Conclave

“The words buzzed in Lomeli’s head without meaning. It was happening more and more often. I cry out to You, God, but You do not answer. Some kind of spiritual insomnia, a kind of noisy interference, had crept over him during the past year, denying him that communion with the Holy Spirit he had once been able to achieve quite naturally. And, as with sleep, the more one desired meaningful prayer, the more elusive it became.”

The novel introduces Lomeli’s crisis of faith in this passage. His inability to find meaning in prayer sets the stage for his insecurity as the manager of the conclave. That insecurity becomes the character flaw he must overcome over the course of the narrative. The passage is also key to establishing The Challenge of Faith as a theme.

“Some are chosen to be shepherds, and others are needed to manage the farm. Yours is not a pastoral role. You are not a shepherd. You are a manager.”

Lomeli’s relationship with the late pope complicates his crisis of faith. Part of Lomeli’s backstory includes this memory of the late pope rejecting Lomeli’s desire for monastic life to keep him on as a manager, suggesting that the solution to a crisis of faith is not a life of prayer, but active engagement with one’s doubt. This passage also increases the ambiguity around Benítez’s support of Lomeli throughout the conclave, because the late pope previously shared his assessments of the senior Vatican officials with him.

“His war with the Vatican’s old guard had started right here, on that issue, on his first day. When some of the heads of the Curia had demurred at his decision as not being appropriate for the dignity of a Pope, he had quoted at them, as if they were schoolboys, Christ’s instruction to his disciples: Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. From then on, being human, they had felt his reproachful eye upon them every time they went home to their grand official apartments; and, being human, they had resented it.”

Although the late pope is virtually absent from the narrative, his presence looms large over the conclave at the center of the novel. This passage gives a sense of the tenor of his papacy and the position points of his rivals and supporters. This is crucial for establishing