Inside the Conclave: A Mozzetta for the Right, Synodality for the Left

O’Connell and Piqué sell Leo XIV as “style without substance” and accidentally admit that substance is the whole point.

The book, El último cónclave, (The Last Conclave) by Elisabetta Piqué and Gerard O'Connell announces itself as a diary of the 2025 conclave, a “megaevent” that is spiritual, political, and soaked in intrigue, with factions trying to “defy the hard arithmetic” and then “undermine their own cause.” It’s written with the breathless pace of two Vatican reporters who were personally close to Francis and want you to experience the transition as narrative.

And the narrative is explicit: Leo XIV is portrayed as the “final surprise” of Francis, “unexpected for almost everyone,” a kind of providential plot twist rather than the culmination of a postconciliar machine. The authors even frame the early days of the new reign as giving “clues” of a pontificate with “its own style,” different “in form,” but “not in substance.”

That line is the whole book’s confession. They mean it as reassurance. It reads like an indictment.

A Conclave Reduced to Optics and Coalition Management

The most revealing element is how little supernatural seriousness remains in the storytelling. It isn’t that the authors deny prayer or ritual. It’s that the real drama is always coalition management: the “rigorists,” the “diplomats,” “Italian interests,” and hybrid alliances moving pieces around a board.

Even the “unexpected” result is explained in modern managerial terms. Prevost “flies below the radar,” benefits from not being a media fixation, and therefore avoids scrutiny. The comparison to 2013 is telling: Bergoglio also “below the radar,” then suddenly the white smoke, then a new phase of permanent “pastoral” revolution that is treated as baseline reality.

So the book’s worldview is less “the Holy Ghost chooses” and more “the best positioned candidate wins the information environment.”

External Interference: The Abuse File as a Weapon of Conclave Politics

One of the chapters is literally titled “External Interference,” and it reads like a dispatch from a political campaign where outside groups drop opposition research at the key moment. Bishop Accountability holds a press conference and targets two leading papabili, Parolin and Tagle, warning they would be “bad options” because of their records on abuse handling.

The authors include a particularly sharp claim: Parolin’s power as a diplomat made him the choke point for information, a keeper of secrets, with “any request for information” passing through the Secretariat of State. Whatever one thinks of the group, the scene matters because it shows the modern Church’s credibility crisis functioning as leverage inside the succession drama.

This is the postconciliar world in miniature: doctrinal clarity is not the axis; scandal management is. And when scandal management becomes the axis, the institution becomes capturable by whoever controls the documents, the leaks, the headlines, and the timing.

The Progressive “Counterattack”: Women, and the Synodal Script

If “external interference” is one pressure, the internal ideological pressure is even more revealing. In “Counterattack,” the progressive bloc openly frames its goal as ensuring “no turning back” from Francis’ “reformist path,” demanding a “prophetic profile.”

A cardinal shames Italian as the Vatican’s functional language, and pivots immediately into the absence of women in the College of Cardinals, calling it a “club of men.”

Even if you ignore the melodrama, the theology is bleak. The argument is not “what has Christ instituted.” It’s “what looks equitable in a global NGO.” The book presents this as a mic-drop, as if the Church’s governance and sacramental theology are merely lagging indicators of modern social expectations.

If you want one takeaway that captures the whole trajectory, it’s this: the conclave is narrated as a struggle over whether the next regime will complete the synodal rebranding or allow a “restoration” to slow it down. That is the revolution admitting that it knows it is a revolution.

The Balcony Moment: “We’ll Make Him One of Us”

Here the book accidentally turns dark.

At the announcement of Leo XIV, the crowd chants. Up in the Curia, officials who expected Parolin are described as “stunned, frozen, defeated.” And then a monsignor says the quiet part out loud: “Lo faremo uno di noi” (“we’ll turn him into one of us”).

This single line is worth the price of admission, because it depicts the papacy not as an office that rules the Curia, but as an office the Curia expects to absorb. It’s institutional capture stated as confidence, not fear.

And it neatly reframes the authors’ own thesis about “style” versus “substance.” If the substance is fixed, then of course style is negotiable. That’s what “we’ll make him one of us” means in practice.

Mozzetta Politics: The Conservatives Get Thrown a Costume

The authors linger on vesture and lifestyle choices because, in their world, optics are theology. We get a detailed explanation of the “Sala of Tears,” the three sizes of papal garments, and even the fact that only one set was newly made while others were “recycled” to save money.

Leo XIV chooses the mozzetta, unlike Francis, and the book underlines that this pleased conservative sectors. Later, the same logic returns: moving back to the Apostolic Palace, wearing the red mozzetta and a gold pectoral cross, swapping the Fiat for a black SUV, giving a Latin blessing to journalists, all of it registers as “enormous satisfaction” for conservatives.

It was all a management technique. Aesthetic concessions are cheap. They cost nothing doctrinally. They buy time. They quiet resistance. They create the illusion of restoration while the “substance” remains intact.

“Under the Radar”: How You Manufacture an “Unexpected” Pope

One of the more candid passages explains why Prevost was viable: unlike Parolin and Tagle, he wasn’t a media obsession; his relative invisibility protected him from scrutiny. The authors even explicitly liken this to 2013.

The postconciliar system does not need a universally loved candidate. It needs a candidate who can be sold quickly and who does not arrive pre-damaged by constant headlines. “Under the radar” becomes a sacrament of the modern era, a prerequisite for the white smoke.

Macron, Sant’Egidio, and the Normalization of “Maybe”

The book also normalizes the swirl of worldly influence with a shrug. It cites reporting about rumors of a Macron “plot” alongside Sant’Egidio to push a preferred candidate. It walks through dinners and guest lists, then lands on the telling line: “Coincidence? Maybe.”

That “maybe” is the modern Catholic condition in a sentence. Maybe there’s influence. Maybe there’s manipulation. Maybe the sacred is also just politics. The reader is trained to live with the ambiguity because the institution cannot afford clarity.

The Peru Subplot: Abuse, Smears, and “Private Help”

The “Unknown Past” material is some of the most combustible because it drags the reader into Peru’s abuse and power struggles, especially around Sodalicio and its fallout. The book presents a source describing how allegations against Prevost were “fabricated” and “totally false,” framed as retaliation by Sodalicio as the Vatican’s intervention intensified.

It also includes vivid claims about Prevost acting “in private” to help victims and to mediate in desperate situations involving people described as “slaves of Figari,” including references to suicidality and immediate needs.

The book handles accusations and counter-accusations, by relying on sympathetic voices, and converts a structural crisis into a character narrative: “he’s calm,” “he’s pragmatic,” “he helped privately.” Even if true, “privately” is not automatically virtuous. In the modern crisis, “privately” is often how rot survives.

“Open to All,” in Spanish, Not English

When Leo XIV appears, the book emphasizes that he thanks Francis, signals continuity, and speaks of an “open to all” Church, missionary and peace-focused, even choosing Spanish at the end rather than English. The authors treat this as meaningful symbolism: “two worlds,” “missionary,” “Peruvian by adoption.”

The revolution has learned to wrap itself in “mission” language while hollowing out what mission historically meant. A Church can be “open to all” and still refuse to preach repentance, dogma, judgment, and conversion with clarity. In fact, that’s the point of the slogan.

Conclusion: The Book’s Most Damning Line Is Its Own Thesis

The authors want to reassure the reader that Leo XIV represents a continuity that will soothe factions: different style, same substance. But that is precisely the nightmare stated plainly.

If the substance is unchanged, then none of the contradictions get resolved. The liturgical destruction remains “a discipline question.” The doctrinal ambiguities remain “a pastoral approach.” The governance model remains “synodality.” The scandals remain “processes.” The aesthetic gestures become pacifiers for the right while the left presses its “prophetic” agenda with NGO talking points and demands for structural feminization.

“El último cónclave” is valuable precisely because it documents how normal this has become to insiders. The Curia expects to “make him one of us.” The progressive bloc expects “no turning back.” The conservative bloc is thrilled by a mozzetta and a Latin blessing. And the reader is invited to experience the entire succession of Peter as one more high-stakes media cycle.

That’s not just a book about a conclave. It’s a nauseating x-ray of what the postconciliar apparatus thinks the papacy has become.

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