Tremblay's alleged simony

Tremblay’s alleged simony is the charge that Goffredo Tedesco used payments to promote his candidacy in the papal election, transforming hidden financial records into a public test of the election’s legitimacy. Lomeli treats the documents as a prima facie case that Tedesco bought support, while Tedesco rejects the report as false and accuses Lomeli of trying to manipulate the conclave. The charge also lends weight to the account that the late Pope had ordered Tedesco to resign before his death; the evidence presented does not show a final determination of guilt.

The allegation and its evidence

The immediate basis for the charge is a confidential report prepared for the late Pope into the alleged offence of simony by Tedesco. Lomeli gives the report to Aldo Bellini and describes it as an overwhelming prima facie case. He argues that Tedesco’s strong first-ballot showing resulted from payments to cardinals, naming Cárdenas, Diène, Figarella, Garang, Papouloute, Baptiste, Sinclair, and Alatas. According to Lomeli, the recipients were in Africa and South America, and Tedesco paid them in cash to make the transfers harder to trace.

Lomeli places the alleged payments within the year before the late Pope’s death, when, he says, Tedesco must have anticipated that the pontificate was nearing its end. His account is not simply that money changed hands: he argues that Tedesco disregarded official procedures and distributed tens of thousands of euros in a way designed to advance his candidacy. The distinction matters to Lomeli’s case. He does not claim that the named cardinals’ votes can be proved, since the ballots have been burned, and he allows that recipients may have intended to pass the money to their churches. The report, as he presents it, establishes suspicious payments and electoral purpose more firmly than it establishes how any individual voted.

The report had been prepared for the late Pope and dated 19 October, the day he died. That date connects the financial inquiry to the disputed final days of the pontificate: the allegation was not merely an accusation that surfaced after the election began, but the subject of a formal investigation prepared for the Pope on the day of his death. Lomeli’s discovery of the report among documents concealed in the papal bed further makes the evidence part of a larger investigation into the late Pope’s records and the Curia’s finances.

The charge of simony and its stakes

Lomeli frames the alleged conduct as simony: the attempt to obtain ecclesiastical office or sacrament through money. In pressing Bellini to read the report, he invokes the biblical account of Simon offering money for spiritual power and Peter’s condemnation of the offer. The scriptural example makes the charge more than a question of irregular campaign finance. As Lomeli presents it, purchasing support for the papacy would violate a religious prohibition at the heart of the office being sought.

The penalty raises the stakes further. Lomeli reminds Bellini that simony carries automatic excommunication. He also says that public circulation of the report would produce a major scandal. The threat is therefore twofold: if the allegation is substantiated, it could place Tedesco under a severe ecclesiastical penalty; whether or not it is proved, its disclosure could damage confidence in the election and in the Church’s leadership.

Bellini does not accept the accusation without testing it. He asks whether the recipients might have used the money for legitimate purposes, and Lomeli answers that he has seen their bank statements. The exchange exposes both the force and the limit of Lomeli’s case. He invokes financial records to support his interpretation of the transfers, while acknowledging that the destroyed ballots prevent him from demonstrating which recipients voted for Tedesco. His argument rests on the pattern, timing, and apparent purpose of the payments rather than a recoverable vote-by-vote proof.

The report’s connection to the Pope’s final actions

The charge also bears on Janusz Woźniak’s account of the night the late Pope died. Woźniak tells Lomeli that he found the Pope dead, summoned the doctor, and that the doctor then summoned Tedesco, who took control of the situation as Camerlengo. Woźniak recalls that, about an hour later, Tedesco asked what the Pope had discussed over supper. Woźniak says he was frightened to disclose what he knew, and later saw Tedesco whispering with Monsignor Morales; he suspected Tedesco was persuading Morales to remain silent about a meeting.

Lomeli argues that the report helps establish that Woźniak was telling the truth when he said the Pope’s last official act was to order Tedesco to resign. The investigation’s date, the reported resignation order, and Woźniak’s account converge on the same question: whether the Pope had confronted Tedesco over the alleged payments before dying. The available evidence presents Lomeli’s conclusion and Woźniak’s recollection, but does not independently settle what happened in the private meeting or establish the Pope’s motive beyond the reported order.

The report’s disclosure is consequential partly because the conclave’s ordinary safeguards leave the allegation difficult to resolve. The ballots have been burned, so Lomeli concedes that the recipients’ votes cannot be proved. Meanwhile, the formal rule against electoral pacts and commitments sits beside a practical contest for the votes needed to elect a pope. The charge thus confronts the institution with a difficult distinction: the evidence may indicate an attempt to influence the election even where the secret ballot prevents proof of its success.

Public confrontation and unresolved outcome

The report was dated and marked strictly confidential, but Lomeli had 118 copies made for distribution to the cardinal-electors. When Tedesco confronts him in public, he calls the report entirely mendacious and says it should never have been disclosed. He accuses Lomeli of breaking into the late Pope’s apartment to remove the document and manipulate the conclave, then argues that Lomeli should step down as dean because his impartiality can no longer be trusted. An unidentified cardinal cries out in shame as Tedesco addresses the room.

The confrontation turns a concealed financial inquiry into an open struggle over both the accusation and the authority to present it. Tedesco contests not only the report’s truth but the legitimacy of Lomeli’s means and position; Lomeli, in turn, maintains that the evidence implicates Tedesco’s conduct. The dispute therefore cannot be reduced to a settled finding of guilt: the report supports a serious allegation, while its public release becomes another contested intervention in the election.

The episode’s central irony is that an inquiry intended to expose a possible purchase of ecclesiastical office becomes itself a source of suspicion about electoral manipulation. The documents may explain Tedesco’s votes and substantiate the Pope’s reported order, but the ballots cannot confirm how the alleged payments affected the result. The charge leaves the conclave confronting not a completed judgment, but a crisis in which financial evidence, secrecy, procedure, and trust pull in different directions.