Vatican

The Vatican is both the physical setting of the papal conclave and the institutional landscape in which the novel tests the Church’s rules, authority, and accountability. During the election, access is controlled, ordinary work largely stops, and the cardinals must navigate a succession not only through ballots but through formal procedures governing information and participation.

A city under conclave restrictions

The conclave clears parts of the Vatican that would ordinarily be busy with Curia officials and vehicles. The deserted streets and guarded Vatican Gardens contrast with the usual movement of people between appointments. Security personnel patrol the grounds, including a guard checking flower beds with a dog, while a bodyguard follows Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli when he walks outside. The landscape offers a view toward Rome, but the election’s restrictions make that wider city feel inaccessible: the newly elected Pope, Lomeli reflects, would be unable to move freely beyond the Vatican.

The Vatican’s security perimeter is not merely background. It shapes how characters move and speak, and makes even a private walk part of the conclave’s controlled environment. The election is also watched from beyond the walls: television commentators and betting markets treat its progress as a public contest, while the cardinals themselves are instructed to keep deliberations within the rules of secrecy.

Procedures and the authority to participate

The Vatican’s election is governed by rules that can determine whether a cardinal has a right to take part. When a previously unlisted cardinal arrives claiming that he was created in pectore, the question becomes a test of procedure rather than appearance or prior recognition. Lomeli invokes paragraph thirty-nine of the Apostolic Constitution: a cardinal-elector who arrives re integra, before a new Pope has been elected, is to be admitted to the election at the stage it has reached. He therefore argues that the newcomer is legally entitled to participate.

Procedure also governs what the cardinals may discuss. In an hour of crisis, Lomeli seeks the conclave’s authority before addressing the assembled men, citing the Apostolic Constitution’s provision for discussion of certain matters under special circumstances when a majority agrees. When an opponent tries to prevent the information from being heard, Lomeli puts the question to a vote. The large majority in favour authorizes him to proceed, while the dissenting hands show that procedure can constrain resistance as well as confer legitimacy.

Information, records, and institutional accountability

The Vatican’s administration is also a subject of scrutiny. A timeline prepared after the Pope’s death sets out the reported sequence of the evening, including his meal, his retirement, the discovery that he had died, the doctor’s arrival, and the time of the formal pronouncement. The document is amended to include his attendance at vespers, while a more extensive schedule is held in reserve. The episode shows how an official account is assembled and managed at a moment when discrepancies could fuel rumours.

A separate set of records found in the Pope’s residence turns the Vatican’s property administration into evidence of a larger accountability problem. The papers include bank statements, transfers, apartment addresses, and the Pope’s handwritten notes. An inventory lists the size of apartments occupied by Curia members, including those of several cardinal-electors, against the Pope’s own small room at Casa Santa Marta. An attached report estimates the total area of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See’s holdings at 347,532 square metres, with a potential value above €2.7 billion but a stated book value of €389.6 million; it also reports a paid occupancy rate of 56 percent and raises concern that income is not being fully declared.

The late Pope’s earlier effort to address such concerns had met resistance within the institution. According to Aldo Bellini, the Pope demanded financial transparency, proper accounts, disclosure, outside tenders, and receipts, and brought in accountants and management consultants to examine files. Bellini describes the subsequent leaks and internal hostility as contributing to the Pope’s isolation and declining trust. In this account, the Vatican is not simply an election venue: its offices and records reveal the friction between the Church’s formal responsibilities and the interests of those charged with administering them.

The Vatican as a contested public and private space

The conclave’s failure to elect a Pope quickly becomes visible outside the sealed process. Black smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel is picked out by a searchlight on St Peter’s Basilica, and media commentators revise their expectations as repeated ballots produce no winner. The public interprets the election through candidates, odds, and the possibility of a historic outcome, even as the cardinals remain bound by secrecy and continued voting.

The novel sets that public spectacle against the Vatican’s interior negotiations: a guarded city, a restricted electorate, documents assembled or concealed, and decisions made under constitutional rules. Its setting gives institutional questions a concrete geography. The same place that confines the electors also supplies the procedures through which they can challenge exclusion, authorize disclosure, and confront the administration of the Church.