Vaticano is both the seat of the Church’s authority and a vulnerable institutional arena in the novel: it sends Lorenzo Quart to Seville to investigate a hacker’s message, while its own computer system is being probed by the elusive Vísperas. Decisions made there shape the pressure on a local priest and the threatened church, but authority is divided among offices, delayed by procedure, and shadowed by internal rivalry. The result is not a single, commanding center so much as a network of officials who manage information, defer responsibility, and compete over who controls the consequences.

Authority and the Seville Investigation

The decision to investigate begins with the Pope’s wish for a formal inquiry, but not an immediate referral to the Holy Office. Paolo Spada explains that involving the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would be excessive at this stage; only if the inquiry uncovers serious indications will the matter be transferred to that body. For now, the Institute for External Works is assigned the task, and Quart is sent to Seville for several days to identify the author of the letter, maintain discreet contact with the local ecclesiastical authority, and conduct the matter through reasonable, confidential channels.

The assignment is therefore deliberately provisional. Spada stresses that the present arrangement is only for the time being, leaving open the possibility of escalation while making Quart responsible for the first report. A hacker’s intrusion might ordinarily have been a minor matter, and the issue would more naturally fall within the authority of the Archbishop of Seville and his relations with the priests of his diocese. The Pope’s interest changes its scale: in the current institutional climate, Spada says, even a small incident can become a wedge in an internal reckoning.

Spada’s choice of Quart also serves a political purpose. He wants a substantial report that demonstrates activity, satisfies the Pope, and keeps Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz at bay. In explaining the stakes, he tells Quart that the case matters less in itself than as another setting for the Curia’s struggle over power. He values Quart and has watched his career since he was a student at the Gregorian University, but warns that personal loyalty can make Quart vulnerable if Spada himself falls from favor. The investigator is thus both a trusted agent and a potential casualty in the calculations surrounding the assignment.

Competing Offices and Institutional Discipline

The exchanges around the investigation reveal the distance between formal jurisdiction and practical control. When Spada invokes the Inquisition as a possible destination for the case, Iwaszkiewicz corrects him: the Inquisition ceased to exist thirty years earlier. Spada revises the reference to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Iwaszkiewicz repeats that no one is burned anymore, but the remark carries a dark warning rather than reassurance. The scene presents institutional change as real but incomplete: old forms of coercion have disappeared, while the threat of damaging or destroying a person’s life remains.

This friction is reproduced in Seville. Archbishop Aquilino Corvo explains that removing the church’s religious status before demolition has become difficult because of a privilege granted in 1687 with papal sanction. Under its terms, Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas retains its privileges as long as Mass is said there each Thursday for its benefactor, Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija. Father Príamo Ferro celebrates Mass every day at eight in the morning, and on Sundays and feast days he says two. The privilege gives a repeated local rite direct force in a property dispute: what appears to be routine worship obstructs the planned demolition.

Corvo has asked Rome to suspend Ferro from office, but says that such procedures move slowly. He suggests that the Vatican’s recent computer infiltration has further delayed a decision, as officials wait for Quart’s report. Meanwhile, Banco Cartujano has a redevelopment arrangement ready and offers the diocese generous compensation, funding for a church in one of Seville’s poorer neighborhoods, and a foundation supporting social work among the Roma community. Corvo initially speaks of the benefit to his diocese, then corrects himself to say “this diocese,” marking the tension between institutional interest and personal possession. The commercial proposal may appear generous, but its implementation remains blocked by the privilege and Ferro’s continuing observance of it.

Corvo’s account also shows how discipline differs from authority. He says that the difficulty is not simply that an archbishop cannot command a priest to stop saying Mass; Ferro’s resistance is a disciplinary problem. Ferro disregards Corvo’s pastoral letters and admonitions, yet the formal route to suspension is still pending. Corvo characterizes Ferro as a mediocre priest and describes himself as the temporary administrator of the Church’s intellectual and material inheritance, obliged to govern very different kinds of clergy while also handling financial and political realities. Having allowed the dispute to proceed slowly, he now tells Quart that Rome has intervened and that he will stand aside, leaving the field to those who have taken up the matter.

The Computer System and Vísperas

Vaticano is not only the source of the inquiry but also the object of the hacker’s activity. A week after Vísperas first makes contact, Father Ignacio Arregui and a Jesuit team of computer specialists are monitoring the central system in shifts of twelve hours. During one night watch, Arregui steps away for coffee shortly before one in the morning, then returns to the computer room. The interruption is brief; the surveillance is continuous, and the team is waiting for the intruder to reveal a trace.

The specialists have constructed what they call “Sadducee Traps”: decoy computer areas arranged like a river mouth, designed to draw intruders into confusing paths where they may expose information that can identify them. The traps prepared for Vísperas are sophisticated electronic mazes. As the hacker searches for INMAVAT, the team watches the progression and recognizes the skill of the intruder, even while treating the access as criminal. The system’s defenses turn the encounter into a contest over information: the Vatican watches Vísperas, but the hacker’s intrusion has already forced the institution to devote round-the-clock attention to its own vulnerability.

One of the messages entered into the Holy See’s system describes a church that kills to defend itself. Quart raises the phrase with Ferro and asks how the priest interprets it, but Ferro refuses to answer. Corvo confirms that Ferro had likewise declined to answer him. The message thereby connects the remote computer intrusion to the local conflict over Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas without resolving whether it predicts, explains, or merely names the violence surrounding the church.

Procedures, Distance, and the Seville Church

For Quart, Vaticano’s authority arrives in Seville as an assignment, a dossier, and a requirement to report. The institution can initiate an investigation and contemplate disciplinary measures, but its procedures do not quickly settle the local contest. The old privilege depends on a specific repeated act of worship; the archbishop’s request for suspension is still moving through Rome; and the bank’s offer awaits the removal of the church’s protected status. Each institution has a means of influence, but none can simply make the others’ constraints disappear.

The same pattern shapes the aftermath of the police inquiry. Corvo tells Quart that, whether or not Vísperas is involved, the case belongs exclusively to Rome—or, in practice, to Quart—and that the archbishop will leave the responsibility to them. Quart understands the institutional stakes: the police may be ahead, and Rome will not welcome the arrest of a cleric before he can provide information to soften the blow. He considers finding Ferro a lawyer and defending the priest’s innocence unless evidence proves otherwise, while also recognizing that, if guilt becomes clear, the Church should facilitate secular justice. His immediate concern is to preserve the forms, though he knows his own conscience remains an unresolved question.

The physical history of church authority gives this institutional distance a local setting. Leaving Corvo’s palace, Quart sees the Giralda beyond the courtyard where the bishops’ former prison, the Cárcel de la Parra, once stood. He imagines that, centuries earlier, Ferro—and perhaps Quart himself—might have exchanged views there while Corvo sent his version of events to Rome by the ordinary, very slow route. The modern telephone has replaced that delay, but not the old imbalance between those who govern, those who are disciplined, and those who must wait for a decision.

Institutional Significance

Vaticano functions as a center of authority that cannot act without negotiation. Its offices distinguish among investigation, discipline, and doctrinal escalation; its officials use reports and procedural timing to manage political risk; and its computer system becomes a site where the Church’s control of information is tested from outside. These activities intersect in Seville, where an ancient papally sanctioned privilege, an energetic parish priest, a cautious archbishop, and a bank’s redevelopment plan make the consequences of Vatican decisions tangible.

The contrast between the computer traps and the Thursday Mass is especially revealing. One is a modern defensive mechanism designed to expose an intruder; the other is a centuries-old ritual whose repetition preserves a legal privilege. Both depend on repeated procedures and the interpretation of rules, yet neither guarantees control. The Holy See can monitor its system without immediately identifying Vísperas, just as the archbishop can seek Ferro’s suspension without promptly obtaining it. Vaticano’s power is therefore substantial but mediated: it operates through offices, reports, inherited terms, and local acts that may delay, redirect, or complicate what the center intends.