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Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca enters the Sistine Chapel and sees the cardinals watching Kohler’s video on a loop beside Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra. Realizing everyone knows, Ventresca asks God for guidance but hears only silence. Instead of denying the evidence, Ventresca chooses to speak what he sees as truth, framing his crimes as sacrifices made to rescue a faithless world.

Ventresca argues that resurrecting fear of the Illuminati was necessary to unite people through horror and hope. In Ventresca’s mind, the staged threat, the antimatter crisis, and Ventresca’s apparent miracle have destroyed apathy and drawn crowds back to faith. Langdon turns off the television and leaves the altar with Vittoria, while Ventresca interprets Langdon’s survival as God’s will.

Vittoria confronts Ventresca about Leonardo Vetra’s death. Ventresca defends the killing by claiming Vetra’s antimatter research was spiritually dangerous because science advances faster than morality and threatens to replace faith. Vittoria counters that her father’s work was also a search for God and accuses Ventresca of fearing a world where people find God outside church control.

Mortati then forces Ventresca to address the murdered preferiti. Ventresca justifies their deaths as martyrdom, saying the four cardinals served the Church better in death by helping create a miracle that would save millions of souls. Ventresca also reveals that the Illuminati brands came from the Papal Vault, where the Vatican had secretly stored dangerous historical relics, including the Illuminati Collection.

When Vittoria says Ventresca risked destroying the Vatican with antimatter, Ventresca insists there was no risk because God supported his cause. Ventresca claims CERN’s arrogance had to be exposed and likens his own suffering to the sacrifices demanded by God in scripture. Mortati, horrified, finally asks about the Pope, and Ventresca calls the late pontiff a vile liar despite admitting Ventresca loved him.

Ventresca recalls returning from CERN and warning the Pope about Vetra’s work. The Pope instead saw hope in the discovery and even wanted the Vatican to fund Vetra’s research. When Ventresca protested, the Pope said he owed a debt to science and had hidden a truth from Ventresca all his life; the chapter ends as the Pope begins to reveal that astonishing truth.