hear the cardinals making their way across the lobby to the chapel for morning Mass. He grasped his pectoral cross.
Forgive me, Lord, if today I try to serve You in a different way . . .
A few minutes later, Sister Agnes returned carrying two boxes of A4 Manila envelopes.

They started inserting the reports into the envelopes. She said, ‘What do you want us to do with them, Eminence? Shall we deliver them to each room?’

‘I want to be sure every cardinal has a chance to read it before we leave to vote – I fear we don’t have the time. Perhaps we could distribute them in the dining room?’

‘As you wish.’

Accordingly, when the envelopes had been filled and sealed, they divided the pile in two and went into the dining room, where the nuns were setting the tables for breakfast. Lomeli worked on one side of the room, placing the envelopes on the chairs, and Sister Agnes on the other. From the chapel, where Tremblay was celebrating the Mass, came the sound of plainsong. Lomeli could feel his heart pounding; the pain behind his eyes throbbed in unison with each beat. Nevertheless, he pressed on until he and Sister Agnes met in the centre of the hall and the last of the reports was gone.

‘Thank you,’ he said to her. He was touched by the sternness of her kindness and held out his hand, expecting her to grasp it. But to his surprise, she knelt and kissed his ring. Then she rose and smoothed her skirts, and walked away without uttering a word.

After that, there was nothing for Lomeli to do except take a seat at the nearest table and wait.

Garbled accounts of what happened next were to emerge within hours of the end of the Conclave, for although there was a strict injunction of secrecy on every cardinal, many could not resist talking to their closest associates when they returned to the outside world, and these confidantes, mostly priests and monsignors, gossiped in their turn, so that very quickly a version of the story appeared.

Broadly speaking, there were two categories of eyewitness. Those who were among the first to leave the chapel and enter the dining room were struck by the spectacle of Lomeli sitting alone and impassive at one of the central tables, his forearms resting on the tablecloth, his gaze fixed ahead, unseeing. The other thing they recalled was the shocked quiet that fell as the cardinals discovered the envelopes and started reading.

In contrast, those who arrived a few minutes later – the ones who had chosen to pray in their rooms rather than attend the morning Mass, or who had lingered in the chapel after receiving Communion – they remembered most clearly the hubbub in the dining room and the cluster of cardinals who by that time had gathered around Lomeli demanding explanations.

Truth, in other words, was a matter of perspective.

In addition to all these, there was another, smaller group, whose rooms were on the second floor, or who had descended via the two staircases from upper storeys, and who had noticed that the seals on the papal apartment were broken. Accordingly, a new set of rumours started circulating, as a counterpoint to the first, that there had been some kind of burglary during the night.

Throughout it all, Lomeli never moved from his seat. To all the cardinals who came up to him – Sá, Brotzkus, Yatsenko and the rest – he repeated the same mantra. Yes, he was responsible for the circulation of the document. Yes, he had broken the seals. No, he had not taken leave of his senses. It had been brought to his notice that an excommunicable offence might have been committed, and then covered up. He had felt it his duty to investigate, even if that had meant entering the Holy Father’s rooms in search of evidence. He had tried to handle the matter responsibly. His brother electors now had the information in front of them. Theirs was the sacred duty.
They must decide what weight to attach to it. He had merely obeyed his conscience.

He was surprised both by his own sense of inner strength and by the way this conviction seemed to radiate out from him, so that even those cardinals who approached him to express their dismay often ended up going away nodding in approbation. Others took a harsher view. Sabbadin bent as he was passing on his way to the buffet table and hissed in his ear, ‘Why have you thrown away a valuable weapon? We could have used this to control Tremblay after his election. All you have succeeded in doing is strengthening Tedesco!’

And Archbishop Fitzgerald of Boston, Massachusetts, who was one of Tremblay’s most prominent supporters, actually strode over to the table and flung the report towards Lomeli. ‘This is contrary to all natural justice. You have given our brother cardinal no opportunity to lay out his defence. You have acted as judge, jury and executioner. I am appalled at such an unchristian act.’ Several cardinals, listening at the neighbouring tables, murmured agreement. One called out, ‘Well said!’ and another, ‘Amen to that!’

Lomeli remained impassive.

At one point Benítez fetched him some bread and fruit and beckoned to one of the nuns to pour him coffee. He took the seat beside him. ‘You must eat, Dean, or you will make yourself ill.’

Lomeli said in a low voice, ‘Did I do the right thing, Vincent? What is your opinion?’

‘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 himself appeared, stepping out of the elevator nearest the dining hall. Someone must have taken him a copy of the report. He was holding it rolled up in his hand. He appeared quite composed as he walked between the tables towards Lomeli. Most of the cardinals stopped talking and ceased eating. Tremblay’s grey hair was coiffed; his chin jutted. If it hadn’t been for his scarlet choir dress, he might have been a sheriff on his way to a showdown in a Western.

‘A word with you, Dean, if I may?’

Lomeli put down his napkin and stood. ‘Of course, Your Eminence. Would you like to talk somewhere private?’

‘No, I would prefer to speak in public, if you don’t mind. I want our brothers to hear what I have to say. You are responsible for this, I believe?’ He waved the report in Lomeli’s face.

‘No, Your Eminence,
you
are responsible for it – because of your actions.’

‘The report is entirely mendacious!’ Tremblay turned to address the room. ‘It should never have seen the light of day – and it wouldn’t if Cardinal Lomeli hadn’t broken into the Holy Father’s apartment to remove it in order to manipulate the outcome of this Conclave!’

One of the cardinals – Lomeli could not see who it was – shouted out, ‘Shame!’

Tremblay went on, ‘In these circumstances, I believe he should step down from his office as dean, since nobody can any longer have confidence in his impartiality.’

Lomeli said, ‘If the report is, as you say, mendacious, perhaps you could explain why the Holy Father, in his last official act as Pope, asked you to resign?’

A stir of astonishment went through the room.

‘He did no such thing – as the only witness to the meeting, his private secretary Monsignor Morales, will confirm.’

‘And yet Archbishop Woźniak insists that the Holy Father told him personally of the conversation, and that he was so agitated over dinner when he was recalling it that his distress may have contributed to his death.’

Tremblay’s outrage was magnificent. ‘The Holy Father – may his name be numbered among the high priests – was a sick man towards the end of his life, and easily confused, as those of us who saw him regularly will confirm: was it not so, Cardinal Bellini?’

Bellini frowned at his plate. ‘I have nothing to say on the matter.’

In the far corner of the dining room, Tedesco held up his hand. ‘May someone else be allowed to join in this dialogue?’ He rose heavily to his feet. ‘I deplore all this gossip about private conversations. The issue is the accuracy or otherwise of the report. The names of eight cardinals have been blacked out. I assume the dean can tell us who they are. Let him give us the names, and let these brothers confirm, here and now, whether or not they received these payments, and if they did, whether Cardinal Tremblay requested their votes in return.’

He sat down again. Lomeli was aware of all eyes upon him. He said quietly, ‘No, I will not do that.’ There were protests. He held up his hand. ‘Let each man examine his conscience, as I have had to do. I omitted those names precisely because I have no desire to create bitterness in this Conclave, which will only make it harder for us to listen to God and perform our sacred duty. I have done what I thought was necessary – many of you will say I have done too much: I understand that. In the circumstances, I would be happy to stand down as dean, and I would propose that Cardinal Bellini, as the next
most senior member of the College, should preside over the remainder of the Conclave.’

Immediately voices started shouting out all over the dining room, some in favour, some against. Bellini shook his head vigorously. ‘Absolutely not!’

In the cacophony it was hard at first to hear the words, perhaps because they were spoken by a woman. ‘Your Eminences, may I be allowed to speak?’ She had to repeat them more firmly, and this time they cut through the din. ‘Your Eminences, may I speak, if you please?’