Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church is the institution whose unity and authority shape the conclave’s central conflicts. Its universal ideal is invoked against the prospect of schism, while the conduct of its officials, the management of its resources, and the legality of its election procedures test how far that ideal can be sustained in practice.

Universal unity and the threat of schism

For Lomeli, the Church’s unity is not merely an administrative convenience. He describes the single Universal Church as the work to which he has devoted his life, and regards schism as a repudiation of that commitment. Yet the ballot count makes division a practical danger: he expects Joshua Adeyemi to be elected, believing that resistance to Adeyemi’s apparent momentum will soon collapse because few electors will risk splitting the Church. The prospect of unity thus appears both as a spiritual good and as a pressure shaping political choices.

The possibility of division returns during the terrorist attacks in Rome, when the electors must weigh the victims’ situation against the need to choose a leader. Lomeli fears that suspending the conclave would prolong the leadership vacuum, but accelerating the vote would violate the Apostolic Constitution and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the resulting pontificate. The crisis makes the Church’s unity inseparable from confidence in its procedures: a decision intended to meet an emergency could instead weaken the authority needed to hold the institution together.

Governance, secrecy, and accountability

The account of the late Pope’s death shows how official procedure and the management of information become tests of institutional trust. Archbishop Woźniak gives Lomeli a prepared timeline of the Pope’s final evening, from supper at 7:30 p.m. and retirement at 8:30 to the discovery that he had no vital functions at 11:30. Emergency treatment began at 11:34, and the Pope was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m. The document is presented as protection against discrepancies and malicious rumours, but Woźniak’s later account complicates the official record: after the death, he says, Cardinal Tremblay took control, questioned him about the Pope’s state of mind, and he withheld details because he was frightened. The institution needs accurate information, yet its chain of authority can also discourage disclosure.

The dispute over Vincent Benítez’s appointment brings another institutional tension into focus: whether a secret papal decision can be recognized through the Church’s law. Lomeli explains that the late Pope had revised the canon law on in pectore appointments. He argues that paragraph thirty-nine permits an elector who arrives re integra, before a new Pope has been elected, to join the election at the stage it has reached. On that basis, he maintains that Benítez is legally a cardinal, even as the appointment’s secrecy and the question of who was informed unsettle expectations within the Curia. The episode presents legal interpretation not as an abstract matter but as a means of determining who belongs to the body that elects the Church’s leader.

The conclave’s voting ritual gives institutional authority a visible and ordered form. Under the prescribed procedure, each elector folds and displays a ballot, carries it to the altar, swears that the vote reflects what he believes should be done before God, and deposits it in the receptacle. Lomeli reads the rule aloud before the ballot and votes for Bellini. Later, faced with an emergency, he insists on seeking the assembled cardinals’ authority to discuss what has occurred under the Constitution’s provisions for special circumstances. He puts the question to a vote; the majority agrees to receive the information, and nobody leaves. Rules constrain the electors, but they also provide a framework through which they can act together.

The Curia and the Church’s material responsibilities

The hidden papers found in the late Pope’s bed reveal the scale of the Church’s property and the questions surrounding its administration. A case concealed inside a bedpost contains bank statements, transfers, addresses, and the Pope’s notes. A property list records the areas of Curial apartments, including Lomeli’s 445-square-metre apartment, alongside the Pope’s 50-square-metre accommodation at Casa Santa Marta. The contrast gives the investigation a concrete measure of the disparities under scrutiny.

An attached report estimates the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See’s property at 347,532 square metres. It gives the estate a potential value above €2.7 billion but a stated book value of €389.6 million, and says that only 56 percent of the space appears to be occupied for rent. The report concludes that much of the income may not be properly declared. These figures turn the question of institutional corruption into a problem of stewardship: the issue is not simply the Church’s wealth, but whether its administrators account for the resources entrusted to them.

Bellini recalls the late Pope’s attempts to impose financial transparency: demanding proper accounts, disclosure, outside tenders for building work, and receipts; bringing in accountants and management consultants to examine files; and placing them in offices on the first floor of Casa Santa Marta. In his account, these reforms provoked hostility and leaks, including reports that associates were diverting funds intended for the poor. The conflict reveals the limits of reform when those responsible for oversight depend on the same institution and officials whose practices they are meant to examine.

Institutional loyalty and spiritual purpose

The Church’s institutional life is presented as necessary to its religious mission, but not as identical with it. Bellini rejects the suggestion that service to God can be separated from service through the Church: he regards the Curia as the Church’s heart and brain, however imperfect. His position explains why he fears that using the Pope’s report against Tremblay could damage the Church’s memory and taint a future pontificate. Yet it also risks making loyalty to the institution a reason to suppress evidence of its failures.

That tension governs the Church’s larger portrayal. Its claim to universality demands unity, its election rules confer legitimacy, and its finances require accountability; each is vulnerable when secrecy, faction, or fear takes precedence. The conclave does not resolve those demands into a simple opposition between faith and administration. Instead, it shows the Church’s authority being tested precisely where spiritual purpose depends on fallible people and institutions.