Quart is ordered to investigate Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas

Lorenzo Quart’s assignment to investigate Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas is presented as an intelligence-gathering mission, not a license to intervene. It begins with a Vatican dispute over how to respond to an anonymous message and two deaths at the church, but Quart’s investigation leads him from official caution into a closer understanding of the parish’s precarious life. The inquiry’s defining tension is between neutrality as an institutional demand and the human significance of the place he has been sent to examine.

Mandate and limits

The inquiry takes shape amid competing views inside the Vatican. Paolo Spada reports that the facts in the computer expert’s message are authentic: the church has problems, causes problems, and has been associated with two deaths in three months. Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz favors bringing in the Holy Office “the old way,” while Pope John Paul II wants a proper investigation and considers that response excessive. Quart is dispatched into this dispute as an investigator rather than an enforcer.

Iwaszkiewicz makes that distinction explicit. Quart’s mission is only to gather information; he must maintain “exquisite neutrality” and avoid publicity or scandal, whatever he discovers. The warning is politically edged: the cardinal cautions that truth made public does not always set people free. Quart kneels to kiss the cardinal’s ring, but delays for a second longer than necessary, a small gesture that registers his reserve even as he accepts the assignment.

The deaths under investigation

In Seville, Aquilino Corvo presents the death of Peñuelas, the municipal architect assigned to prepare a report declaring the church structurally ruined, as an accident. Peñuelas had clashed with Father Ferro. During his visits to the building, an old wooden scaffold railing gave way; he fell from the roof and was impaled on a metal tube that had not yet been installed. Another official was present, as was Father Óscar, who administered the last rites. The circumstances invite scrutiny, but the account Quart receives offers both a physical explanation and witnesses to the aftermath.

The later death of Padre Urbizu is also described as an accident, though there were no witnesses. Police reconstruct a possible sequence: a movement of the scaffolding dislodged a large piece of plaster from a cornice, and the chunk—more than ten kilograms—fell onto Urbizu’s head. The church’s unstable structure provides a plausible cause, but the lack of witnesses leaves the reconstruction less conclusive than Corvo’s account of Peñuelas’s fall.

Quart also asks Father Ferro to explain the phrase “a church that kills to defend itself,” which appears in the message sent to the Holy See. Ferro refuses to interpret it or discuss whether the deaths might have a providential design. Corvo confirms that Ferro had likewise declined to answer him. The investigator continues through his formal questions, including the possibility of disciplinary measures, but Ferro dismisses the deaths as accidents and shows little concern for the Holy See’s authority.

Reporting without conclusions

Quart initially adheres closely to the limits of his commission. After speaking with Corvo, Gris Marsala, and Ferro, he spends an hour preparing an eight-page report for Spada. It transcribes the conversations with considerable fidelity while carefully avoiding conclusions about the people involved, the church, or the identity of Vísperas. The document is an example of neutrality as method: Quart records what he has heard without claiming that the available accounts resolve the case.

That professional distance also shapes his encounters with others at the parish. When Quart’s questioning leaves Father Óscar physically distressed, Quart helps him up, retrieves his glasses, and brings him water. He apologizes and explains that he is carrying out a mission, not acting from personal hostility. The scene makes the cost of an investigation visible without changing its official purpose: its questions press on people already under strain.

The parish and its ritual life

Quart’s understanding shifts when he attends the morning Mass. At just after eight, he enters the church as a small congregation gathers among scaffolding and stacked pews. Ferro celebrates with Father Óscar assisting. His clothing is conspicuously traditional: beneath the vestments Quart sees an amice, a garment largely abandoned after the Second Vatican Council, and Ferro wears an old guitar-shaped chasuble. He also celebrates parts of the service in Latin, although Church rules since Paul VI call for Mass in the parish’s local language to promote understanding and participation.

The ritual affects Quart despite his technical skepticism and dislike of Ferro. The old priest’s worn clothes and rough appearance do not disappear, but the solemn gestures and words lend him authority at the altar. Quart sees the congregation—many elderly or tired, some plainly dressed for work or errands—attending to Ferro’s hands and voice. For them, the Mass offers consolation: warmth against cold, or a friendly hand in darkness. Quart repeats the words of consecration inwardly and recognizes that understanding the church means seeing more than its conflicts and the enigmatic message associated with it.

That ritual has a practical as well as spiritual force. Ferro celebrates Mass every day, and twice on Sundays and holy days. Macarena Bruner explains that the church remains protected from demolition so long as a Mass is said for her ancestor Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija every Thursday—the day he died in 1709—at eight in the morning. The condition places two watchers in the last pew: an envoy of the archbishop and a notary paid by Pencho Gavira, each alert for a mistake or omission. A repeated act of worship thus serves simultaneously as memorial, communal practice, and a vulnerable legal safeguard.

An inquiry that changes its meaning

Macarena describes the material precarity behind the parish’s persistence. The church is in debt; Ferro’s small salary and the Sunday collection cannot even cover the cost of candles, while the restoration works require money the parish does not have. The Thursday Mass condition consequently carries unusually high stakes. If a priest failed to celebrate it or omitted the required formula, Macarena fears, the church could be demolished, benefiting both the Archbishop of Seville and Banco Cartujano. Her anxiety also extends to Ferro, particularly with Father Óscar away from the parish.

The investigation’s later turns make the original deaths harder to treat as a closed matter of accidents. When Quart returns to the church, he finds Honorato Bonafé dead in the confessional, with a cut running across his palm from wrist to index finger. Subcomisario Simeón Navajo reconstructs a possible struggle on scaffolding near the main altar: Bonafé fell, or was pushed, from about five metres, injured his hand trying to catch a scaffold screw, then dragged himself to the confessional and died there. Police evidence further suggests that the Virgin’s twenty pearls had been replaced months earlier with imitations. Money from the genuine pearls may have financed renewed building work, and Bonafé may have discovered the substitution and tried to blackmail Ferro—or confronted him before he could do so. Navajo’s account remains a reconstruction rather than a settled explanation, and Ferro does not explain his own disappearance. In retrospect, Quart’s original demand for a neutral report sits within a more complicated investigation: one where uncertain deaths, church finances, an endangered building, and the consolations of worship cannot be cleanly separated.