On the far side of the room, Lomeli saw Benítez tentatively raise his hand.
‘Your Eminence, I wish to say something.’
The cardinals seated nearest him, Mendoza and Ramos of the Philippines, were calling for quiet so that he could be heard.
Lomeli announced, ‘Cardinal Benítez wishes to speak.’
Tedesco flapped his arms in dismay. ‘Really, Dean, this cannot be allowed to turn into a general congregation – that phase is over.’
‘I think if one of our brothers desires to talk to us, it should be allowed.’
‘But under what provision of the constitution is this permitted?’
‘Under what provision is it forbidden?’
‘Your Eminence, I will be heard!’ It was the first time Lomeli had heard Benítez raise his voice. The high-pitched tone cut through the murmur of conversation. Tedesco gave an exaggerated shrug and rolled his eyes at his supporters, as if to say that the whole thing had become ridiculous. Nevertheless, he made no further protest. A hush settled over the room. ‘Thank you, my brothers. I shall be brief.’ The Filipino’s hands were shaking slightly. He transferred them behind his back and clasped them. His voice was soft again. ‘I know nothing of the etiquette of the College, so forgive me. But perhaps for the very reason that I am your newest colleague, I feel I must say something on behalf of those millions outside these walls at this moment who will be looking to the Vatican for leadership. We are all good men, I believe – all of us, are we not?’ He sought out Adeyemi and Tremblay and nodded to them, and also to Tedesco and Lomeli. ‘Our petty ambitions and follies and disagreements vanish to nothing beside the evil that has been visited upon our Mother the Church.’
Several cardinals murmured in agreement.
‘If I dare to speak out, it is only because two dozen of you have been good enough, and I would say foolish enough, to cast your ballots in my favour. My brothers, I believe we will not be forgiven if we go on with this election, day after day, until such time as the rules permit us to elect a Pope by a simple majority. After the last ballot we have an obvious leader, and I would urge us to unite behind him this afternoon. Therefore, for my part, I would ask that all those who have voted for me should transfer their support to our dean, Cardinal Lomeli, and that when we return to the Sistine we should elect him Pope. Thank you. Forgive me. That is all I wish to say.’
Before Lomeli could reply, Tedesco interrupted him.
‘Oh no!’ He shook his head. ‘No, no, no!’ He started waving his fat, short-fingered hands again, smiling desperately in his alarm. ‘Now, you see, this is exactly what I warned you against, gentlemen! God has been forgotten in the heat of the moment and we are reacting to the pressure of events as if we represented nothing more sacred than a political convention. The Holy Spirit is not biddable, to be summoned at will, like a waiter! Brothers, I beg you, remember that we swear an oath to God to elect the one we believe is best fitted to be Pope, not the one we can most easily push out on to the balcony of St Peter’s this afternoon to calm the crowd!’
If Tedesco had been able to stop himself there, Lomeli reflected afterwards, he might have swayed the meeting to his view, which was entirely legitimate. But he was not a man who could ever stop himself once launched upon a theme – that was his glory and his tragedy; that was why his supporters loved him and why they had also persuaded him to stay away from Rome in the days before the Conclave. He was like the man in Christ’s sermon: out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks – regardless of whether that heart’s abundance be good or bad, wise or foolish.
‘And in any case,’ Tedesco said, gesturing to Lomeli, ‘is the dean the best man for this crisis?’ He flashed that awful smile again. ‘I revere him as a brother and as a friend, but he is not a pastor – he is not a man to heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds, let alone to sound the trumpet. Insofar as he has any doctrinal positions to speak of, they are the very ones that have brought us to our present pass of drift and relativism, where all faiths and passing fancies are accorded equal weight – so that now, when we look around us, we see the homeland of the Holy Roman Catholic Church dotted with the mosques and minarets of Muhammad.’
Someone – it was Bellini, Lomeli realised – shouted out, ‘Disgraceful!’
Tedesco wheeled on him – goaded, like a bull. His face blazed red with anger. ‘“Disgraceful,” says the former Secretary of State. It is a disgrace, I agree. Imagine the blood of the innocents in the Piazza del Risorgimento or the church of San Marco this morning! Do you think we are not ourselves in some part responsible? We tolerate Islam in our land, but they revile us in theirs; we nourish them in our homelands, but they exterminate us in theirs, by the tens of thousands and, yea, by the hundreds of thousands – it is the unspoken genocide of our time. And now they are literally at our walls and we do nothing! How long will we persist in our weakness?’
Even Krasinski tried to reach up a restraining hand, but Tedesco brushed him aside.
‘No, there are things that have needed saying in this Conclave, and now they must be said. My brothers, each time we file into the Sistine Chapel to vote, we pass, in the Sala Regia, a fresco of the Battle of Lepanto – I looked at it this morning – where the naval forces of Christendom, drawn together by the diplomacy of His Holiness Pope Pius V, and blessed by the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary, defeated the galleys of the Ottoman Empire and saved the Mediterranean from slavery at the hands of the forces of Islam.
‘We need some fraction of that leadership today. We need to hold fast to our values as the Islamists hold fast to theirs. We need to put a stop to the drift that has gone on almost ceaselessly for the past fifty years, ever since the Second Vatican Council, and that has rendered us weak in the face of evil. Cardinal Benítez speaks of the millions beyond the walls looking to us in these terrible hours for guidance. I agree with him. The most sacred task that ever arises within our Mother Church – the bestowing of the Keys of St Peter – has been disrupted by violence in Rome itself. The moment of supreme crisis has come upon us, as foretold by our Lord Jesus Christ, and we must at long last find the strength to rise to meet it: And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in great perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’
When he had finished, he crossed himself and bowed his head, then sat down quickly. He was breathing heavily. The ensuing silence seemed to Lomeli to go on for a very long time and was only broken by the gentle voice of Benítez. ‘But my dear Patriarch of Venice, you forget I am the Archbishop of Baghdad. There were one and a half million Christians in Iraq before the Americans attacked, and now there are one hundred and fifty thousand. My own diocese is almost empty. So much for the power of the sword! I have seen our holy places bombed and our brothers and sisters laid out dead in lines – in the Middle East and in Africa. I have comforted them in their distress and I have buried them, and I can tell you that not one of them – not one – would have wished to see violence met by violence. They died in the love of, and for the love of, our Lord Jesus Christ.’
A group of cardinals – Ramos, Martinez and Xalxo among them – clapped loudly in agreement. Gradually the applause spread across the room, from Asia through Africa and the Americas to Italy itself. Tedesco glanced around him in surprise and shook his head sorrowfully – whether in regret at their folly, or realisation of his own, or both, it was impossible to tell.