And he prayed the very reverend cardinals to use their good offices on his behalf, adding to his own their intercessions to the Pope's Holiness to accord him the grace he sought.
The cardinals relegated the decision of the matter to the Pope.

Cardinal Ximenes alone--as the representative of Spain--stood out against the granting of the solicited dispensation, and threw obstacles in the way of it.

In this, no doubt, he obeyed his instructions from Ferdinand and Isabella, who saw to the bottom of the intrigue with France that was toward, and of the alliance that impended between Louis XII and the Holy See--an alliance not at all to the interests of Spain.
The Pope made a speedy rout of the cardinal's objections with the most apostolic and irresistible of all weapons.

He pointed out that it was not for him to hinder the Cardinal of Valencia's renunciation of the purple, since that renunciation was clearly become necessary for the salvation of his soul--"Pro salutae animae suae"-- to which, of course, Ximenes had no answer.
But, with the object of conciliating Spain, this ever-politic Pope indicated that, if Cesare was about to become a prince of France, his many ecclesiastical benefices, yielding some 35,000 gold florins yearly, being mostly in Spain, would be bestowed upon Spanish churchmen, and he further begged Ximenes to remember that he already had a "nephew" at the Court of Spain in the person of the heir of Gandia, whom he particularly commended to the favour of Ferdinand and Isabella.
Thus was Cesare Borgia's petition granted, and his return to the world accomplished.

And, by a strange chance of homonymy, his title remained unchanged despite his change of estate.