Benítez gave Lomeli a resigned smile. ‘Apparently even the smallest vestments are too large.’
‘May I speak to Your Holiness alone?’
‘Of course.’ Benítez peered down at the tailor, ‘Have you finished, my child?’
Through clenched teeth and pins the reply was unintelligible.
‘Leave that,’ ordered Lomeli curtly. ‘You can finish it later.’ The tailor looked round at him and spat his pins into a metal tin, then unthreaded his needle and bit through the gossamer line of spun white silk. Lomeli added, ‘You too, Father.’
The two men bowed and left.
When the door was closed, Lomeli said, ‘You must tell me about this treatment at the clinic in Geneva. What is your situation?’
He had anticipated various responses – angry denials, tearful confessions. Instead, Benítez looked more amused than alarmed. ‘Must I, Dean?’
‘Yes, Your Holiness, you must. Within the hour you will be the most famous man in the world. We can be certain the media will try to find out everything there is to know about you. Your colleagues have a right to know it first. So if I may repeat: what is your situation?’
‘My situation, as you call it, is the same as it was when I was ordained a priest, the same as when I was made an archbishop and the same as when I was created a cardinal. The truth is, there was no treatment in Geneva. I considered it. I prayed for guidance. And then I decided against it.’
‘And what would it have been, this treatment?’
Benítez sighed. ‘I believe the clinical terms are surgery to correct a fusion of the labia majora and minora, and a clitoropexy.’
Lomeli sat down on the nearest chair and put his head in his hands. After a few moments, he was aware of Benítez pulling up a chair next to him.
‘Let me tell you how it was, Dean,’ Benítez said softly. ‘This is the truth of it. I was born to very poor parents in the Philippines, in a place where boys are more prized than girls – a preference I fear is still the case all over the world. My deformity, if that is what we must call it, was such that it was perfectly easy and natural for me to pass as a boy. My parents believed that I was a boy. I believed that I was a boy. And because the life of the seminary is a modest one, as you know well, with an aversion to the uncovering of the body, I had no reason to suspect otherwise, and nor did anyone else. I need hardly add that all my life I have observed my vows of chastity.’
‘And you really never guessed? In sixty years?’
‘No, never. Now, of course, when I look back, I can see that my ministry as a priest, which was mainly among women who were suffering in some way, was probably an unconscious reflection of my natural state. But I had no idea of it at the time. When I was injured in the explosion in Baghdad, I went to a hospital, and only then was I fully examined by a doctor for the first time. The instant the medical facts were explained to me, naturally I was appalled. Such darkness came upon me! It seemed to me that my entire life had been lived in a state of mortal sin. I offered my resignation to the Holy Father, without giving him the reasons. He invited me to Rome to discuss it and sought to dissuade me.’
‘And did you tell him the reasons for your resignation?’
‘In the end, yes, I had to.’
Lomeli stared at him, incredulous. ‘And he thought it was acceptable for you to continue as an ordained minister?’
‘He left it up to me. We prayed together in his room for guidance. Eventually I decided to have the surgery and to leave the ministry. But the night before I was due to fly to Switzerland, I changed my mind. I am what God made me, Your Eminence. It seemed to me more of a sin to correct His handiwork than to leave my body as it was. So I cancelled my appointment and returned to Baghdad.’
‘And the Holy Father was content to allow that?’
‘One must assume so. After all, he made me a cardinal in pectore in full knowledge of who I am.’
Lomeli cried out, ‘Then he must have gone mad!’
There was a knock at the door.
Lomeli shouted, ‘Not now!’ but Benítez called, ‘Come!’
It was Santini, the Senior Cardinal-Deacon. Lomeli often wondered afterwards what he must have made of the scene: the newly elected Holy Father and the Dean of the College of Cardinals sitting on a pair of chairs, knees practically touching, in the middle of what was obviously a profound conversation. ‘Forgive me, Your Holiness,’ Santini said, ‘but when would you like me to go out on to the balcony to announce your election? There are said to be a quarter of a million in the square and the surrounding streets.’ He gave Lomeli an imploring look. ‘We are waiting to burn the ballot papers, Dean.’
Lomeli said, ‘Give us one more minute, Your Eminence.’
‘Of course.’ Santini bowed and withdrew.
Lomeli massaged his forehead. The pain behind his eyes had returned, more blinding even than before. ‘Your Holiness, how many people know of your medical condition? Monsignor O’Malley has guessed it, but he swears he has mentioned it to no one apart from me.’
‘Then it is only we three. The doctor who treated me in Baghdad was killed in a bombing shortly after he examined me, and the Holy Father is dead.’
‘What about the clinic in Geneva?’
‘I was only booked in for a preliminary consultation under an assumed name. I never went. Nobody there would have any idea the prospective patient was me.’
Lomeli sat back in his chair and contemplated the unthinkable. But then, was it not written in Matthew, Chapter 10, Verse 16: Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves . . . ? ‘I’d say there’s a reasonable chance that we can keep it secret in the short term. O’Malley can be promoted to archbishop and sent away somewhere – he won’t talk; I can deal with him. But in the long term, Your Holiness, the truth will emerge, we may be sure of it. I recall there was a visa application for your stay in Switzerland, giving the address of the clinic – that might be discovered one day. You will get old, and require medical treatment – you may have to be examined then. Perhaps you will have a heart attack. And eventually you will die, and your body will be embalmed . . .’
They sat in silence. Benítez said, ‘Of course, we are forgetting: there is one other who knows this secret.’
Lomeli looked at him in alarm. ‘Who?’
‘God.’
*
It was nearly five when the two emerged. Afterwards, the Vatican press office let it be known that Pope Innocent XIV had refused to receive the traditional pledges of obedience while seated in the papal throne but instead had greeted the cardinal-electors individually, standing before the altar. He embraced them all warmly, but especially those who had at one time dreamed of being in his place: Bellini, Tedesco, Adeyemi, Tremblay. For each he had a word of comfort and admiration; to each he pledged his support. By this demonstration of love and forgiveness he made it plain to every man in the Sistine Chapel that there were to be no recriminations – that no one would be dismissed and that the Church would face the perilous days and years ahead in a spirit of unity. There was a communal sense of relief. Even Tedesco grudgingly acknowledged it. The Holy Spirit had done its work. They had picked the right man.
In the vestibule, Lomeli watched O’Malley cram the paper sacks of ballot papers and all the notes and records of the Conclave into the round stove and set fire to them. The secrets burnt easily. Then into the square stove he released a canister of potassium chlorate, lactose and pine resin. Lomeli let his eyes travel slowly up the length of the flue to the point where it exited through the glassless window and into the darkened heavens. He could not make out the chimney or the white smoke, only the pale reflection of the searchlight in the shadows of the ceiling, followed a moment later by the distant roar of hundreds of thousands of voices raised in hope and acclamation.
Acknowledgements
At the outset of my research I asked the Vatican for permission to visit the locations used during a Conclave that are permanently closed to the public. I am grateful to M
onsignor Guillermo Karcher of the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff for arranging my visit, and to Signora Gabrielle Lalatta for her expert guidance. I also interviewed a number of prominent Catholics, including a cardinal who participated in a Conclave; however, our conversations were off the record, and therefore I can only thank them generally rather than specifically. I hope they are not too appalled by the result.
I have drawn on the work of many reporters and authors. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the following: John L. Allen, All the Pope’s Men; Conclave; John Cornwell, A Thief in the Night: The Death of Pope John Paul I; The Pope in Winter: The Dark Face of John Paul II’s Papacy; Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: Pope of the Century; The Year of Three Popes; Richard Holloway, Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt; Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope; Pope John XXIII, Journal of a Soul; Sally Ninham, Ten African Cardinals; Gianluigi Nuzzi, Merchants in the Temple: Inside Pope Francis’s Secret Battle Against Corruption in the Vatican; Ratzinger Was Afraid: The secret documents, the money and the scandals that overwhelmed the Pope; Gerald O’Collins SJ, On the Left Bank of the Tiber; Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, An English Spring; John-Peter Pham, Heirs of the Fisherman: Behind the Scenes of Papal Death and Succession; Marco Politi, Pope Francis Among the Wolves: The Inside Story of a Revolution; John Thavis, The Vatican Diaries.
I also wish to thank, once again, my editors in London and New York, Jocasta Hamilton and Sonny Mehta, for their consistently wise advice and enthusiasm; Joy Terekiev and Cristiana Moroni of Mondadori in Milan, who helped facilitate my visit to the Vatican; and, as ever, my German translator, Wolfgang Müller, who exercised his usual sharp eye for errors.
Finally, my love and gratitude to my family – my children Holly, Charlie (to whom this book is dedicated), Matilda and Sam, and above all to my wife Gill: first reader, as always. Semper fidelis.
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Epub ISBN: 9781473519688
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Copyright © Robert Harris 2016
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This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in the UK by Hutchinson in 2016
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ISBN 9780091959166 (hardback)
ISBN 9780091959173 (trade paperback)
Robert Harris, Conclave
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