Monsignor Ray O’Malley

Monsignor Ray O’Malley is a trusted aide to Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli, the dean of the conclave, and a careful observer of its procedures and people. His role shifts from helping manage information and emergencies to carrying a private discovery about the newly elected Vincent Benítez. When Benítez becomes Pope, O’Malley’s belated recognition of a small detail turns the new pontificate’s first moments into a test of what should be disclosed, and to whom.

Identity and Work

O’Malley works closely with Lomeli during the conclave, assisting in its practical business and bringing urgent information to the dean. When another cardinal arrives despite having been absent from the official list, O’Malley reports that the man says he was created in pectore, or secretly elevated to the cardinalate. The unexpected arrival raises a question of eligibility; Lomeli invokes the election constitution’s provision for a cardinal arriving re integra, before a new Pope has been elected, and concludes that the newcomer may participate. O’Malley’s report therefore helps put a procedural question before the dean, even though the legal judgment is Lomeli’s.

His work is not limited to reporting. After the conclave is interrupted by a terrorist attack, O’Malley returns to the Sistine Chapel with Archbishop Wilhelm Mandorff and their assistants. As security personnel and members of the Swiss Guard wait outside, the chapel is cleared and the cardinals’ notes are gathered. O’Malley tells Lomeli that the situation is grave and relays the preliminary account: a suicide bomber and a car bomb have struck the Piazza del Risorgimento, a place crowded with pilgrims. The sequence places him among the officials who carry information across the boundary between the sealed election and the crisis outside it.

A Conclave Under Pressure

The attack forces the cardinals to decide whether they will hear a report about events beyond the conclave. Lomeli explains that paragraphs five and six of the Apostolic Constitution permit discussion of certain problems in special circumstances if a majority agrees. After an argument over whether the cardinals should respond to the explosion, Lomeli puts the matter to a vote. O’Malley is present as the information is admitted and the emergency becomes part of the conclave’s deliberations.

When the vote carries, Lomeli reports that a car bomb exploded in the Piazza del Risorgimento at 11:20 that morning, followed shortly by a person carrying explosives who detonated them while people were fleeing. The preliminary report includes credible eyewitness accounts that the attacker cried “Allahu Akbar.” O’Malley’s earlier description of the situation as grave frames the stakes before the details reach the cardinals: their election is no longer proceeding in isolation from the danger affecting the pilgrims outside.

Confidentiality and the New Pope

O’Malley’s most consequential action comes after Benítez has been elected and is signing the deed of acceptance. O’Malley stares at the document, appearing distracted and troubled. Lomeli first assumes that he may be concerned about his own position, but O’Malley says the result was not what he expected and then admits that he has a burden on his conscience. He urgently draws Lomeli into the vestibule to speak in private, while the cardinals attend to Benítez and the formalities of his acceptance continue.

The source of O’Malley’s concern is a recollection from the first night: when he brought Benítez toiletries, Benítez remarked that a razor was unnecessary because he never shaved. O’Malley had treated the remark as unremarkable at the time. Later, after noticing that the conclave might move toward Benítez, he investigated a reference to a clinic in Switzerland. He discovered that it was not a general hospital but a clinic specializing in gender reassignment. The clue does not by itself explain Benítez’s full medical history; it prompts O’Malley to speak to Lomeli before the new Pope’s public emergence.

Lomeli returns to Benítez and asks how many people know about his medical condition. He says O’Malley has guessed it and has sworn that he has told no one apart from Lomeli. Benítez answers that only the three of them know: the doctor who treated him in Baghdad was killed in a bombing shortly after examining him, and the late Pope is dead. O’Malley’s discovery thus becomes part of a tightly restricted circle of knowledge at the outset of the new pontificate. The evidence establishes his disclosure to Lomeli and Benítez’s response, but does not establish what further action O’Malley takes or whether the information is made public.

Narrative Role

O’Malley repeatedly serves as a conduit for information whose significance becomes clear only in context. The arrival of a secretly elevated cardinal tests the rules governing who may vote; the attack tests whether the cardinals may receive news from outside; the remark about the razor acquires a different meaning only after O’Malley researches the Swiss clinic. His work depends on distinguishing what he has witnessed from what he has learned or inferred, and on choosing when a private fact must be brought to Lomeli’s attention.

That role also complicates his apparent composure. During the election’s formal conclusion, he struggles to behave as though nothing is wrong, then returns to Lomeli because he cannot leave his discovery unspoken. His intervention does not settle the ethical or practical questions raised by Benítez’s condition. It transfers them to the dean and the new Pope, at the precise moment when the conclave’s closed procedures give way to a new pontificate.