Pastor and Administrator

Pastor and Administrator names the tension at the heart of Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli’s vocation. He wants the intimacy of pastoral ministry, but the late Pope calls him a manager and insists that the Church needs him in Rome. The phrase initially feels like a diminishment; as Lomeli takes up the duties of Dean, it becomes both a burden and a way to understand his service. The novel ultimately enlarges the distinction: managers, like pastors and teachers, can contribute to the unity of the Church.

The wound behind the distinction

For a year, Lomeli has struggled to pray. The words of the Church’s rites sometimes reach him without meaning, and he experiences his former communion with the Holy Spirit as obscured. At their final meeting, he confesses this spiritual insomnia to the late Pope and asks permission to leave Rome, resign as Dean, and withdraw to a religious order. At seventy-five, he is already of retirement age; his request is not a bid for advancement but an attempt to step away from a responsibility that seems increasingly remote from God.

The Pope refuses. He distinguishes between those called to be shepherds and those needed to manage the farm, telling Lomeli that his role is not pastoral and that he is needed in Rome. He also reassures him that God will return to him. The answer offers a practical judgment and a promise, but it hurts: Lomeli wonders whether the Pope truly sees him only as a manager. The two part in a coldness that remains unresolved, and this is the last time Lomeli sees him.

A life of service at a distance

The label finds an echo in Lomeli’s own history. He has held the titles of Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, Cardinal-Priest of San Marcello al Corso, and titular Archbishop of Aquileia, and has preached, celebrated Mass, and heard confessions. Yet he fears that titles and official functions have not given him the formation of an ordinary parish priest. He wishes he had spent even a year or two in parish life; instead, his service has led from canon-law professor to diplomat and, briefly, Secretary of State. The higher he has climbed, he feels, the further heaven has receded.

Lomeli’s coat of arms bears the motto Servus fidelis, “a faithful servant.” He judges it prosaic, as he judges himself, and the Pope’s description seems to confirm the distance between his office and his desired identity. But the thought does not end in self-reproach. After considering his inadequacy and pouring himself a glass of water, he answers the designation with a short decision: “Very well then, he thought. Manage.” The acceptance is not a claim that his spiritual difficulty has vanished. It is a decision to carry out the work entrusted to him despite it.

Management as service to the Church

The distinction becomes visible in Lomeli’s actions as Dean. He prepares the cardinals for the election by insisting that they observe the rules: communications with the outside world will cease after registration, and mobile phones and computers must be surrendered. During the ballot, he explains the prescribed sequence, including the oath, the presentation of each folded ballot, and its delivery to the receptacle at the altar. His management is concrete and procedural, concerned with ensuring that the election proceeds in an intelligible and legitimate way.

That procedural role also has consequences in moments of uncertainty. When the legality of a secretly appointed cardinal’s participation is disputed, Lomeli invokes the revised canon law and the provision that permits electors arriving re integra—before a new Pope has been elected—to join the election at its current stage. He insists that the man is legally a cardinal and should be admitted. The episode shows administration not as mere control of routine, but as responsibility for interpreting and applying rules when the Church’s authority is at stake.

A plurality held together by service

In his homily before the election, Lomeli gives the role a broader theological meaning. Reflecting on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he describes a Church made up of different kinds of people: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Their variety is not an obstacle to unity. It is their shared work of service that brings them together as the body of Christ. Lomeli extends the image to include mystics, dreamers, practical builders, and managers, whose differing strengths can serve the same whole.

The sermon transforms the Pope’s private description of Lomeli from a personal judgment into a principle of ecclesial life. A manager is not thereby a failed shepherd, nor does administration have to stand outside spiritual service. The late Pope’s words still mark Lomeli’s doubt, and the duties of the Dean do not cure his crisis of prayer. But the idea that service takes different forms allows him to act without pretending to possess a vocation he does not feel. In the novel’s account of his leadership, management is neither glamorous nor sufficient by itself: its value lies in helping a diverse Church remain capable of acting together.