Lorenzo Quart—Óscar Lobato

Lorenzo Quart—Óscar Lobato is a relationship forged in an investigation and tested in a parish house: Quart arrives as Rome’s informant, while the young vicar sees him as an agent of the very hierarchy threatening Father Príamo Ferro and Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas. Their first direct encounter turns into a fight, but its aftermath gives way to a candid, uneasy conversation. Lobato does not resolve Quart’s suspicions about Vísperas; instead, he makes his allegiance unmistakable, insisting that he has chosen a side in the struggle over the church.

Uneasy Encounters

Quart’s suspicion reaches Lobato through the investigation into Vísperas, the hacker who has sent a message to Rome. Searching the house, Quart finds twenty computer-printed pages on Saint John of the Cross and five plastic cases containing a dozen 3.5-inch disks apiece. The material seems substantial enough to require checking, but proves neither that Lobato is Vísperas nor that the disks contain evidence. Quart concludes that he will have to return and copy them for a slower examination. He also reasons that the equipment and accessible telephone line needed for the hacking operation are not available in the house, so Vísperas is not operating from there.

The search ends when Lobato catches Quart in the house and demands to know what he is doing there. Quart answers that he is looking around, then tries to leave; Lobato blocks the narrow passage. Quart tells him not to be foolish, but the confrontation becomes physical. Lobato throws a wild punch, which Quart avoids, then lands a glancing blow to Quart’s jaw. Quart responds with a kick to the groin and a punch behind the ear, bringing the vicar to his knees against the wall.

The violence does not become a lasting estrangement. Quart retrieves Lobato’s fallen glasses and helps him to the sitting room, where the young priest sinks into a chair on top of copies of Vida Nueva. Quart brings him water from the kitchen. With one lens clouded by a large fingerprint and his hair damp with sweat, Lobato looks less like an adversary than a man overwhelmed by strain. Quart apologizes, and Lobato eventually admits that he lost control. Quart answers that both of them did, then says that he has not come to make trouble but to understand.

Suspicion and Candor

Quart uses the fragile calm to explain his inquiry. He invokes obedience, the computer pirate, and the message received in Rome before putting the suspicion plainly: some people think Lobato is Vísperas. The accusation rests, as Quart presents it, on a possible match in age, education, and interests; he asks about Lobato’s computer skills. The evidence found in the house had already left Quart uncertain: it was enough to investigate, but not enough to establish guilt, and the absence of a suitable operating setup weakened the case that the hacking came from there.

Lobato does not give Quart a confession or a technical explanation. Instead, he shifts the exchange from the hacker’s identity to the cause he has chosen. Sitting straighter and meeting Quart’s gaze, he says there is a war underway and that he has picked his side. Father Ferro, he maintains, is good and honest; the opponents are not. When Quart asks who they are, Lobato names everyone from the bank to the archbishop, and includes the people who sent Quart from Rome. His confidence sharpens the conflict between them: to Quart, Lobato is a possible source of evidence; to Lobato, Quart belongs to the machinery arrayed against Ferro.

The Church as a Trench

Lobato explains his allegiance through the image of a church as a trench, an expression Quart recognizes because Father Ferro has used it too. When Quart says he does not see the connection between Lobato’s soul and the church, the vicar replies that there are churches more necessary than others for what they contain or symbolize. Asked what they need defending against, he turns to the window, draws back the curtains, and faces the view before answering: the Church itself.

His indictment is historical as well as immediate. He argues that the Church has betrayed its original message, losing much of Europe through the Reformation, excommunicating Reason in the eighteenth century, and alienating workers who saw it on the side of owners and oppressors. In his account, it is now losing young people and women; what remains will be empty pews and mice. The threatened parish is therefore more than disputed property. In Lobato’s understanding, defending it means resisting the institutional submission and silence Quart’s mission appears to bring.

Lobato also describes the Church’s internal culture as a system of forms, ambition, and compromise. In the seminary, he says, advancement depended on choosing a professor, friend, or bishop who could help a young priest prosper. He had once believed that a priest’s gestures before the altar were simply ritual; experience taught him, as he presents it, that clerical life involved other kinds of bowing as well. His account makes his opposition personal without reducing it to personal resentment: he sees the hierarchy’s habits as obstructing the priest’s obligation to offer people a meaningful sign, leaving them vulnerable to fortune-tellers, astrologers, and spiritual salesmen.

Choosing a Side

Lobato’s loyalties stand in contrast to the official terms of Quart’s assignment. Rome has instructed Quart to conduct an informational inquiry, maintain strict neutrality, and avoid publicity or scandal. The concern is not abstract: the church has suffered two real deaths within three months, while the Cartujano Bank has a redevelopment plan ready and offers the diocese compensation, funding for a church in one of Seville’s poorest neighborhoods, and support for social work among the Roma community. The archbishop presents the deal as beneficial; Quart sees that the parish’s future is bound up with competing institutional interests. Lobato rejects the neutrality that would leave those interests unchallenged.

He says his problems have already begun, but he does not regret his choice. He is not yet twenty-seven and believes he could start over in another occupation and place; nevertheless, he intends to stay and fight wherever he is sent. He calls this the discovery of his vocation: to be an inconvenient priest. That declaration recasts the earlier fight. Quart and Lobato have physically opposed one another in a hallway, yet their deeper conflict is over what obedience requires and whether a priest should preserve institutional quiet or openly defend a threatened community.

The relationship remains unresolved in the evidence of their encounter. Quart has neither proven that Lobato is Vísperas nor persuaded him to withdraw his allegiance to Ferro; Lobato, for his part, has made clear that he distrusts the investigators and authorities Quart represents. Their exchange nevertheless changes the terms of the investigation. The vicar is no longer merely a possible hacker identified by circumstantial clues: he becomes an articulate defender of the parish, willing to accept professional consequences for opposing what he regards as the Church’s betrayal of its own message.

Institutional Pressure and Conflicted Neutrality

The tension between Quart and Lobato is part of a wider struggle over who may define the church’s future. Before Quart’s mission, the director of the Institute for External Works warns that Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz favors intervention by the Holy Office “in the old style.” The Pope, however, wants a proper inquiry and considers involving the Holy Office excessive. The distinction matters to Quart, who associates both the old and new methods of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with troubling memories, including the killing of Nelson Corona, a Brazilian priest for whose coffin Quart had once supplied the wood. The investigation is therefore not a neutral encounter between an outsider and a parish: Quart arrives carrying the authority of institutions whose methods and history he distrusts.

The cardinal defines Quart’s task narrowly: it is informational, and he must maintain “exquisite neutrality,” avoid publicity, and report what he finds before any concrete action is taken. His warning that publicly aired truth does not always make people free makes discretion sound less like a procedural safeguard than a potential means of containment. Quart obeys the formal assignment, but his own thoughts register suspicion toward those who prefer that someone else take responsibility while keeping their hands clean. Lobato’s later refusal of submission and silence consequently answers not only the local dispute but the terms under which Rome has sent Quart to investigate it.

At the diocesan level, Archbishop Corvo presents the redevelopment proposal as a practical settlement. The Cartujano Bank would use the church site, compensate the diocese despite its having only a moral claim founded on three centuries of worship, finance a new church in one of Seville’s poorest neighborhoods, and establish a foundation supporting social work among the Roma community. Corvo calls the offer generous in a time when parish collection boxes are nearly empty, while Quart declines to endorse the pitch. The archbishop says the arrangement is stalled by the stubbornness of a priest nearing retirement. Lobato’s defense of Father Ferro thus confronts a bargain described in the language of charitable provision, while challenging the institutional decisions and silences that make demolition appear negotiable.

The contrast also clarifies why the two men’s conversation cannot be reduced to Quart’s suspicion that Lobato is Vísperas. Quart works within an assignment that demands evidence, reserve, and neutrality; Lobato treats the threatened parish as a front line and sees neutrality as aligned with the forces already arrayed against it. Their disagreement is moral and institutional before it is personal, even though it erupts in a physical struggle. Neither the favorable terms of the bank’s offer nor the hierarchy’s demand for discretion persuades Lobato to retreat: he chooses to remain where he may be sent and to oppose what he regards as a betrayal of the Church’s original message.

The Church as a Trench

Lobato explains his allegiance through the image of a church as a trench, an expression Quart recognizes because Father Ferro has used it too. When Quart says he does not see the connection between Lobato’s soul and the church, the vicar replies that some churches matter because of what they contain or symbolize. Asked what they need defending against, he goes to the window, draws back the curtains, and answers: the Church itself.

His indictment is historical as well as immediate. He argues that the Church has betrayed its original message, losing much of Europe through the Reformation, excommunicating Reason in the eighteenth century, and alienating workers who saw it on the side of owners and oppressors. In his account, it is now losing young people and women; what remains will be empty pews and mice. The threatened parish is therefore more than disputed property. For Lobato, defending it means resisting the institutional submission and silence that Quart’s mission seems to bring.

Lobato describes the Church’s internal culture as a system of forms, ambition, and compromise. At the seminary, he says, advancement depended on choosing a professor, friend, or bishop who could help a young priest prosper. He had believed that a priest’s gestures before the altar were simply ritual; experience taught him that clerical life involved other kinds of bowing as well. He sees the hierarchy’s habits as obstructing the priest’s obligation to offer people a meaningful sign, leaving them vulnerable to fortune-tellers, astrologers, and spiritual salesmen.

Commitment and the Limits of the Encounter

Lobato does not describe his opposition as a passing protest. He says his problems have already begun, yet he does not regret choosing a side. Not yet twenty-seven, he believes he could begin again in another occupation and another place; instead, he will stay and fight wherever he is sent. His name for this chosen role is an “inconvenient priest.” The declaration turns the clash in the parish house into a sharper measure of their disagreement: Quart seeks to understand and investigate, while Lobato accepts the consequences of resisting the authorities he believes threaten Father Ferro and the church.

The encounter leaves their central suspicions unresolved. Quart has not established that Lobato is Vísperas, and Lobato offers no confession or technical account of the hacking. What becomes clear is the divide in their loyalties: Quart arrives under Rome’s instruction to gather information while maintaining neutrality; Lobato distrusts the institutions behind that mission and refuses to separate the parish’s defense from opposition to the hierarchy. Their relationship is consequently neither settled friendship nor a simple investigator-and-suspect exchange. After violence, apology, and an unusually direct conversation, each has a clearer view of the other’s position, but neither abandons it.