Lomeli’s homily on doubt and tolerance

Lomeli’s homily on doubt and tolerance is the improvised sermon he delivers during the Mass before the conclave, abandoning a prepared text to argue that the Church’s unity depends on the different gifts of its members and on a faith able to live with doubt. The address marks a rare public break from his accustomed reserve: it brings him closer to God, astonishes his fellow cardinals, and is soon interpreted by some as an attempt to shape the papal election.

The prepared sermon and the break from it

Lomeli begins by reading automatically from his written homily. Its opening describes the moment as one of great responsibility in the Church’s history and asks God to send a new pope through the discernment of the cardinal fathers. The congregation responds only when he praises the late Pope; applause builds from the laity at the far end of the basilica and reaches the cardinals with less force. Lomeli has to pause while it dies away.

The prepared pages continue with familiar appeals to the keys entrusted to Peter and the solemnity of electing his successor. But when Lomeli turns through the remaining pages, their smoothly linked platitudes fail to give him what he wants to say. He places the homily on the seat of his throne and returns to the microphone without it. His decision is not presented as a calculated change of strategy: he says he will speak from the heart, and feels calm as he gathers his thoughts.

Diversity as the Church’s unity

Instead of continuing the prepared text, Lomeli recalls Paul’s ministry in Rome and the letter sent to the Ephesians, a community of Gentiles and Jews. He emphasizes Paul’s picture of a Church composed of people called to different work: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Their unity does not depend on having identical temperaments or functions. It comes through their shared service, which makes them members of one body.

Lomeli extends that image into a defense of varied gifts and dispositions. The Church, he says, is not a single archetype but an ecosystem that includes mystics, dreamers, practical builders, and managers. In the next part of his argument, Paul’s image of Christ as the head of a body becomes a model of collective growth: distinct members serve in distinct ways, while the whole grows together in truth and love. Diversity is therefore not a weakness to be suppressed. It is a source of strength, and cooperation requires tolerance because every limb is needed.

The argument also has an immediate bearing on the conclave. Lomeli warns against one person or faction dominating the rest, and invokes Paul’s call for the faithful to be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. The sermon does not name a candidate or explicitly endorse a faction; instead, it offers a standard for how the Church’s competing gifts and convictions should coexist.

Doubt against certainty

Lomeli’s central warning is against certainty, which he calls the great enemy of both unity and tolerance. He links that warning to Christ’s cry of abandonment on the cross: even at the end, Christ voices a question to God. For Lomeli, doubt does not cancel faith. It keeps faith alive by preserving mystery; without doubt, he argues, there would be no need for faith.

His closing prayer applies this conviction directly to the choice before the cardinals. He asks God to grant the Church a pope who doubts, sins, seeks forgiveness, and carries on. The appeal defines fallibility not as a reason to abandon religious leadership, but as part of a continuing life of faith and repentance. It also returns the conclave’s search for certainty to a more demanding question: whether its next leader can remain open to humility and correction.

Reception and immediate effect

After speaking, Lomeli retrieves the prepared homily he did not deliver and hands it to Monsignor Epifano, leaving the status of the unused text uncertain. A traditional silence of a minute and a half follows so the congregation can absorb the sermon. The stillness gives him no reliable measure of its reception; he considers that the cardinals may be shocked, but accepts that possibility. Privately, he feels closer to God than he has for months, perhaps closer than ever, and prays that he had spoken what God intended and had been given the courage and strength to do so.

The Mass continues, and Lomeli chants the opening of the Credo with a firmer voice. He experiences the ensuing prayers, chants, and Eucharistic rites as alive with the presence of the Holy Spirit. As he gives Communion to selected members of the congregation, he becomes aware of his colleagues’ astonishment. They have known him as smooth, reliable, competent, a lawyer and diplomat; the unexpected homily has shown them a different public voice. Lomeli himself had not expected it.

Political interpretation

Monsignor O’Malley tells Lomeli that the homily was well said, while noting that it may raise eyebrows at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He also asks whether it was truly extempore. Lomeli confirms that it was, surprised that his spontaneity might be suspected of being an act. O’Malley warns that it may have had considerable effect and reports murmurs that Lomeli is trying to pick the new pope.

Lomeli initially laughs at the suggestion. He says he had spoken as the Holy Spirit moved him and had not considered that his words could be taken as an effort to influence the vote. He also cannot remember the exact phrases he used, an immediate cost of speaking without a prepared text. The homily’s meaning thus divides between intention and consequence: Lomeli experiences it as an act of spiritual candour, while observers can read its call for tolerance and resistance to factional dominance as intervention in the election. Its force lies in that unresolved tension, as an appeal to collective discernment that cannot remain outside the politics of the conclave.