I wish this cup to leave me

“Let this cup pass from me” recurs as a prayer in which Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli’s dread of the papacy meets his sense of religious duty. The words first express his plea to be spared the office; when they return during the final ballot, they accompany a changed readiness to accept its outcome as God’s will.

A Prayer Against Election

As the Conclave prepares for a seventh ballot, Lomeli is certain that he does not wish to become Pope. He prays to be spared the Calvary of the papacy, invoking the cup that Jesus asked to have taken from him. Yet the prayer does not settle what Lomeli would do if elected. He resolves to refuse the office, recalling that Luciani had tried to refuse at the end of the first Conclave of 1978 before yielding to his colleagues’ pleading.

Lomeli’s resistance is not simply a fear of hardship. He believes he could endure the loneliness, isolation, and agony of the papacy; what he considers unconscionable is accepting the office without sufficient holiness. He understands refusal as potentially selfish and cowardly, but reasons that self-knowledge creates an obligation: if he knows himself unfit, he must not mistake ambition or pressure for a call.

Responsibility and the Seventh Ballot

His private struggle is entangled with responsibility for the Conclave’s political course. As dean, Lomeli recognizes that he helped destroy one front-runner and ruin another, thereby removing obstacles to Goffredo Tedesco’s advance even though he remains convinced Tedesco must be stopped. Continuing to vote for Aldo Bellini, he concludes, would be an act of self-indulgence, since Bellini cannot prevent Tedesco’s ascendancy. Lomeli opens his folder and takes out his ballot paper while still uncertain what choice to make.

When the seventh ballot is counted, the repeated prayer returns in a stark, solitary form: “O Lord, let this cup pass from me!” The counting has become almost unbearable. Lomeli leaves his list of cardinals untouched rather than follow the votes one by one, and the scrutineers hurry through their work as the Archbishop of Westminster begins the recital. The words therefore register not a resolution already reached, but the intensity of the trial at the moment its result is being disclosed.

From Plea to Surrender

Later, as Lomeli sings with the others, the prayer changes its emphasis. In the cobbled courtyard, amid the danger surrounding the Conclave, he gives thanks and senses the Holy Spirit moving among them. For the first time, he feels at peace with the outcome: if the lot falls to him, so be it. His prayer now asks that the cup be removed only if God is willing, and concludes with submission to the divine will rather than insistence on his own.

The recurrence gives the expression its significance. The cup remains a figure for the papacy’s burden, but Lomeli’s relation to it shifts: his initial plea seeks release, while the later prayer makes room for acceptance. The change is not a claim that he has come to desire the office or overcome its cost. Instead, he becomes willing to receive the outcome without treating his own preference as decisive.