51 pages • 1 hour read
Robert HarrisConclave
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “Universi Dominici Gregis”
Back at the Casa Santa Marta, Lomeli decides to share the news of the attacks with the college. Some cardinals, including Tedesco, believe the news will influence their decision-making process. Lomeli gives them the freedom to withdraw from the room. He provides the details of the coordinated attacks, including their targets.
Benítez insists on addressing the college. He endorses Lomeli’s candidacy as pope, redirecting the votes that have been cast for himself to the dean. Tedesco criticizes Benítez’s statement but goes too far in mudslinging against Lomeli and showing his bias against Islam. He blames Muslims for the attacks. This upsets some of the cardinals. Benítez responds that based on his experience in Baghdad, more Christian Iraqis have been killed by the American military than by Muslims.
Bellini proposes that the conclave should urgently proceed to the next ballot. The cardinals agree. Bellini anticipates that Lomeli will win the election.
Chapter 18 Summary: “The Eighth Ballot”
The cardinals collectively walk back to the Sistine Chapel. Press helicopters snap photos of the movement, attracting the attention of the thousands of pilgrims who have come to Vatican City to greet the new pope.
Lomeli decides to vote for Benítez this time, believing he is the only viable candidate left apart from himself. He spends the rest of the ballot reflecting on the procedures for the ascension of the cardinal who is to be announced as pope. Should he be elected, Lomeli wants to be renamed John XXIV, a name he has secretly held onto for years. He fantasizes about the first Apostolic Blessing he would grant to the pilgrims that afternoon and begins writing a draft.
The scrutineers start tallying the votes. When it becomes clear that Benítez is leading the vote, Lomeli tears his draft speech up. Benítez is elected pope. As the cardinals carry out the procedures for his installment, Benítez chooses the name Innocent.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Habemus Papam”
Lomeli rejoices in the knowledge that Pope Innocent XIV will be the first pontiff to represent the Global South. The new pope indicates his intention to maintain Lomeli as Dean of the College of Cardinals.
O’Malley approaches Lomeli to express his concern over the outcome. In private, he tells Lomeli that he found it curious that Benítez never shaved. After digging deeper into the pope’s abandoned travel plans for Geneva, O’Malley learned that he wasn’t planning to visit a private hospital, but a clinic specializing in gender confirmation.
Lomeli confronts the new pope in private while he is being robed in the Room of Tears. He presses him to explain his “situation.” Pope Innocent reveals that though he was raised male throughout his life, he discovered that he was intersex after surviving the car-bomb attack in Baghdad. He offered his resignation to his predecessor, but the late pope left him to decide whether he wanted to continue his vocation. The late pope then offered to help him undergo gender confirmation surgery in Geneva. The night before Pope Innocent was scheduled to travel, he changed his mind, deciding that it would be a grave sin to “correct” God’s work. Soon after, the late pope made him a cardinal in full knowledge of his identity as an intersex person.
Lomeli is upset by the late pope’s decision. Pope Innocent assures him that the only people who know about his intersex identity are the two of them and O’Malley. This convinces Lomeli to look at how they might manage the public discovery of the pope being intersex in the long term. Pope Innocent corrects his earlier statement, reminding him that God is in on the secret as well.
Pope Innocent XIV greets each of his cardinal brothers, including the previous frontrunners in the conclave. His behavior makes it clear that none of the cardinals will suffer recriminations for the sins exposed during the conclave. Lomeli watches O’Malley prepare the final ballot for burning. As the white smoke rises through the chimney, he hears the thousands of pilgrims who have gathered cheer “in hope and acclamation” (286).
Chapters 17-19 Analysis
Lomeli’s narrative arc revolves around his crisis of faith. He assumed that the loss of meaning in his prayer made him unfit to serve the Church, initially resulting in his offer of resignation. The rejection of that offer put Lomeli in a bind, as he could not reconcile serving the Church with his skepticism that prayer could achieve anything. Over the course of the novel, his willingness to pursue the truth has helped to restore his faith. However, The Challenge of Faith truly arises at the very end of the conclave, not when he faces the possibility of becoming pope but when he learns how Benítez’s election marks a significant break from Church history.
The plot twist that Benítez is intersex challenges Lomeli’s faith by testing his notions of who is fit to lead the Church in the modern world. If the previous chapters pitted traditionalism and liberalism against each other and found them both wanting, then it is only right for the Catholic world to be seen through a new perspective, which Benítez represents. He does not stand by the regressive views of the traditionalists, nor does he submit to the calculated compromises of the liberals. Instead, his heart remains with the people he has chosen to serve all his life in the missions. As he explains in Chapter 12, this is where he sees the Holy Spirit, in contrast to other traditional Church leaders like Bellini, who prioritized the integrity of the Vatican leadership because he saw it as the “heart and brain of the Church” (215).
While Benítez does stand out as the sincerest option for pope, he consistently voted for Lomeli, believing him to be a better choice than himself. This is not a display of Benítez’s modesty but a response to the integrity Lomeli shows in his work as a manager, which he extended to Benítez from the moment he admitted him to the conclave.
Lomeli did not accept this possibility for himself because of his spiritual crisis, but once that is resolved, he begins to consider the possibility. This is a momentary display of ego on Lomeli’s part, echoing the moment he chose to vote for himself in Chapter 16. At once, his aspirations rise to the surface, allowing him to land on his papal name and initial thoughts for a public blessing. If God truly does influence the results of the conclave, then Benítez’s election is Lomeli’s ultimate humbling. This once more drives Human Ambition and Divine Providence as a major theme.
Regardless of Lomeli’s outdated views on intersex people, God has chosen him to lead his Church, inspiring a sense of mystery that continues to challenge him through to the end of the novel. This is Harris’ way of suggesting that for faith to be dynamic, it must be challenged with new ideas and perspectives.
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