Roman Curia administration

The Roman Curia administration is the governing apparatus at the heart of the Church and a central institutional force in the novel. It is at once the machinery through which church business is conducted and an organization whose opacity, internal interests, and resistance to scrutiny complicate the work of its leaders. The late Pope’s campaign for accountability exposes those tensions; his death leaves his successor and the cardinals to decide what to disclose, what to investigate, and how the institution’s rules should be applied.

Structure and Institutional Reach

The Curia’s influence is visible in its control of official procedure and information. When the Pope dies, Archbishop Woźniak recounts that the doctor summoned Cardinal Tremblay, who, as Camerlengo, was the first Curial member officially notified and took charge of the situation. The chain of notification makes the Curia’s formal offices consequential in a moment of crisis, even as Woźniak’s account reveals how shock and authority shaped what was said and withheld.

The organization also holds extensive administrative and financial responsibilities. The Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See supplied the late Pope with a list of official apartments occupied by serving and retired Curial members. The document included the area of each apartment, including 445 square metres for Lomeli’s and 510 for Tremblay’s, against the Pope’s 50-square-metre residence at Casa Santa Marta. In a separate report, the total APSA property portfolio was estimated at 347,532 square metres, with a potential value exceeding €2.7 billion but a stated book value of €389.6 million. The reported paid occupancy rate of 56 percent suggested that substantial income was not being properly declared.

Reform and Resistance

Bellini describes the late Pope’s pontificate as a sustained battle with the Curia. From the beginning, the Pope declined full ceremonial regalia and chose to live at Casa Santa Marta rather than the Apostolic Palace. At an introductory meeting with congregation prefects in the Sala Bologna, he demanded financial transparency: proper accounts, disclosure, outside tenders for building work, and receipts. He then brought in accountants and management consultants to examine files, placing them in offices on the first floor of Casa Santa Marta.

The scrutiny produced resistance and damaging disclosures. Bellini says the Curia resented the audits, and that leaks to the press exposed alleged misuse of funds intended for the poor, including renovations to associates’ apartments and first-class travel. The late Pope’s efforts to reform administrative practice therefore generated public embarrassment as well as internal opposition. Bellini presents the result as a bitter reversal: the Pope was loved by the outside world but became increasingly isolated within the Holy See, eventually trusting very few people.

Records, Secrecy, and Accountability

After the Pope’s death, the Curia’s financial opacity becomes tangible in the concealed papers Lomeli finds in the bedposts of the papal bed. A wooden case contains bank statements, transfers, addresses, and handwritten annotations. The papers include the apartment list and a separate collection of personal financial records obtained from the Institute for the Works of Religion. Among the listed deposits are €42,112 for Bellini, €121,865 for Adeyemi, and €519,732 for Tremblay; Tedesco’s balance is €2,821, while Benítez appears to have no account. Lomeli also sees the late Pope’s own annotation contrasting the Church’s call to be a house of prayer with the reality of a den of robbers.

The discovery unsettles Lomeli not only because it suggests financial misconduct, but because the Pope had secretly acquired his colleagues’ private records. The concealed archive thus presents accountability as ethically fraught: evidence of institutional failure has been assembled through an act of secrecy. The late Pope’s investigations imply that ordinary oversight had not sufficed, while the covert method raises questions about the limits of authority and the handling of confidential information.

Rules and Crisis Deliberation

The Curia’s formal procedures also become instruments in disputes over the conclave. When Benítez arrives as a previously unlisted cardinal created in pectore, Lomeli argues that paragraph thirty-nine of the Apostolic Constitution allows a cardinal who arrives re integra, before the election of a new Pope, to participate at the stage the election has reached. His interpretation establishes Benítez’s legal right to join the election, showing how an institutional rule can determine membership in the most consequential decision the Church faces.

Later, during an emergency, Lomeli invokes paragraphs five and six of the Apostolic Constitution to ask the assembled cardinals for authority to discuss matters normally outside the conclave’s deliberations. He proposes putting the question to a vote rather than allowing Tedesco to block discussion. A large majority supports receiving the information; those opposed are outnumbered, and no one leaves when Lomeli makes clear that dissenters may do so. In these scenes, the Curia’s rules are neither mere formality nor an automatic solution: their interpretation and use decide who may participate and whether the institution can confront information that threatens its stability.