Suddenly he was facing the dead eyes of the television cameras and the great magnitude of the congregation, too huge to take in, roughly arranged in blocks of colour: the black of the nuns and the laity in the distance, just inside the bronze doors; the white of the priests halfway up the nave; the purple of the bishops at the top of the aisle; the scarlet of the cardinals at his feet, beneath the dome. An anticipatory silence fell over the basilica.
He looked down at his text. He had spent hours that morning going over it. Yet now it appeared entirely unfamiliar to him. He stared at it until he was conscious of a slight stirring of unease around him and realised he had better make a start.
‘Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ. . .’
To begin with he read automatically. ‘At this moment of great responsibility in the history of the Holy Church of Christ. . .’
The words issued from his mouth, went forth into nothingness, and seemed to expire halfway along the nave and drop inert from mid-air. Only when he mentioned the late Holy Father, ‘whose brilliant pontificate was a gift from God’, was there a gradual welling-up of applause that started among the laity at the far end of the basilica and rolled towards the altar until finally it was taken up with diminished enthusiasm by the cardinals. He was obliged to stop until it subsided.
‘Now we must ask our Lord to send us a new Holy Father through the pastoral solicitude of the cardinal fathers. And in this hour we must remember first of all the faith and the promise of Jesus Christ, when He said to the one He had chosen: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”
‘To this very day the symbol of papal authority remains a pair of keys. But to whom are these keys to be entrusted? It is the most solemn and sacred responsibility that any of us will ever be called upon to exercise in our entire lives, and we must pray to God for that loving assistance He always reserves for His Holy Church and ask Him to guide us to the right choice.’
Lomeli turned over to the next page and scanned it briefly. Platitude followed platitude, seamlessly interlocked. He flicked over to the third page, and the fourth. They were no better. On impulse he turned around and placed the homily on the seat of his throne, then turned back to the microphone.
‘But you know all that.’ There was some laughter. Beneath him he could see the cardinals turning to one another in alarm. ‘Let me speak from the heart for a moment.’ He paused to arrange his thoughts. He felt entirely calm.
‘About thirty years after Jesus entrusted the keys of His Church to St Peter, St Paul the Apostle came here to Rome. He had been preaching around the Mediterranean, laying the foundations of our Mother the Church, and when he came to this city he was thrown into prison, because the authorities were frightened of him – as far as they were concerned, he was a revolutionary. And like a revolutionary, he continued to organise, even from his cell. In the year ad 62 or 63, he sent one of his ministers, Tychicus, back to Ephesus, where he’d lived for three years, to deliver that remarkable letter to the faithful, part of which we listened to just now.
‘Let us contemplate what we’ve just heard. Paul tells the Ephesians – who were, let us remember, a mixture of Gentiles and Jews – that God’s gift to the Church is its variety: some are created by Him to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and others teachers, who “together make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ”. They make a unity in the work of service. These are different people – one may suppose strong people, with forceful personalities, unafraid of persecution – serving the Church in their different ways: it is the work of service that brings them together and makes the Church. God could, after all, have created a single archetype to serve Him. Instead, He created what a naturalist might call a whole ecosystem of mystics and dreamers and practical builders – managers, even – with different strengths and impulses, and from these He fashioned the body of Christ.’
The basilica was entirely still apart from a lone cameraman circling the base of the altar, filming him. Lomeli’s mind was fully engaged. Never had he been more sure of exactly what he wanted to say.
‘In the second part of the reading, we heard Paul reinforcing this image of the Church as a living body. “If we live by the truth and in love,” he says, “we shall grow in all ways into Christ, who is the head by whom the whole body is joined and fitted together.” Hands are hands, just as feet are feet, and they serve the Lord in their different ways. In other words, we should have no fear of diversity, because it is this variety that gives our Church its strength. And then, says Paul, when we have achieved completeness in truth and love, “we shall not be children any longer, or tossed one way and another and carried along by every wind of doctrine, at the mercy of all the tricks men play and their cleverness in deceit”.
‘I take this idea of the body and the head to be a beautiful metaphor for collective wisdom: of a religious community working together to grow into Christ. To work together, and grow together, we must be tolerant, because all of the body’s limbs are needed. No one person or faction should seek to dominate another. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,” Paul urges the faithful elsewhere in that same letter.
‘My brothers and sisters, in the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?” He cried out in His agony at the ninth hour on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.
‘Let us pray that the Lord will grant us a Pope who doubts, and by his doubts continues to make the Catholic faith a living thing that may inspire the whole world. Let Him grant us a Pope who sins, and asks forgiveness, and carries on. We ask this of the Lord, through the intercession of Mary most holy, Queen of the Apostles, and of all the martyrs and saints, who through the course of history made this Church of Rome glorious through the ages. Amen.’
He retrieved from his seat the homily he had not delivered and handed it to Monsignor Epifano, who took it from him with a quizzical look, as if he were not sure exactly what he was supposed to do with it. It had not been delivered, so was it now to go to the Vatican archive or not? Then he sat. By tradition there now followed a silence of one and a half minutes so that the meaning of the sermon could be absorbed. Only the occasional cough disturbed the immense hush. He could not gauge the reaction. Perhaps they were all in a state of shock. If they were, then so be it. He felt closer to God than he had for many months – closer perhaps than he had ever felt before in his life. He closed his eyes and prayed. O Lord, I hope my words have served Your purpose, and I thank You for granting me the courage to say what was in my heart, and the mental and physical strength to deliver it.