by Morris West
‘Salviati is emphatic that the Pontiff can do nothing unless we help him. I agree. I know his family history. Subsistence farming. A father dead too early. A mother determined to lift her son and herself off the dung heap. The best, if not the only, solution was the Church. It’s a sad, sterile story. The one thing he has never experienced is the human family, the quarrels, the kisses, the fairytales around the fire.’
‘You and I, my dear Anton, are hardly experts in that area.’
‘You underrate me, my friend,’ Anton Drexel laughed. ‘I have a very large adoptive progeny, sixteen boys and girls. And they all live under my roof.’
‘Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Anton! I’ve got a million homeless kids in the favelas here! If you’re ever short, I can always send you some replacements.’
‘Send me your prayers instead. I’m not half as confident as I sound in this affair.’
‘It seems to me you’re juggling with a man’s soul – and quite possibly with his sanity. You’re also playing very dangerous politics. You could be accused of making a puppet out of a sick man. Why are you doing it, old friend?’
It was the question Drexel had dreaded, but he had to answer it.
‘You know I correspond with Jean Marie Barette?’ ‘I do. Where is he now?’
‘Still in Germany, in that little mountain commune I told you about; but he manages to be very well informed about what’s going on in the big world. It was he who encouraged me in this work with the children … You know Jean Marie; he can make jokes like a Parisian music-hall comedian and the next moment he is discoursing deep mysteries. About a month ago he wrote me a very strange letter. Part of it was pure prophecy. He told me that the Holy Father would soon be forced to make a dangerous voyage and that I was the one marked to support him on the journey. Soon afterwards the Pontiff’s disease was diagnosed; the papal physician named Salviati as the best heart surgeon in Italy – and the mother of my favourite Enkelin is a counsellor at his clinic. So a whole pattern of related events began to form itself around me. Does that answer your question?’
‘You’ve left out something, Anton.’
‘What?’
‘Why do you care so much about a man you’ve disliked for so long?’
‘You’re being rough with me, Manfred.’
‘Answer my question. Why do you care so much?’
‘Because I’m past eighty. I am perhaps closer to judgement even than our Pontiff. I have been given many of the sweets of life. If I don’t share them now, they will be like Dead Sea fruit – dust and ashes in my mouth!’
Nicol Peters sat under a pergola of vines on his terrace, sipped coffee, ate fresh pastry and watched the roof-dwellers of old Rome wake to the warm spring morning.
There was the fat fellow with striped pyjamas gaping open at the crotch, whose first care was to take the cover off his canary cage and coax the birds into a morning chorus, with trills and cadenzas of his own. There was the housewife in curlers and carpet slippers, watering her azaleas. On the next terrace, a heavy-hipped girl in a black leotard laboured through fifteen minutes of aerobic exercises to the tinny tunes of a tape machine. Over by the Torre Argentina a pair of lovers thrust open their shutters and then, as if seeing each other for the first time, embraced passionately and tumbled back into bed for a public mating.
Their nearest audience was a skinny bachelor with a towel for a loincloth, who did his own laundry and hung out every morning the shirt, the jockey shorts, the cotton vest and socks which he had just washed under the shower. This done, he lit a cigarette, watched the love-making of his neighbours and went inside to reappear a few minutes later with coffee and a morning paper … Above them, the first swifts dipped and wheeled around the campaniles and through the forest of antennae and satellite discs, while shadowy figures passed and repassed by open doors and casements to a growing cacophony of music, radio announcements and a rumour of traffic from the alleys below.
These folk were the theme upon which Nicol Peters was building the text for his weekly column, ‘A View From My Terrace’. He stacked the scattered pages, picked up a pencil and began his editing.
‘ … The Romans have a proprietary interest in the Pope. They own him. He is their elected Bishop. His domains are all on Roman soil. They cannot be exported, but they may in some future crisis be expropriated. There is not a single Roman citizen who will not freely admit that most of his personal income depends directly or indirectly upon the Pontiff. Who else brings the tourists and the pilgrims and the art lovers and the romantics, young and old, to clog the airport and pack the hotels and pump tourist and export currency into the city?
‘The fact that they need him, however, does not compel the Romans to love him. Some do. Some don’t. Most accept him with a shrug and an expressive “Boh!”, a monosyllable which defies translation but conveys a wholly Roman sentiment: “Popes come, Popes go. We acclaim them. We bury them. You must not expect us to tremble at every proclamation and every anathema they utter.
“‘That’s our way, you see. Foreigners never understand it. We make horrendous laws, load them with terrible penalties – and then water them all down with tolleranza and casuistry! …
“‘It has nothing to do with faith and only a little to do with morals. It has to do with arrangiarsi, the art of getting along, of managing oneself in a contradictory world. If the cogs of creation slip, that has to be due to defects in the original workmanship. So, God can’t be too hard on his creatures who live on a defective planet.
“‘The Pope will tell you Christian marriages are made in heaven. They are made to last a lifetime. We’re good Catholics, we have no quarrel with that. But Beppi and Lucia next door come close to murder every night, and keep us all awake. Is that Christian? Is that a marriage? Does it have the seal of heaven stamped on it? We beg leave to doubt the proposition. The sooner they break up, the sooner we’ll all get some sleep; but, for pity’s sake, don’t stop ’em finding new mates; otherwise our lives will be disrupted again by a randy bull and a heifer in heat …”
‘Clearly, there is no way your average Roman wants to argue this with the Pope. After all, a Pope sleeps alone and loves everybody in the Lord, so he is ill-equipped to deal with such matters. So your Roman listens politely to what he has to say, makes his own arrangements and turns up faithfully in church for marriages, christenings, funerals and first communions.
‘So far, so good – for the Romans! They have no need or desire to change their capital interest in the Pope. But what about the rest of Christendom – not to mention the millions outside the pale? Their attitude is exactly the reverse. They are happy to accept the Pope – or anyone else for that matter – as a champion of good conduct, just dealing, stable family relationships, social responsibility. It’s his theology which now becomes the root problem. Who, they ask, determines that the Pope sees all creation plain as day, the moment after he is elected? Who gives him the prescriptive right to create, by simple proclamation, a doctrine like the Assumption of the Virgin or to declare that it is a crime most damnable for a husband and wife to control their own breeding cycle with a pill or a condom?
‘The questions, it seems to this writer, are legitimate and they deserve open discussion and answers more frank than those which have yet been given. They need something else, too – a compassion in the respondent, an openness to history and to argument, a respect for the honest doubts and reservations of his questioners. I have been unable to find the source of the following quotation, but I have no hesitation in adopting it as my own sentiment: “There will be no hope of reform in the Roman Catholic Church, there will be no restoration of confidence between the faithful and the hierarchy, unless and until a reigning pontiff is prepared to admit and abjure the errors of his predecessors …
They were strong words, the strongest Nicol Peters had written in a long time. Given the subject and the circumstances, an ailing pontiff under threat of death, they might even be considered a gross breach of eti
quette. The longer he practised his craft, the more conscious he became of the dynamic of language, of speech and writing as events in themselves. The simplest and most obvious proposition, stated in the most elementary language, could so mutate itself in the mind of the reader that it could express the opposite of what the writer had intended. What he wrote as evidence for the defence could hang the man he was defending.
Nicol Peters’s credit and credibility as a commentator on the Vatican depended upon his ability to render the most complex argument into clear prose for the hurried reader. The clarity of the prose depended upon a precise understanding of the matter at issue. In this case, it was a highly delicate one. It had to do with the Roman view of orthodoxy (right doctrine) and orthopraxis (right practice), the nature of the pontiff’s right to prescribe either – and his duty to recant any error that might creep into the prescription.
This was the problem which still split Christendom like an apple, and which the old-fashioned absolutism of Leo XIV had only exacerbated. It would not be solved as the Romans solved it, by cynical indifference. It would not go away like a wart or heal itself like a razor nick. It would grow and fester like a cancer, sapping the inner life of the Church, reducing it to invalidism and indifference.
Which raised quite other questions for Nicol Peters, doyen of the press corps, confidant of cardinals, comfortable in his elegant Roman domain: ‘Why should I care so much? I’m not even a Catholic, for God’s sake! Why should I sweat blood over every shade of clerical opinion, while the hierarchs themselves sit content inside the ramparts of Vatican City and watch the decline and fall of the Roman Church?’
To which his wife Katrina, arrived with fresh coffee and her good morning smile, delivered the perfect answer: ‘Glum today, are we? Morning sex doesn’t agree with you? Brighten up, lover boy. Spring is here. The shop’s making money. And I’ve just had a fascinating phone call about Salviati and his girlfriend and, of all people, your friend Drexel.’
Four
Precisely at ten that same morning, Monsignor Malachy O’Rahilly, senior private secretary to the Pontiff, waited on his master at the clinic.
His presence was a radiant one: round, glowing face, blue eyes of limpid innocence, a joyful smile, six languages tripping off his tongue with a beautiful blarneying brogue to sweeten them all. His Holiness, a cross-tempered man, depended upon his good humour and even more on his Celtic talent for smelling the winds of intrigue, which in the Curial enclaves blew hot and cold and every which way in the same moment.
Monsignor O’Rahilly’s loyalties were absolute. They pointed always to magnetic north, the dwelling-place of power. Statistically, papal secretaries outlived their masters; the wise ones made sure that they had post-mortem insurance always in place. Of course, all insurance required the payment of premiums: a discreet recommendation, a file brought to the Pontiff’s attention, a name dropped at the right moment. The currency might vary; but the principle was ironclad and backed by biblical mandate: make friends of the mammon of iniquity, so that when you fail (or when your patron dies, which is the same thing) they may receive you into their houses!
This morning the Monsignor was serving his alternate master, the Cardinal Secretary of State, who had admonished him firmly: ‘No business, Monsignore, absolutely none! Tomorrow he goes under the knife and there’ll be nothing, absolutely nothing, he can do about anything!’
To the Pontiff, Malachy explained with voluble good humour: ‘I’m under pain of instant exile if I raise your blood pressure by a single point. I’m to tell you from Their Eminences of the Curia that everything’s being handled according to your instructions and that prayers and good wishes are pouring in like water from the Fons Bandusiae … There’s even a love note from the Kremlin and one from the Patriarch Dimitri in Moscow. Chairman Tang has sent a polite note from Beijing and the Secretariat is making a full list of all the other communications … Cardinal Agostini said he’ll be in to see you just before lunch. Once again, it’s strictly no business, as the doctor has most firmly ordered. But if there are any personal things you’d like me to take care of …’
‘There’s only one.’ Monsignor Malachy O’Rahilly was instantly at the ready – notebook open, pen poised in his chubby fist. ‘A young woman died here last night. She leaves a husband and two young children. Her husband is a priest of the Roman diocese who broke his vows and contracted a civil marriage. I am told he made a number of applications to us to laicise him and to regularise the union. The applications were all refused. I want you to get me full details of the case and copies of all the documents on the file …’
‘Be sure, I’ll get on to it right away. Does Your Holiness have a name to give me?’
‘Not yet. I’m waiting to speak to the counsellor here.’
‘No matter. I’ll dig it out somehow … Not that you’ll be able to give it much attention for a week or two …’
‘Nevertheless, you will treat the matter as most urgent.’
‘May one ask the reason for your interest in this case, Holiness?’
‘Two children and a grieving husband, my dear Malachy … and a text that keeps running through my head: “The bruised reed he will not break, the smoking flax he will not extinguish.”’
‘First, in a messy affair like this, I’ll have to find out who’s got the papers – Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Clerics, the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Rota. None of them will be happy about an intervention by Your Holiness.’
‘They’re not asked to be happy. Tell them this is a matter of personal concern to me. I want the documents in my hands as soon as I’m fit to read them.’
‘Now that,’ Monsignor O’Rahilly looked very dubious, ‘that’s going to be the nub of a lot of arguments. Who will say when Your Holiness is ready – and for what? This is a big operation for a man past middle age and it needs a longish convalescence … You’ve done a pretty effective job of concentrating power in your own hands. Now the grossi pezzi in the Curia will be working to claw it back. I can keep you informed, but I can’t stage a pitched battle with the Prefect of a Roman Congregation.’
‘Are you saying you have trouble already?’
‘Trouble? That’s not a word I’d dare breathe to Your Holiness, especially at a time like this. I’m simply pointing out that the members of your household will be rather isolated during your absence. Authorities greater than ours will be brought into play. So we need a clear direction from the Chair of Peter.’
‘You already have it!’ The Pontiff was suddenly his old self again, frowning and emphatic. ‘My reserved business and my private documents remain private. In other matters, you will represent what you know to be my views. If contrary orders are given by any member of the Curia, you will request a direction in writing before you comply. If you have a big problem, go to Cardinal Drexel and put the matter to him. Is that clear?’
‘It’s clear,’ said Monsignor O’Rahilly, ‘but a little surprising. I’d always felt there was a certain tension between Drexel and Your Holiness.’
‘There was. There is. We are very different beings. But Drexel has two great virtues: he has overpassed ambition and he has a sense of humour rare in the Germans. I disagree with him often; but I trust him, always. You can, too.’
‘That’s good to know.’
‘But there’s also a warning, Malachy. Don’t try any of your Irish tricks on him. I’m Italian, I understand – most of the time – how your mind works. Drexel’s very direct: one-two-three. Work that way with him.’
Monsignor O’Rahilly smiled and bowed his head under the admonition. The Pontiff was right. The Irish and the Italians understood each other very well. After all, the great St Patrick himself was a Roman born; but once the Celts were converted it was they who exported learning and civility to Europe while the Empire was tumbling into ruins. Besides, there was much shared experience between the son of a peat-digger from Connemara and a man who had shovelled dung on a share-farm in Mirandola. All of whic
h gave Malachy O’Rahilly a certain freedom to advise his high master.
‘With the greatest respect, Holiness …’ He made a careful actor’s pause.
‘Say it, Malachy! Say it plain, without the compliments! What’s on your mind?’
‘The report on the finances of the Church. It will land on your desk at the end of this month. That’s definitely not a matter I can refer to Cardinal Drexel.’
‘There’s no reason why you should. I can study the document while I’m convalescing.’
‘Four years’ work by fifteen prelates and laymen? With every bishop in the world looking over your shoulder? And all the faithful asking themselves whether they will or they won’t be donating to Peter’s Pence and Propaganda Fide next year? Don’t delude yourself, Holiness. Better you shouldn’t open the report than that you should botch the handling of it.’
‘I’m perfectly capable of –’
‘You’re not. You won’t be for some time. And I’d be a bad servant if I didn’t say so! Think of all the hard-nosed fellows who’ve been working four years on that document. Think of all the messes they’ve uncovered – and the ones they’ll have tried their damndest to bury … And you’ll be just recovering from a massive surgical invasion. No way you can do a proper job of study.’
‘And who else is going to do it for me, Malachy? You?’
‘Listen to me Holiness, please!’ He was pleading now, earnestly. ‘I remember the day, and the hour, when you swore by all the saints in the calendar that you’d clean up the covo di ladri who were running the Institute for Religious Works and all its banking agencies. You were so angry that I thought you’d swell up and burst. You said: “These bankers think they’re impressing me with their money jargon. Instead, they’re insulting me! They’re like fairground jugglers, pumping wine out of their elbows, picking coins out of children’s ears! I’m a farmer’s son. My mother kept all our spare cash in a jam-jar. She taught me that if you spend more than you earn, you’re bankrupt – and if you lie down in the pigpen you’ll get dirty. I’ll never be canonised, because I’m too bad-tempered and stiff-necked, but I promise you, Malachy, I’ll be one pope they never call a crook or a friend of crooks – and if I find another financial rogue wearing the purple I’ll have it off his back before he goes to bed!” Do you remember all that?’