The death of the unnamed Pope is both a personal loss and the event that sets the novel’s succession crisis in motion. In the early hours, Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli arrives expecting an emergency and finds that the Pope is dead; Joseph Tremblay then destroys the seal on the Fisherman’s Ring and declares the Holy See vacant. The vigil gives way to a contest to choose a successor, while the records assembled around the death open questions about who controlled the account of the Pope’s final hours and what he had been investigating.

The vigil and the declaration

Shortly before two in the morning, Lomeli leaves his apartment in the Palace of the Holy Office and hurries through the Vatican toward the Pope’s bedroom. He has been praying that the Pope be spared and that his own life be taken instead. The quiet approach contrasts with the panic that had prompted the summons: in Piazza Santa Marta, an ambulance waits at a discreet distance. Lomeli recognizes that it has come not to take a sick man to hospital, but to remove a body.

The Pope lies in the Renaissance bed, with a crucifix above it and a plain iron pectoral cross on his chest. His spectacles and a travel alarm clock rest on the nightstand. Aldo Bellini and Tremblay kneel beside the bed; Lomeli, arriving last among the senior cardinals, steps around them to reach the Pope and kiss his forehead. His whispered question about why God had summoned the Pope while he still had so much to do expresses the grief and incomprehension that accompany the formal transition of power.

At Tremblay’s request, Archbishop Janusz Woźniak removes the Pope’s ring. It catches at the knuckle before coming free. Tremblay takes shears from a silver box and cuts through the seal depicting St Peter hauling in a fisherman’s net. He then announces, “Sede vacante,” declaring the throne of the Holy See vacant. Lomeli remains for a contemplative farewell and helps lay a white veil over the Pope’s face; the vigil dissolves into whispering groups.

An account prepared under pressure

Tremblay is concerned that confusion at the moment of death could later feed malicious rumours. He invokes the long-running public suspicion surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I, which he says was aggravated by uncertainty over who discovered the body. To avoid discrepancies, he gives Lomeli a freshly printed document headed “Timeline.” Its precision offers an official sequence against which later recollections can be measured.

The timeline says the Pope ate with Woźniak at 7:30 p.m. in the reserved dining area at Casa Santa Marta, read and meditated on Chapter 8 of The Imitation of Christ at 8:30, and went to bed at 9:30. At 11:30, Woźniak checked on him and failed to observe vital signs; a doctor began emergency treatment at 11:34. The Pope was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m. The document’s minute-by-minute form establishes an administrative account of the death, but its very insistence on consistency becomes significant when Woźniak later describes what happened after he found the body.

Woźniak tells Lomeli that he found the Pope dead and summoned a doctor, who in turn notified Tremblay, as the rules required. In shock, he did not initially disclose that the Pope had seemed agitated at supper. He says that about an hour after Tremblay took control, the Camerlengo asked whether the Pope had had anything particular on his mind; Woźniak admits that he answered only that the Pope seemed agitated. He also recalls seeing Tremblay speak privately with Hector Morales, one of the Pope’s secretaries, and suspects that Tremblay persuaded him not to mention the meeting. The account does not itself settle what was concealed, but it makes the official chronology part of a broader question about custody of information and responsibility for disclosure.

From death to succession

Lomeli later identifies the immediate aftermath as the moment the succession contest began. Bellini, Tremblay, and Joshua Adeyemi each have supporters among the electors, and each brings a distinct political profile: Bellini is the liberals’ long-standing intellectual hope; Tremblay combines his Camerlengo’s office with leadership of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples; Adeyemi attracts attention as a possible first black Pope. Their presence at the deathbed thus becomes the first tableau of the struggle to come.

The Pope died on 19 October, the day after the feast of St Luke the Evangelist. His funeral and the College of Cardinals’ nearly daily private congregations occupied the rest of October and the beginning of November. The cardinals discussed the Church’s future; although divisions between progressives and traditionalists surfaced, the meetings passed without controversy. On 7 November, Lomeli stood at the threshold of the Sistine Chapel as preparations continued and the cardinal-electors prepared to be confined in the Vatican. Balloting was due to begin the following day.

The death also changes Lomeli’s own position. As Dean of the College of Cardinals, he realizes that he must manage the election in exceptionally difficult circumstances. He had tried to resign and, after a previous diagnosis of prostate cancer, had assumed that he would die before the Pope. He had thought of himself as a stopgap, not as the person who would organize a conclave. The vacancy turns that presumed temporary office into an immediate burden of governance.

The dead Pope’s unfinished work

The death continues to shape the election through evidence discovered after the vigil. Among papers hidden in a cavity within the Pope’s bed, Lomeli finds financial records, bank statements, transfers, apartment addresses, and handwritten notations. One list, prepared for the Pope by the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, compares the official apartments occupied by curial members with the Pope’s own small room at Casa Santa Marta. Lomeli’s apartment is listed as 445 square metres; those of Bellini, Adeyemi, and Tremblay as 410, 480, and 510 square metres respectively; the Pope’s room is listed as 50 square metres.

An attached report estimates the Administration’s property at 347,532 square metres, with a potential value exceeding €2.7 billion but a stated book value of €389.6 million. It estimates paid occupancy at only 56 percent and says much of the income may not be properly declared. These figures connect the succession to the late Pope’s unfinished campaign for financial transparency: his death has not ended the inquiry into how Church property and revenue were managed.

Bellini recalls that the Pope’s demand for transparent accounts began at the start of his pontificate. He rejected full ceremonial regalia and chose to live at Casa Santa Marta rather than the Apostolic Palace; in a meeting with congregation prefects, he demanded proper books, disclosed accounts, outside tenders for building work, and receipts. He brought in accountants and management consultants to examine files, giving them offices on the first floor of Casa Santa Marta. Bellini says that leaks and public embarrassments followed, while Goffredo Tedesco and his allies attacked the Pope over remarks concerning gay people, divorced couples, and women’s advancement. In Bellini’s recollection, the Pope’s popularity outside the Holy See coincided with increasing isolation inside it and a loss of trust, even among close colleagues.

The death therefore does not close the late Pope’s disputes; it transfers them to the election. The ring’s broken seal marks the vacancy in law, while the timeline, Woźniak’s account, and the concealed financial report expose the difficulties of establishing what the Pope knew and what those around him did with that knowledge. The man at the center can no longer speak, but the contest over his legacy and the Church’s obligations begins at his bedside.