‘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 forth 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.