The sphere of the Fixed Stars is the sphere of the church triumphant. From here (in fact, from the constellation Gemini, under which he was born), Dante looks back on the seven spheres he has visited, and on the Earth (Canto XXII):
My eyes returned through all the seven spheres and saw this globe in such a way that I smiled at its scrawny image: I approve
that judgment as the best, which holds this earth to be the least; and he whose thoughts are set elsewhere, can truly be called virtuous.
Here, Dante sees the Virgin Mary and other saints (Canto XXIII). St. Peter tests Dante on faith, asking what it is, and whether Dante has it. In response to Dante's reply, St. Peter asks Dante how he knows that the Bible is true, and (in an argument attributed to Augustine[36]) Dante cites the miracle of the Church's growth from such humble beginnings (Canto XXIV):
Say, who assures you that those works were real? came the reply. The very thing that needs roof no thing else attests these works to you.
I said: If without miracles the world was turned to Christianity, that is so great a miracle that, all the rest
are not its hundredth part: for you were poor and hungry when you found the field and sowed the good plant once a vine and now a thorn.
St. James questions Dante on hope, and Beatrice vouches for his possession of it (Canto XXV):
There is no child of the Church Militant who has more hope than he has, as is written within the Sun whose rays reach all our ranks:
thus it is granted him to come from Egypt into Jerusalem that he have vision of it, before his term of warring ends.
Finally, St. John questions Dante on love. In his reply, Dante refers back to the concept of "twisted love" discussed in the Purgatorio[40] (Canto XXVI):
Thus I began again: My charity results from all those things whose bite can bring the heart to turn to God; the world's existence
and mine, the death that He sustained that Imight live, and that which is the hope of all believers, as it is my hope, together
with living knowledge I have spoken of these drew me from the sea of twisted love and set me on the shore of the right love.
The leaves enleaving all the garden of the Everlasting Gardener, I love according to the good He gave to them.
St. Peter then denounces Pope Boniface VIII in very strong terms, and says that, in his eyes, the Papal See stands empty (Canto XXVII).