The Burden and Calling of the Papacy

The Burden and Calling of the Papacy describes the office as both a weight that can exhaust its holder and a vocation demanding judgment, service, and acceptance of risk. In the succession contest, that tension becomes political: the burdens of the late Pope’s final day can be presented as evidence of his service, but also as a warning about the cost of the office and an argument for a younger candidate. The novel keeps the responsibility itself in view even as the electors manoeuvre over who should bear it.

The burden made public

After the late Pope’s death, the cardinals discuss how to describe his last day. Joshua Adeyemi urges that his full schedule be included in the account, reasoning that it would show how hard the Pope had worked to the end and that no one had reason to suspect he was ill. Joseph Tremblay objects that publishing the entire schedule could instead make it seem the Church had imposed an excessive burden on a sick man. Adeyemi replies that the papacy is a huge burden and that people need reminding of this.

The disagreement is not simply about what to disclose. The timetable records the late Pope’s dinner with Archbishop Janusz Woźniak at 7:30 p.m., his retirement to his apartment at 8:30, and his reading and meditation on Chapter 8 of The Imitation of Christ, “Of the dangers of intimacy,” before bed at 9:30. Woźniak checked on him at 11:30 p.m.; emergency treatment began at 11:34, and the Pope was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m. Against that sequence, Adeyemi’s proposed full schedule would make the demands of the office visible, while Tremblay’s concern exposes the possibility that the same facts could suggest neglect or overwork. Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli proposes a compromise: add the Pope’s attendance at vespers to the account, and keep a second document listing the full day’s appointments in reserve.

Adeyemi’s emphasis also carries a political implication. Lomeli recognizes that stressing the weight of the papacy could favor a younger candidate: Adeyemi, just over sixty, is nearly a decade younger than the other two cardinals involved in the exchange. The responsibility of the office is thus both a real condition of papal service and an argument that can be used in the succession contest.

A vocation complicated by choice

The burden is not confined to the deceased Pope’s schedule. Speaking privately with Lomeli, Aldo Bellini rejects the idea that a candidate is merely an instrument of divine will. God has given human beings free will, Bellini insists, and he has some say in the matter. He says he does not want the papacy, describing it as something no sane man could want, and recalls what it did to the late Pope: “It’s a Calvary.”

Bellini’s reluctance is accompanied by fear that he is unworthy. Lomeli counters that Bellini is more worthy than any of them, then offers him a practical way to refuse the office: tell his supporters not to vote for him and pass the chalice to someone else. Bellini cannot accept that solution. He fears the election of Goffredo Tedesco and believes Tedesco would undo decades of progress; withdrawing would leave Bellini unable to live with himself. His exchange with Lomeli shows how a sense of calling can be entangled with resistance to ambition: Bellini does not claim to desire the office, yet feels obliged to contest it because of what he believes its alternative would mean.

The dialogue leaves the dilemma unresolved rather than treating reluctance as proof of fitness. Refusing power may be an act of humility, but it may also surrender a consequential choice to a rival. Conversely, entering the contest to prevent that rival’s election can make a candidate’s sense of duty difficult to distinguish from political purpose. The papacy’s burden lies partly in this demand to choose, not only in the work that follows election.

Office, service, and institutional resistance

Bellini recalls the late Pope’s pontificate as a sustained struggle over what service to the Church required. From his first day, Bellini says, the Pope refused full regalia and chose to live at Casa Santa Marta rather than the Apostolic Palace. He then demanded financial transparency from the heads of the congregations: proper accounts, disclosure, outside tenders for even small building works, and receipts. Accountants and management consultants were brought in to examine files, and given offices on the first floor of Casa Santa Marta.

Those reforms made the responsibilities of the office concrete, but they also provoked resistance. Bellini recalls leaks and public embarrassment over money intended for the poor being diverted to private benefits, while Tedesco and his allies attacked the Pope over positions involving gay people, divorced couples, and the promotion of women. In Bellini’s account, the paradox was that the Pope became more loved by the outside world as he grew more isolated within the Holy See. By the end, Bellini was unsure whether the Pope trusted even him. The papacy appears here not as authority exercised in a vacuum, but as a burden made heavier by institutional opposition and the failure of those entrusted with Church affairs to act transparently.

A concealed set of documents gives that institutional burden a material form. Hidden inside a carved bedpost in the late Pope’s apartment, the papers include financial statements, money transfers, addresses, and the Pope’s notes. One list compares the apartments occupied by Curial officials with the Pope’s own small accommodation: Lomeli’s is listed as 445 square metres, while the late Pope’s at Casa Santa Marta is 50. An attached report estimates the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See’s total property at 347,532 square metres, with a potential value exceeding €2.7 billion but a recorded book value of €389.6 million; it also says that the paid occupancy rate appears to be only 56 percent and that much income may not be properly declared. The contrast between the Pope’s modest residence and the vast, poorly accounted property underscores how the work of reform brought him into conflict with the institution he was charged to lead.

The calling transferred to the electors

The burden of the office is also reflected in who must manage its succession. Lomeli initially regards himself as a stopgap, having tried to resign and believing his earlier prostate cancer diagnosis made it likely that he would die before the Pope. Instead, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, he finds that organizing the conclave in difficult circumstances falls to him. The candidates’ supporters and factions are already taking shape: Bellini is the liberals’ intellectual hope, Tremblay has connections through his work in the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and Adeyemi embodies the possibility, much discussed by the media, of becoming the first black Pope. Lomeli prays for wisdom to discharge his unexpected duty in a way that will strengthen the Church.

As the contest develops, the novel distinguishes electoral momentum from a settled sense of vocation. During one evening, Lomeli sees Adeyemi remain in a corner of the lobby while supporters bring potential voters to speak with him; Tremblay pursues a cardinal who has gone out to smoke, while Tedesco and Bellini move among the tables. Adeyemi’s manner appears to Lomeli to be unusually assured, and Lomeli considers whether he might unite the Church. Yet the visible confidence of a candidate does not settle whether he is ready to bear the office, just as Bellini’s doubts do not remove his political responsibility.

Bellini eventually asks those who voted for him to transfer their support to Lomeli, saying that the electors should not prolong the election until the rules permit a simple majority when there is already an obvious leader. He urges them to unite behind Lomeli and elect him Pope. Tedesco objects that the electors must choose the person they believe best fitted for the office, not the person easiest to put before the crowd that afternoon. The clash restates the central distinction: an election can be treated as a practical answer to pressure, or as a judgment about who should accept the burden.

Acceptance and the meaning of service

After the election, Pope Innocent XIV declines to receive the traditional pledges of obedience while seated on the papal throne. Instead, he greets the cardinal-electors individually while standing before the altar. He embraces them, particularly Bellini, Tedesco, Adeyemi, and Tremblay, who had once imagined themselves in his place; to each he offers comfort and admiration and pledges his support. The gesture turns the new office away from recrimination and toward a promise of unity during the perilous days ahead.

That welcome does not make the burden disappear. Rather, it gives the office a form of service directed toward men who were rivals and toward a Church facing danger. The electors’ relief and even Tedesco’s grudging acknowledgment that they chose the right man give the scene a collective resolution, but the ending retains the costs and uncertainties that preceded it. As the records of the conclave are burned and white smoke is prepared, the secrets of the election are extinguished while the new Pope’s public responsibility begins.