The Threat of Schism

The Threat of Schism is the possibility that divisions within the Church will harden into a break in its unity. It gives the conclave’s electoral deadlock stakes beyond the choice of pope: a prolonged contest might advertise an institution unable to agree on its leadership, strengthen factions seeking a return to an earlier era, and bring about the fracture that Lomeli has feared for decades. Yet the novel does not treat unity as a simple justification for any expedient. Through disputes over rules, procedure, and divine intention, it makes the threat a test of how the Church understands both its law and its oneness.

A Deadlock with Institutional Consequences

The threat becomes concrete in the time required to elect a pope. The Apostolic Constitution obliges the electors to keep voting until a candidate achieves a two-thirds majority; the process can extend to thirty ballots across twelve days before a different system, requiring only a simple majority, becomes available. Lomeli sees that possibility as more than an exhausting procedural contingency. With the world’s media gathered in Rome, twelve days of secret balloting and discussion could be read as evidence that the Church cannot agree on a leader, and that public impression would strengthen those who want to take it back to an earlier era. In his worst fear, the prolonged conclave could start the great schism he says has been threatening the Church for nearly sixty years.

The first ballot’s results give that fear a numerical basis. Thirty-four cardinals receive at least one vote, a record as reported after the count, and no candidate comes close to the seventy-nine votes needed to win. Lomeli’s own unexpected votes trouble him because he suspects that he may have taken support from Bellini and weakened the prospect of an early resolution. He then looks beyond the first ballot to the rules for as many as thirty: the more the election remains unresolved, the more time the institution has to appear divided before the world. The deadlock is thus both a question of arithmetic and a public crisis in the Church’s capacity to choose a leader.

Law and the Legitimacy of Participation

The dispute over Benítez’s right to take part in the conclave shows how the Church’s unity depends, in practice, on interpretation as well as conviction. Lomeli understands that the late Pope had revised the canon law on in pectore appointments shortly before his death. Such an appointment could keep a cardinal’s identity undisclosed, even from the Pope’s closest associates, and the rule matters directly to whether the newly arrived Benítez can join the election.

When that eligibility is challenged, Lomeli argues that paragraph thirty-nine of the Apostolic Constitution permits cardinal-electors who arrive re integra—before the new pope has been elected—to participate at the stage the election has reached. In his reading, the provision settles Benítez’s legal status: the man is a cardinal and may vote. Lomeli’s appeal is not merely to the late Pope’s wishes or to personal loyalty. It is a claim that the governing text authorizes Benítez’s participation, and that the election must proceed within that law if its result is to command legitimacy.

The ballot itself is also governed by a prescribed rite. Lomeli reads aloud the rule that each elector folds and carries his ballot to the altar, swears before Christ that he has voted for the person he believes should be elected, places the ballot in the receptacle, and bows before returning to his place. The formal sequence gives a private act of choice a common, public structure: electors may disagree about whom the Church should choose, but they are bound to make their choices through the same procedure. Against the looming possibility of schism, the ceremony presents rule-following as one means of holding a divided body together.

A Crisis That Tests the Rules

The threat becomes immediate when bombs explode in Rome during the conclave. Lomeli sees black smoke rising from the piazza where the explosions occurred and from the Sistine Chapel chimney; the chapel’s windows are shattered. He recognizes the attacks as a challenge to the Church at a moment without a pope, but also sees the danger in the available responses. Suspending the conclave would express respect for the victims while prolonging the leadership vacuum. Accelerating the vote would break the Apostolic Constitution and risk electing a pope whose legitimacy could be challenged from the beginning of his pontificate.

The cardinals first have to decide whether the attacks may be discussed under the conclave’s rules. Lomeli invokes paragraphs five and six of the Apostolic Constitution, which allow certain matters to be considered in special circumstances if a majority of the assembled cardinals agrees. He then puts the question of whether the conclave should receive the information to a vote. Scores raise their hands in favor; Tedesco, Krasinski, Tutino, and roughly a dozen others oppose it. Lomeli says that those who do not wish to hear the information may leave, but nobody does. The incident does not resolve the election or erase the danger. It shows, instead, the Dean using an authorized procedure to secure collective consent at a moment when urgency could otherwise invite him to bypass the rules.

Unity, Faith, and the Possibility of Division

Lomeli’s fear of schism reflects his commitment to the Church’s unity as both a vocation and a principle. When Benítez allows that a schism might be what God wants, Lomeli answers that it would go against everything he has believed in and worked for: the divine gift of the single Universal Church. Their disagreement is not simply between a person who values unity and one who does not. Benítez grounds his response in belief in God alone and refuses to assume that a long conclave—or even a schism—must fall outside divine intention. Lomeli, by contrast, sees the prospect through a lifetime of work for the universal Church and through the damage a public and protracted crisis could inflict.

The phrase “single Universal Church” gathers the concept’s central tension. The possibility of schism names the failure of visible unity, but the novel places that fear alongside unresolved disagreement over leadership, doctrine, and the meaning of God’s will. Lomeli hopes that lawful procedure will protect both the election and the institution it serves; Benítez’s challenge prevents that hope from becoming certainty that unity can be secured simply by avoiding rupture. The threat remains a pressure on the conclave, and a measure of the cost of leadership, rather than an outcome the evidence establishes as inevitable.