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Last Sunday the Vatican released the first photograph of Pope Francis since his ordeal began. He was wearing a stole around his neck, indicating that he had concelebrated mass in the chapel of the Gemelli hospital. Admittedly, all he had to do was raise his hand and whisper a few words of consecration, but it would have been impossible to take such a photo a week earlier, when Vatican-watchers were checking their phones hourly to discover whether the See of Peter had become vacant.

Francis is still very ill, of course, and everyone noticed that the picture was taken from behind, perhaps to hide his oxygen tube. The image was touching but unintentionally symbolic. For the first time during this pontificate, power-hungry curial officials are flexing their muscles behind the back of a severely weakened pope.

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One cardinal in particular is pushing his luck: Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, who is both the Vatican’s prime minister and foreign minister. The 70-year-old Italian career diplomat, known for his silky charm, has spent years weaving alliances with rival factions in the Church. Given Francis’s habit of defenestrating top advisers without warning, it’s testimony to Parolin’s political skills that he has held on to his job for 12 years. But it is one thing to cultivate useful friends; it’s quite another to exploit the pontiff’s absence to behave like a deputy pope, which the Secretary of State emphatically is not. And it’s most dangerous of all to behave like a pope-in-waiting. Yet that is what Cardinal Parolin is doing.

On 24 February, when it looked as though Francis was close to death, he presided over the first prayer vigil in St Peter’s Square.