Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul

The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul are a religious order represented in the conclave by sisters who serve meals and attend to the cardinals. Their quiet presence becomes politically consequential when Sister Agnes, responsible for her sisters’ welfare, publicly explains why one of them was brought to Rome and clarifies the circumstances behind the Dean’s investigation of Cardinal Tremblay.

Presence in the Conclave

The sisters move through the Casa Santa Marta dining room in blue habits, carrying trays and bottles of wine while the cardinals eat and debate. Lomeli, familiar with the order from his years as a nuncio, knows that its mother house is on the rue du Bac in Paris and that the remains of St Catherine Labouré and St Louise de Marillac lie in its chapel. He contrasts the order’s stated charism of service to the poor with the work its members perform for the cardinals, observing that they had not given their lives to become waitresses.

Their position at the edge of the cardinals’ deliberations is both practical and vulnerable. A sister’s presence near Cardinal Adeyemi’s rooms becomes part of a troubling episode that Lomeli hears during the night: he recognizes Adeyemi’s voice, then sees the blue uniform of a Daughter of Charity disappear around a corner. The next day, he asks where the sister involved in an accident has gone; an Italian nun tells him that she is with Sister Agnes. The episode later acquires a political explanation when the sisters’ presence is connected to a request made by Cardinal Tremblay.

Sister Agnes’s Intervention

At a tense meal, Sister Agnes steps between the tables and asks to address the assembled cardinals. She explains that although the Daughters of Charity are supposed to be invisible, God has given them eyes and ears, and she is responsible for her sisters’ welfare. She says she had spoken with Lomeli before he entered the late Pope’s rooms: he feared that a sister had been brought to Rome deliberately to embarrass a member of the conclave.

Agnes confirms that his suspicion was correct. The sister had come at Cardinal Tremblay’s specific request, she says, and this discovery—not malicious intent—had guided Lomeli’s actions. Her short statement reframes the Dean’s conduct before the whole assembly and makes the order’s members witnesses to a dispute from which their customary role had kept them largely unseen.

Consequences and Significance

After Agnes leaves, Tremblay admits that he made the request but claims he did so because the late Pope asked him to, adding that he did not know the sister’s identity. The claim does not settle the matter: Cardinal Adeyemi rises and calls Tremblay a traitor. Agnes’s disclosure has thus shifted the sisters’ presence from background service to evidence in a confrontation among the cardinals.

The order’s narrative significance rests on that contrast. Its sisters are treated as nearly invisible while serving the conclave, yet their work places them inside the spaces where consequential events unfold. Agnes turns that overlooked access into testimony, speaking not as a participant in the cardinals’ election but as a guardian of her community. Her intervention makes the order’s service—and the vulnerability implicit in it—impossible to ignore.