Tranblay requested deployment of Sanumi

Sister Shanumi’s transfer from her Nigerian community to Rome became a disputed request at the center of the conclave’s scrutiny of Cardinal Tremblay and the late Pope. Shanumi believed Cardinal Adeyemi might have summoned her, while an email from her superioress identified Tremblay as the requester; when challenged, Tremblay said he had acted at the late Pope’s direction. The transfer thus linked a private journey, arranged through the Daughters of Charity, to the unsettled question of what the late Pope had asked his senior officials to do.

The transfer from Nigeria

In September, Shanumi was called before the sister in charge of her community and told that an email had arrived from the order’s Superioress General in Paris requesting her immediate transfer to its mission in Rome. The other sisters regarded the move as an honour, and some speculated that the late Pope himself had arranged it. Shanumi, however, had never met him. She had seen him only once during his tour of Africa, as a distant white figure among millions.

The request moved quickly. Shanumi was given three weeks to prepare, then flew to Rome; she had been there for only a day when the late Pope died. She did not have an opportunity to speak with him. Her arrival therefore preceded his death but supplied no direct explanation from him for why she had been summoned.

Shanumi’s understanding and Lomeli’s inquiry

When asked why she had agreed to leave home and travel so far, Shanumi gave a different account of what she had believed: she thought Cardinal Adeyemi might have sent for her. The distinction mattered. Her understanding did not establish that Adeyemi had made the request, but it showed that the transfer had reached her without a clear, personally confirmed explanation of its origin.

Lomeli pursued the discrepancy with Sister Agnes, who had helped receive Shanumi in Rome. He pointed out that Shanumi did not speak Italian and had never left Nigeria, and argued that she could not simply have arrived without someone making it happen. Sister Agnes initially said she knew nothing. Pressed to ask God, she maintained that she had promised the superioress not to speak. She then turned to her computer and typed an email for Lomeli to read.

The message, dated 3 October—two weeks before the late Pope died—was from the superioress herself and marked “In Confidence.” It identified Shanumi as a sister of the Oko community in Ondo province, Nigeria, and stated that her presence in Rome had been requested by Cardinal Tremblay, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples. This document gave Lomeli a specific account of who had initiated the transfer, while leaving open whether Tremblay had acted independently or under another person’s instructions.

Tremblay’s explanation

Lomeli confronted Tremblay and asked directly whether he had requested that the superioress transfer one of her sisters to Rome. Tremblay acknowledged making the request, but denied doing so on his own behalf. He said it had been made for the late Pope: according to Tremblay, the Pope had supplied the name of a sister in Africa and asked him, in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, to make a private request to the Daughters of Charity. Tremblay said he had complied without asking why.

The explanation turned the evidence of the email into a contested account rather than a settled answer. The message verified that Tremblay had requested Shanumi’s transfer, but its wording did not independently confirm his claim that the late Pope had instructed him. Lomeli regarded the claim as difficult to believe and accused Tremblay of invoking the dead Pope to save his candidacy. Tremblay insisted that it was true, then ended the conversation, saying he would pretend it had never taken place.

Significance in the conclave

The transfer’s importance lies in the gap between the documented request and its disputed origin. Shanumi’s own belief pointed toward Adeyemi, the superioress’s confidential email named Tremblay, and Tremblay attributed the decision to the late Pope. Each account had a different source and status: Shanumi described what she had thought, the email recorded who formally requested her presence, and Tremblay supplied an explanation that Lomeli could not verify from the document alone.

The chronology sharpened the question without resolving it. The request was recorded on 3 October, Shanumi arrived after three weeks of preparation, and the late Pope died the day after she reached Rome. The episode therefore fed into the broader inquiry surrounding the Pope’s final days and the conduct of the cardinals competing to succeed him. It did not establish why the Pope wanted Shanumi brought to Rome; instead, it exposed how an apparently administrative transfer could become politically consequential when the people implicated were themselves under scrutiny.