A minute later they processed up the temporary wooden ramp, through the screen and on to the raised floor of the chapel. The organ was playing. The choir was still chanting the names of the saints: ‘Sancte Antoni… Sancte Benedicte…’ Most of the cardinals were standing at their places behind the long rows of desks. Bellini was the last to be conducted to his seat. When the aisle was cleared, Lomeli walked along the beige carpet to the table where the Bible had been set up for the swearing of the oath. He took off his biretta and handed it to Epifano.
The choir began to sing the Veni Creator Spiritus:
Come, creator spirit,
Visit the hearts of your people,
Fill with celestial grace
The hearts you have made…
When the hymn was over, Lomeli advanced towards the altar. It was wide and narrow, flush to the wall, like a double hearth. Above it, The Last Judgement filled his vision. He must have seen it a thousand times yet he had never experienced its power as he did in those few seconds. He felt almost as if he was being sucked into it. When he mounted the step, he found himself at eye level with the damned being dragged down to hell, and he had to take a moment to steady himself before he turned and faced the Conclave.
Epifano held the book up for him. He intoned the prayer – ‘Ecclesiae tuae, Domine, rector et custos’ – and then began to administer the oath. The cardinals, following the text in their order of service, read out the words along with him:
‘“We, the cardinal-electors present in this election of the Supreme Pontiff, promise, pledge and swear, as individuals and as a group, to observe faithfully and scrupulously the prescriptions contained in the Apostolic Constitution…
‘“We likewise promise, pledge and swear that whichever of us by divine disposition is elected Roman pontiff will commit himself faithfully to carrying out the Petrine Primacy of Pastor of the Universal Church…
‘“We promise and swear to observe with the greatest fidelity and with all persons, clerical or lay, secrecy regarding everything that in any way relates to the election of the Roman pontiff and regarding what occurs in the place of the election…”’
Lomeli walked back down the aisle to the table where the Bible was propped up. ‘And I, Jacopo Baldassare, Cardinal Lomeli, do so promise, pledge and swear.’ He placed his palm on the open page. ‘So help me God and these Holy Gospels which I touch with my hand.’
Once he had finished, he took his seat at the end of the long desk nearest the altar. In the next seat was the Patriarch of Lebanon; one place further along was Bellini. Lomeli could do nothing now except watch as the cardinals queued in the aisle and stepped forward one after another to swear the short oath. He had a perfect view of every face. In a few days’ time, the television producers would be able to spool through their tapes of the ceremony and find the new Pope at exactly this moment, placing his hand on the Gospel, and then his elevation would seem inevitable: it always did. Roncalli, Montini, Wojtyła, even poor little awkward Luciani, who had died after barely a month in office: viewed down the long majestic gallery of hindsight, each one shone with the aura of destiny.
As he scrutinised the parade of cardinals, he tried to imagine every individual clothed in pontifical white. Sá, Contreras, Hierra, Fitzgerald, Santos, De Luca, Löwenstein, Jandaček, Brotzkus, Villanueva, Nakitanda, Sabbadin, Santini – it could be any of these men. It didn’t have to be one of the front-runners. There was an old saying: ‘He who enters the Conclave a Pope leaves it a cardinal.’ Nobody had tipped the late Holy Father before the last election, and yet he had achieved a two-thirds majority on the fourth ballot. O Lord, let our choice fall on a worthy candidate, and may You so guide us in our deliberations that our Conclave is neither long nor divisive but an emblem of the unity of Your Church. Amen.
It took more than half an hour for the entire college to swear their oaths. Then Archbishop Mandorff, as Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations, stepped up to the microphone erected on its stand beneath The Last Judgement. In his quiet, precise voice, stressing all four syllables distinctly, he intoned the official formula, ‘Extra omnes.’
The television lights were switched off, and the four masters of ceremonies, the priests and officials, the choristers, the security men, the television cameramen, the official photographer, one solitary nun and the commandant of the Swiss Guard in his white-plumed helmet all left their positions and made their way out of the chapel.
Mandorff waited until the last of them had gone, then he walked down the carpeted aisle to the big double doors. It was 4.46 p.m. precisely. The outside world’s last view of the Conclave was of his solemn bald head, and then the doors were closed from the inside and the television transmission ended.
7 The First Ballot
LATER, WHEN THE experts who were paid to analyse the Conclave tried to breach the wall of secrecy and piece together exactly what had happened, their sources were all agreed on this: that the divisions started the moment Mandorff closed the doors.
Only two men who were not cardinal-electors now remained in the Sistine Chapel. Mandorff was one; the other was the Vatican’s oldest resident, Cardinal Vittorio Scavizzi, the ninety-four-year-old Vicar General Emeritus of Rome.
Scavizzi had been chosen by the College soon after the Holy Father’s funeral to deliver what was described in the Apostolic Constitution as ‘the second meditation’. This was stipulated to take place in private immediately before the first ballot; its function was to remind the Conclave one last time of their heavy responsibility ‘to act with the right intention for the good of the Universal Church’. Traditionally it was given by one of the cardinals who had passed the age of eighty and was therefore ineligible to vote – a sop, in other words, to the old guard.
Lomeli could not remember how they had ended up choosing Scavizzi. There had been so much else for him to worry about, he had not paid the decision much attention. He suspected the original proposal might have come from Tutino – this was before it was discovered that the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who was under investigation for his wretched apartment extension, was planning to switch his support to Tedesco. Now, as Lomeli watched the elderly cleric being helped towards the microphone by Archbishop Mandorff – his shrivelled body listing to one side, his notes clutched fiercely in his arthritic hand, his narrow eyes bright with resolve – he had a sudden premonition of trouble.
Scavizzi grabbed the microphone and pulled it towards him. Amplified thumps ricocheted off the Sistine’s walls. He held his pages up very close to his eyes. For a few seconds nothing happened, and then gradually from the rasp of his laboured breathing words began to emerge.
‘Cardinal brothers, at this moment of great responsibility, let us listen with special attention to what the Lord says to us in His own words. When I heard the dean of this order, in his homily this morning, use St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians as an argument for doubt, I felt I could not believe my ears. Doubt! Is that what we are short of in the modern world? Doubt?’