August 1978 Papal Conclave

The August 1978 Papal Conclave matters in the novel chiefly as a remembered precedent: at its close, Albino Luciani tried to refuse election before yielding to his colleagues’ appeals. Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli invokes that episode while resolving what he would do if elected, making the earlier conclave a test of conscience as well as a historical comparison. Elsewhere, rules revised shortly before the death of the late Pope and the formal procedures of the current election show how precedent and legal interpretation shape who may participate and how authority is exercised.

A precedent for refusing office

During the seventh ballot of the current conclave, Lomeli is certain that he does not wish to become Pope. He prays to be spared the office and resolves that, if elected, he will refuse it. To clarify his decision, he recalls Luciani at the end of the first conclave of 1978: Luciani had tried to decline, but eventually yielded to the pleading of his colleagues. Lomeli recognizes the pressure embodied in that precedent, yet intends to stand firm. He accepts the suffering and isolation associated with the papacy; what he fears is accepting office without sufficient holiness. The remembered episode therefore sharpens his distinction between personal reluctance and what he regards as a duty to refuse an unworthy succession.

Precedent and the law of election

The 1978 conclave is also part of the legal and institutional memory through which the current election is interpreted. Shortly before the late Pope’s death, he revised canon law concerning appointments made in pectore, or in secret. When Wilhelm Mandorff questions whether Vincent Benítez is genuinely a cardinal, Lomeli cites paragraph thirty-nine of the Apostolic Constitution: a cardinal-elector arriving re integra, before a new Pope has been elected, may join the election at the stage it has reached. Lomeli uses that provision to argue that Benítez is legally entitled to participate. The passage presents election law not as self-applying procedure but as a text whose terms must be interpreted and asserted by people with institutional authority.

The voting ritual itself is likewise governed by written rules. Before the ballot, Lomeli reads aloud paragraph sixty-six, specifying that each elector displays and folds a ballot, carries it to the altar, swears that the vote reflects whom he believes should be elected before God, and deposits it in the receptacle. The procedure makes the ballot a formal act under both ecclesiastical order and religious obligation. Its precise choreography stands in contrast to the political uncertainty surrounding the candidates and the changing count.

Legitimacy under pressure

Later, coordinated bomb attacks in Rome force the electors to confront whether the conclave should continue unchanged. Lomeli sees the dilemma in terms of competing obligations: suspending the election would show respect for the victims but prolong the leadership vacuum, while accelerating the vote would violate the Apostolic Constitution and risk an election whose legitimacy could be challenged. The past conclave’s place in the story thus belongs to a wider concern with how an election acquires authority—through rules, their interpretation, and the electors’ willingness to abide by them in crisis.

Lomeli first seeks the assembled cardinals’ authority to address the emergency. He invokes paragraphs five and six, which permit discussion of certain matters in special circumstances if a majority agrees. When Goffredo Tedesco tries to interrupt the process, Lomeli puts the question to a vote; scores raise their hands in favour of receiving the information, and no one leaves when invited to do so. The episode makes collective consent, rather than the dean’s office alone, the basis for the next step. Against that procedural present, the August 1978 conclave remains a remembered measure of the human cost and contested legitimacy of papal succession.