The Archbishop's Palace of Seville is the seat of the local archbishop and a recurring setting for Lorenzo Quart’s investigation into Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas. Its offices turn the church’s threatened demolition into a contest over jurisdiction and procedure: Rome commissions a discreet inquiry, the archbishop weighs discipline and a profitable redevelopment, and a weekly Mass tied to an old privilege keeps the church from being treated as an ordinary parcel of land.

The Palace as an Institutional Setting

The palace is presented through the rooms in which the archbishop receives and manages visitors. In the archbishop’s office, shelves hold volumes of Church Fathers and papal encyclicals, bound with the archiepiscopal arms; a crucifix hangs above a kneeler, while a sofa and armchairs mark a more cordial place for favored guests. Quart sits in an uncomfortable chair at the desk’s side, a physical sign of his outsider status in the local hierarchy.

The palace’s grander spaces carry their own institutional history. After leaving the archbishop’s office, Quart walks beneath Venetian ceiling paintings in the Gallery of Prelates and down the main marble staircase. From the windows he sees the Giralda beyond the courtyard where the bishops’ former prison, the Cárcel de la Parra, once stood. The route makes the building’s authority tangible: it has housed both the governance of priests and their confinement.

The Inquiry and the Contest over Jurisdiction

Quart’s assignment originates in Rome. The Holy Father wants a formal investigation, but involving the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is considered excessive unless the inquiry uncovers serious evidence. The Institute for External Works is therefore tasked with identifying the author of a letter, keeping discreet contact with local church authorities, and proceeding reasonably. The palace is where this outside investigation meets the archdiocese’s own interests.

Archbishop Corvo tells Quart that secularizing Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas, a prerequisite to demolition, has become difficult because of a papally sanctioned privilege from 1687. The church must retain its rights while Mass is said each Thursday for its benefactor, Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija. Corvo says the privilege is unequivocal, although he treats its historical origin with wry cynicism: Bruner’s power, he suggests, may have secured the arrangement from his predecessor.

The privilege has a present-day procedural consequence. Father Príamo Ferro celebrates Mass every day at eight in the morning, except on Sundays and holy days, when he celebrates twice. Corvo has asked Rome to suspend Ferro from office, but the process is slow; he also suspects that Rome is waiting for Quart’s report after the Vatican computer intrusion. The archbishop distinguishes his inability to prevent a priest from celebrating Mass from his authority to discipline him, while making clear that Ferro has repeatedly ignored his pastorals and admonitions.

The Redevelopment Deal and the Archdiocese’s Position

The Banco Cartujano has a plan ready for the church site. Corvo says the archdiocese would receive generous compensation despite possessing no claim to the land beyond the moral claim created by three centuries of worship. The bank would also fund a church in one of Seville’s poorest neighborhoods and establish a foundation supporting social work in the Romani community. Corvo presents these terms as valuable when parish collections barely cover candles, but the proposed benefits do not resolve the conflict: the church’s survival remains bound to Ferro’s repeated observance of the privilege.

Corvo’s language shifts as he describes the arrangement. He begins by speaking of what his diocese would gain, then corrects himself to say “this diocese,” as though acknowledging the distinction between personal possession and institutional responsibility. His office administers both religious obligations and material assets. He describes himself as having to manage marketable values while keeping a vow of poverty, negotiate with enemies, and sometimes condemn friends. His account makes the palace a place where the spiritual and financial demands of the archdiocese are not separated but handled at the same desk.

Encounters, Recusals, and Consequences

The palace also stages the limits of Quart’s authority. In his interview with Ferro, Quart follows an official procedure, asking whether the priest understands the stakes and explaining that his report could lead to serious disciplinary measures. When Quart turns to Corvo for help eliciting an answer about whether the church might have a providential purpose, the archbishop declines to intervene and confirms that Ferro refused to answer him as well. Corvo’s amused detachment leaves Quart to carry out the inquiry without local cooperation.

The same withdrawal becomes more explicit in a later conversation. Corvo tells Quart that, whether or not Vísperas is involved, the matter belongs exclusively to Rome—and therefore to Quart—and that the local ordinary will wash his hands of it. He offers support and prayers, but leaves the investigation and its consequences to the institution that initiated it. The palace thus marks a transfer of responsibility as much as a seat of local authority.

A later summons briefly unsettles this distance. As Quart descends the palace staircase, Corvo calls him back from the balustrade, no longer wearing the satisfied expression with which he had appeared to dismiss him. The scene ends with the archbishop asking Quart to return because they need to talk. The palace remains the point where local authority, Roman intervention, and the church’s precarious future must repeatedly confront one another.