He who enters the Conclave a Pope leaves it a cardinal

“He who enters the Conclave a Pope leaves it a cardinal” is a warning against mistaking a candidate’s apparent strength for destiny. Spoken as an old saying during the cardinals’ oath-taking, it frames the election as a contest in which support can move, coalitions can be remade, and even a presumed front-runner can fall away. The novel tests the maxim through the changing ballots, before ending with a result that appears decisive only in retrospect.

The Saying and the Election

At the oath ceremony, Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli considers the many men who might become pope, not just the established front-runners. He recalls that the late Pope had not been tipped before the previous election and had nonetheless won a two-thirds majority on the fourth ballot. The saying thus serves as both caution and precedent: an election can produce a surprise, and hindsight can make a contingent choice look destined.

The contest begins amid competing claims to influence. Aldo Bellini is the liberals’ intellectual hope; Joseph Tremblay combines his role as Camerlengo with his leadership of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples; Joshua Adeyemi carries the possibility, much discussed in the media, of becoming the first black Pope. These distinct sources of support make the election more than a simple ranking of candidates. The saying anticipates a process in which votes and perceived momentum will not necessarily coincide.

Ballots and Shifting Fortunes

The first ballot demonstrates the uncertainty the maxim describes. Thirty-four cardinals receive at least one vote, a record, and the tally initially offers no clear leader. Once the totals are assembled, Goffredo Tedesco has 22 votes, Adeyemi 19, Bellini is third, Tremblay is close behind, and Lomeli has five. No candidate is near the 79 votes required for election. Lomeli fears his own votes may have drawn support away from Bellini, while the result overturns Bellini’s campaign manager’s expectation that Bellini would lead with as many as 25 votes.

The second ballot changes the picture again. Adeyemi gains 16 votes from candidates who have fallen away, a striking endorsement, while Tedesco adds seven. Bellini’s support barely moves, and Tremblay’s modest result leaves his candidacy intact but does not make him the clear leader. Benítez, initially almost unknown to the electors, rises from one vote to two. Each total conveys a different kind of political fact: concentrated gains can build momentum, while small increments may keep an unlikely candidacy alive.

After the lunch break, Adeyemi loses 32 votes—more than half his support. Tremblay gains 11, Bellini eight, Lomeli six, Tedesco four, and Benítez three. The sudden transfer follows the circulation of news about Adeyemi, and the imagined prospect of an African pope collapses as Tedesco returns to the lead. The saying’s warning is no longer abstract: the apparent favourite can lose the support that seemed to make his election possible, while other candidates inherit votes and opportunity.

From Front-Runner to Coalition

The maxim also describes the bargaining that follows the ballots. Bellini’s group recognizes that neither Bellini nor Lomeli can win: Bellini has 15 votes, Lomeli 12, and even combining their support would leave Lomeli behind Tremblay and Tedesco. Their proposed alternative is to back Tremblay, whose 40 votes plus their potential 27 would bring him to 67, only 12 short of the two-thirds threshold. Bellini accepts the logic despite his reservations, treating the likely transfer as a possible expression of the Holy Spirit’s will.

But apparent coordination does not settle the election. When Adeyemi asks his supporters to transfer their votes to Lomeli, Tedesco objects that the electors must choose whom they believe best fitted to be pope, not simply rally around the candidate most convenient to the circumstances. His intervention makes the saying’s political tension explicit: a candidate’s position is shaped by arithmetic and alliances, but the election is also presented as a religious judgment that cannot be reduced to tactical agreement.

The Outcome and Its Reversal

The eighth ballot elects Vincent Benítez with 92 votes; Lomeli receives 21 and Tedesco five. Benítez’s victory completes the reversal built into the maxim. An unfamiliar candidate who began with only a single vote rises above the established contenders, while those who had seemed closer to the papacy remain cardinals. The ballot makes the election’s uncertainty measurable, but it cannot make the outcome seem inevitable until after it has happened.

As Pope Innocent XIV, Benítez refuses the traditional pledges of obedience while seated on the papal throne. Instead, he stands before the altar and greets the electors individually, embracing even Bellini, Tedesco, Adeyemi, and Tremblay, men who had at one time imagined themselves in his place. His welcome and pledge of support turn the election’s changing fortunes toward reconciliation: the conclave’s defeated candidates are not dismissed but included in a public gesture of unity. The saying therefore remains a warning against certainty, while the ending shows how a surprising victor can answer the rivalries of the election with forgiveness.