Jacopo Lomeli—Joseph Tremblay relationship

Jacopo Lomeli and Joseph Tremblay’s relationship is a progression from guarded collegiality to direct political and moral conflict. As Dean of the College of Cardinals, Lomeli tries to remain impartial and withdraw from consideration himself, yet his responsibilities draw him into investigating Tremblay and confronting him over the late Pope’s final dealings with the Camerlengo. Their dispute ultimately moves from a private chapel to the public dining room, where the question of who should be trusted to lead the Church becomes inseparable from the question of who has the right to judge a rival.

Early dealings and competing positions

At the outset, Lomeli’s approach to the succession is shaped by duty rather than an overt bid for office. He tells the leading candidates that he wants to withdraw from consideration and asks them to pass that message to their supporters, explaining that he cannot help the conclave reach the right decision if he is seen as a contender. Tremblay responds with suspicion: Lomeli’s withdrawal, he suggests, could itself look like a calculated display of modesty designed to attract votes. Lomeli considers raising the allegation of a report into Tremblay’s activities but chooses not to, anticipating denial. The exchange establishes their unequal readings of the same gesture: Lomeli presents withdrawal as a service to the election, while Tremblay treats it as a possible tactic.

Their roles sharpen that difference. Tremblay is Camerlengo and a leading candidate with institutional authority and a political base; Lomeli is Dean and must manage the election despite having expected to serve only as a stopgap. The candidates have factions among the electors, and Tremblay’s connections and position make him a formidable participant. Lomeli’s responsibility is procedural, but carrying it out will require judgments that affect the contest itself.

The evidence behind Lomeli’s suspicions

The relationship is also shaped by the late Pope’s death and the competing accounts of events around it. The official timeline records the Pope’s final evening: dinner with Archbishop Janusz Woźniak at 7:30 p.m., retirement to his apartment at 8:30, and bed at 9:30. Woźniak checked on him at 11:30 and found no vital signs; a doctor began emergency treatment at 11:34, and the Pope was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m. The document’s precision matters to Lomeli because he understands that errors in the first account of an unexpected papal death can feed damaging rumours. He insists on the importance of consistency, while the circumstances and private conversations surrounding the death remain contested.

Woźniak later tells Lomeli that, after Tremblay arrived and took control as Camerlengo, he asked whether the Pope had seemed troubled at supper. Woźniak admits that he concealed the details because he was frightened and believed he was not supposed to know about the matter. He also recalls seeing Tremblay speak privately with the Pope’s secretary, Monsignor Hector Morales, and suspects Tremblay was persuading Morales not to disclose what had been discussed. This is Woźniak’s account and suspicion, not independent confirmation, but it gives Lomeli reason to question what Tremblay knew and what others had been discouraged from saying.

Lomeli’s concerns grow as he learns that the Pope had revised the canon law governing in pectore appointments shortly before his death. The change meant a cardinal could be created without the Dean being informed, leaving Lomeli outside a decision that he would ordinarily expect to know. Tremblay’s standing and the Pope’s dealings with him thus sit within a broader pattern of information withheld even from the official responsible for administering the election. The secrecy intensifies Lomeli’s sense that his role requires him to investigate rather than merely accept the accounts presented to him.

Private confrontation in the chapel

One evening, after observing Tremblay’s growing influence among the cardinals, Lomeli waits until he can speak with him without witnesses. He watches Tremblay receive attention from other electors and sees Giulio Sabbadin fetch coffee for him, a small sign of the deference gathering around the candidate. Lomeli then brings him into the chapel and makes his demand directly: Tremblay should withdraw his name from the next ballot. Lomeli tells him that he is not the right man to be Pope.

When Tremblay treats the demand as evidence that Lomeli is disturbed, Lomeli sets out what he believes he knows. There was a report into Tremblay’s activities; the late Pope raised the matter with him hours before dying; the Pope dismissed him from his posts; and Lomeli now understands why. He alleges that Tremblay learned of Joshua Adeyemi’s past through contacts with missions in Africa and arranged for the woman involved to be brought to Rome in order to damage Adeyemi’s prospects. Lomeli’s accusation connects the attempted transfer of Sister Shanumi to the electoral contest: he believes a private history was being used as leverage against a rival candidate.

Lomeli presents his intervention as both personal and official. He speaks to Tremblay as a friend, but says that, as Dean, failing to act on what he knows would be a mortal sin. He threatens to tell the conclave that the late Pope’s final official act was to dismiss Tremblay for attempting to blackmail a colleague unless Tremblay withdraws from the papal contest. Tremblay rejects the accusation, questions what proof Lomeli has, and warns that public allegations could be seen as a tactic by an ambitious rival. He invokes the precedent of the traditionalists’ attack on Giovanni Battista Montini in 1963, which he says had the opposite effect and was followed by Montini’s election. Their exchange therefore leaves the evidence and its interpretation contested: Lomeli believes he must act on a pattern of disclosures, while Tremblay frames the charge as an unsubstantiated political maneuver.

Public accusation and institutional stakes

The private confrontation does not end the dispute. Later, Tremblay addresses the other cardinals in public, waving the report and calling it mendacious. He accuses Lomeli of breaking into the late Pope’s apartment to remove the document in order to manipulate the conclave, then argues that Lomeli should step down as Dean because his impartiality can no longer be trusted. The accusation turns their conflict into a challenge to the legitimacy of Lomeli’s conduct as well as to Tremblay’s own candidacy.

Lomeli answers by asking why, if the report is false, the late Pope asked Tremblay to resign in his final official act. The question produces astonishment in the room, but Tremblay denies that the Pope did so and appeals to Morales, described as the only witness to the meeting, as someone who would confirm his account. The scene gives neither man undisputed control over the story: Lomeli invokes the Pope’s alleged action, while Tremblay invokes the secretary who was present. What began as a private demand for withdrawal becomes a public contest over testimony, documentary evidence, and who can claim to speak for the dead Pope.

The conflict is set against the late Pope’s wider effort to impose financial transparency on the Curia. The papers Lomeli discovers in a concealed compartment in the Pope’s bed include accounts, transfers, addresses, and an APSA property report. That report estimates the portfolio at 347,532 square metres and more than €2.7 billion in potential value, while stating a book value of €389.6 million and a paid occupancy rate of only 56 percent. Lomeli himself appears in the apartment list, as do Bellini, Adeyemi, and Tremblay. The material places the dispute within a larger crisis of oversight: the Pope had pressed for proper accounts, disclosed finances, and external tenders, while suspicion persisted that income was not being properly declared. For Lomeli, the papers reinforce the sense that loyalty to the Church cannot mean leaving powerful figures beyond scrutiny.

A relationship resolved through the election

The conflict does not erase the personal regard that Lomeli can still express toward Tremblay. After the election, Pope Innocent XIV greets the cardinal-electors individually while standing before the altar rather than receiving their traditional pledges seated on the papal throne. He embraces them, including Tremblay, and offers each comfort and support. The gesture makes clear that the new Pope intends no reprisals or dismissals and wants the Church to face the coming perilous years in unity. It does not settle the truth of the earlier accusations, but it changes the terms of the relationship: the challenger and the challenged are brought back into a community that must continue beyond the contest.

This reconciliation contrasts with the election’s secrecy and adversarial manoeuvring. After the greeting, O’Malley burns the ballot papers, notes, and records of the conclave; the secrets are destroyed as white smoke signals the election to the crowd. Lomeli’s confrontation with Tremblay has been fought through documents, recollections, and claims that cannot all be verified in public. The ending does not offer a full public adjudication of those claims. Instead, it places forgiveness and institutional unity alongside the deliberate destruction of the conclave’s records, leaving the reader with the tension that defines their relationship: Lomeli acts on information he considers too serious to ignore, while the Church’s recovery depends on ending recrimination without making the underlying questions disappear.