The whole assembly sings Gloria — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and the light and music fill the entire sphere. Then Peter blazes deep red — the color of blood — and the whole heaven takes on his color like a sunset. He speaks in rage and grief. The papacy has been turned into a sewer of blood and filth. Boniface VIII and Clement V use Peter's own tomb and his keys as instruments of faction and personal enrichment. Wolves in shepherds' clothing walk in Peter's pasture. Providence will come — but be patient. Then he and the blessed souls all rise, returning toward the Empyrean.
Beatrice tells Dante to look down before they ascend further. He sees the whole arc of the seven spheres below, the earth tiny, all of it familiar and small. She has him turn his eyes upward into the Primum Mobile — the ninth sphere, the outermost, the Crystal Sphere, the source of all motion in the universe below. It is pure light and motion with no surface, no stars, only the speed of love. They enter. Beatrice explains how this sphere contains all the others — not in space, since it has no spatial dimension, but in the love and knowledge that gives them being and motion. Everything begins here. Then she turns to the state of the world: humanity has strayed. Children grow up, only to be corrupted by adult institutions that themselves have forgotten their purpose. Rome and Florence, the two suns of the world, have set. But there is hope — Dante himself, and the poem he is writing, are instruments of that hope.