“Are we a dysfunctional family?” asked Mike.
“All religions are dysfunctional families,” said Jack. “The problem with us Catholics is that we are a close-knit dysfunctional family. We hug our neurosis tight, like a security blanket.”
They both laughed.
“Is there a way out for me?” said O’Toole.
“Yes,” answered Jack, “more of a way out for you than for me. My day is over, but you are still on the field. In many ways, I lost my chance. Don’t lose your chance now.
“You can’t undo the past, but from now on, the unvarnished truth will be your best friend. Speak the truth in love, but resolve to speak the truth, even when it embarrasses us.”
“You were never afraid to speak the truth,” said O’Toole, looking at Jack with admiration. “I remember when you went down to Selma to march on that bridge, even though all the racists in Southie wanted the cardinal to excommunicate you. You even confronted the racists in Boston in the school desegregation riots. You could have been killed. You marched with Martin Luther King, and you demonstrated against the Vietnam War. You made us look at poverty. I never thought that you were afraid of anything, Jack.”
“That stuff was easy,” answered Jack. “It’s easy to reform other people’s houses. I never did much within the Church, though.”
“You spoke out about celibacy and birth control,” offered Mike.
“Weakly,” said Jack, “and not often enough. And not at any expense to myself.”
The intensity of the confession had exhausted them both. They leaned back in their chairs.
“I’m not sure if I should give you absolution or whether you should give it to me,” said Jack. “Maybe we should absolve each other.”
“Let me kneel down for an act of contrition,” said Cardinal O’Toole. “I wish I’d been half the priest that you have been over the years.”
The cardinal-prince of the Church knelt down in front of his old pastor and said a child’s act of contrition. “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.” Tears streamed down the faces of both confessor and penitent.
When O’Toole finished his prayer, Jack spoke the words of absolution over his kneeling friend.
“Through the ministry of the Church, may God grant you pardon and peace. I absolve you of all of your sins, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
The two old friends struggled to their feet and embraced.
“There won’t be many more times together,” said Jack. “As soon as this conclave is over, I’m back to Gloucester.”
“I know,” said O’Toole. “That’s why I wanted you here now.”
After O’Toole went downstairs to his room, Jack got ready for bed. Just before he turned out the light, he went to the window and looked out on the Roman night sky. Up on the Gianicolo Hill, in the big city park, lovers were making out in cars parked along the road that overlooked the city. A mile away in the late-night cafes near Piazza Navonna, people were drinking coffee and liquor and arguing politics. Families were going for late-night strolls to get gelato. There was ordinary life.
Somewhere in the distance Jack could hear a dog barking.
31
THE ELECTION
THE NEXT DAY, MIKE O’TOOLE WAS UP EARLY, BUT JACK, enervated by a terrible fatigue, slept in.
When the buses arrived to take the cardinals to the Sistine Chapel for the next session of the conclave, the mood among the electors was tense. Mercifully, Amiot and Mendoza rode on separate buses.
The day’s session began with midday prayer. Friday, the day Christ died, is the penitential day, a time to recall our sinfulness. O’Toole recalled the argument the night before between Amiot and Mendoza as they listened to the day’s reading from Philippians:
“Maintain your unanimity, possessing the one love, united in spirit and ideals. Never act out of rivalry or conceit: rather let all parties think humbly of others as superior to themselves, each of you looking to other’s interest rather than his own.”
As he looked around at the splendidly arrayed “princes of the Church,” he thought that perhaps they should have started the session with the words of Psalm 146:
Put not your trust in princes,
in mortal men in whom there is no help.
Take their breath and they return to clay,
and their plans that day come to nothing.
The specter of Crepi lying dead in the Vatican gardens and Salazar languishing in an Italian jail hovered over the chapel. So did the memory of the fury of the argument the night before at dinner.
The balloting continued just as the day before, with the scrutineers calling out the names. They had two ballots in the morning. Then, just before lunch, they burned the ballots in the potbellied stove with some coal tar to make black smoke. The people waiting in the square were again disappointed.
Nobody talked much on the buses back to the casa. It was clear to everyone that the field was narrowing and that Cardinal O’Toole was a contender. His name had received more than forty votes in the morning session, clearly more than a “courtesy vote” from mission countries.
Perhaps the cardinals identified Mike as a safe choice. As a curial cardinal he was seen as an insider, not a threat to the established order. But as an American, he was seen as something new. Perhaps he would be a better manager than Pope Thomas had been. Maybe he could douse the flames of scandal swirling around the Church.
O’Toole noticed that Jack was not in the dining room for pranzo, but there was no time to check on him.
After lunch, the cardinals took a brief nap. Italians call it a pisolino. Americans might call it a power nap.
O’Toole went by Jack’s room after his pisolino and tapped on the door. Hearing no response, he pushed the door open a bit. Jack was asleep in the easy chair. Good, he thought, the old man is resting.
At 3:00 p.m., the cardinals were once more on buses, headed for the Sistine Chapel. By 4:00 p.m., they were casting the first ballot of the afternoon. It was clear that coalitions were forming.
Three cardinals received a substantial number of votes. The Archbishop of Nairobi received thirty votes. The Archbishop of Sao Paulo received thirty-six votes. And Michael O’Toole garnered forty-two votes. Perhaps the taboo against electing an American was weakening.
The atmosphere was tense as they prepared for the second ballot of the afternoon. If there were to be a decision that day, it would come now. They repeated the ritual of the previous ballots.
After everyone had voted, the three cardinal scrutineers came forward and took their seats at the table near the altar. They collected the ballots and began to count them.
The calling of names fell into the rhythm of a litany.
Sitting at his place, Cardinal O’Toole kept his own tally. Two-thirds were needed for election. Since there were one hundred twenty voting cardinals, eighty was the magic number.
O’Toole was gaining votes, probably because the African and Asian votes were moving his way. All those years of distributing mission money and visiting their dioceses had made O’Toole a familiar and friendly face.
The litany continued. O’Toole, O’Toole, O’Toole. The revisers examined each ballot. Michael O’Toole began to sweat. Sixty-five, sixty-six, sixty-seven.
He thought of his father, who’d left the Church in anger. He thought of his mother, who died at the age of ninety-three, a daily communicant until just before she died.
Memories overwhelmed him. He thought of the times he rode his bicycle up Commonwealth Avenue to serve early morning Mass, moved by the mystery of it all. He thought of the Dominican sisters from his parish school, filing into a darkened church for the 6:30 a.m. Mass in their white habits and black veils. They had seemed stern and tender at the very same time.
In his distraction O’Toole lost count. Was it seventy-five or seventy-six? He didn’t know. Eighty-one, eighty-two. The singsong continued.
Suddenly, he was aware that the other cardi
nals were on their feet applauding. They were looking at him. The revisers confirmed the vote: eighty-three for O’Toole.
Michael O’Toole realized he had been elected the Bishop of Rome, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Metropolitan of the Roman Provinces, Sovereign of Vatican City, and Servant of the Servants of God.
In short, he was the pope.
He sat frozen at his place. “Oh, God, be my help,” he prayed under his breath.
The Dean of the College of Cardinals came to him and asked, “Accepi electio Pontifex Maximus? Do you accept your election as Supreme Pontiff?”
O’Toole stood, dry mouthed. He stared at Cardinal Amiot, with his mouth open. Finally, he said quietly, “Accipio.”
The Dean then asked, “What name do you wish to be called?”
Michael O’Toole had not thought about what name he wanted to be called if elected pope, at least not seriously. He looked down at the table. Then he looked around the room. His eyes were drawn to the fresco over the altar of the Last Judgment. He saw the Archangel Michael with sword drawn.
“Michael,” he said weakly. “My father’s name was Michael. It is the name my parents gave me at my baptism. I started my journey with that name, and I will end my journey with that name. I will be Michael.”
Already he was breaking with tradition. No pope in a thousand years had chosen to keep his baptismal name, but so be it. Michael it was.
Pope Michael was led out of the chapel and into the so-called “room of tears,” where new popes are vested. There, on hangers, were three white cassocks: large, medium, and small. He put on the large one and looked in the mirror, shocked to see himself dressed as the pope.
He was immediately led back into the chapel so the cardinals could line up to make their obeisance.
It was an awkward moment. They had entered the Sistine Chapel as equals, but now he was their superior. Mike O’Toole did not like the feel of it. Instead of sitting in the chair that had been positioned for him on a raised dais, he merely stood in front of the altar and embraced each cardinal as he came forward, both men standing, so they could look each other in the eye.
The ballots were burned in the stove, this time with chemicals to make white smoke. In the piazza, people saw white smoke billow from the little chimney, and a huge cheer went up from the crowd.
It’s a long walk from the Sistine Chapel to the balcony on the façade of St. Peter’s that overlooks the piazza. All the cardinals were fairly old men, so it took a good half hour to reach the balcony.
The cardinal deacon came to the microphone on the balcony. The sound system squealed as the microphone was turned on. He was not a very good public speaker, and he did not project his words well. He also did not speak directly into the microphone, so his words were garbled. His hand shook as he read the prescribed Latin announcement from a card:
Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum, Habemus Papam, Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Michael, Sanctae Romae Ecclesiae Cardinalem, O’Toole qui sibi nomen impsuit Michael.
It was hard to hear over all the background noise. Besides, hardly anyone in the square really knew Latin. The people in the crowd looked at one another for a few seconds, confused.
“Who?” they asked.
* * *
Sitting in his room at the Casa Santa Marta, Jack McClendon was saying his evening prayers when he heard the roar of the crowd in St. Peter’s Square. He got up and went to the window. It could be the election, thought Jack. At the very least, the crowd is reacting to the smoke.
Jack’s window at the casa looked out on the rear of the great basilica. It was hard to tell what was happening on the other side of the huge church. There were no televisions or radios in the guesthouse, so Jack was at a loss. Perhaps it is the new pope, he thought.
Searching for confirmation, he went out into the hallway to find someone who might know what was going on. There was nobody on his floor, so he took the elevator down to the lobby. A man dressed in a white coat, probably the porter or a waiter, came running through the front door of the casa.
“What’s going on?” asked Jack. “I heard noise in the square.”
“We have a pope!” said the porter excitedly.
“Who?” asked Jack.
“O’Toole,” answered the porter, struggling with the name, which sounded strange to Italian ears. “Un americano,” he added.
Jack steadied himself on the counter of the registration desk in the lobby.
Poor Mike, thought Jack, he’s never coming home again.
Jack went back up to his room, suddenly overcome with fatigue. He sat down in the easy chair and reopened his breviary to finish evening prayer, but he was too distracted to concentrate.
His old prayer book was stuffed with prayer cards, articles, and quotes that he had come to treasure over the years. Really, he no longer needed to read the words of most of the psalms. He knew them by heart.
Jack took out a card with the words of Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat. He held it loosely between his thumb and forefinger, not really looking at it. He recited the words from memory.
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
My spirit rejoices in God my savior
For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
As a young priest, he had thought of the Virgin’s prayer as just a poem of simple praise. But as he got older, he understood it as a very revolutionary poem, about upsetting the powerful and raising up the powerless. He heard the words with new ears:
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
And the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel,
For he has remembered his promise of mercy,
To Abraham and his children forever.
As he finished the Magnificat, the card slipped from Jack’s fingers and fell to the floor.
* * *
In their suite at the Hotel Danieli in Venice, Nate and Brigid watched in stunned surprise as Cardinal O’Toole stepped out onto the balcony of St. Peter’s in a white papal cassock. Neither knew what to say. Brigid broke the silence first.
“My God,” she said, giddy with excitement, “we actually know the new pope!”
Nate gestured for her to be quiet while O’Toole was preparing to address the crowd in the square. The immense crowd in front of the new pope was both jubilant and curious. Nate wondered if O’Toole would be speaking in English, but he spoke only in Italian, a Boston-accented Italian.
“I’m afraid for him,” said Nate, “after everything I’ve learned about the Church.”
“He’s nobody’s fool,” said Brigid.
“Nobody’s fool,” said Nate with a shrug, “but maybe somebody’s target. After all, someone tried to run us off the road just because I was investigating. What do you think they will do to him, now that he has the power to actually threaten them?”
Brigid and Nate watched the television as the new pope turned and walked back behind the red velvet curtain of the balcony.
The reporters from Rai 1 appeared on the screen to give their spin on the papal election. Not understanding what they were saying, Brigid stood up and walked out onto the balcony overlooking the Grand Canal. It was a beautiful Venetian evening.
Nate switched off the TV and fixed them both a drink from the mini-bar. Then he joined her on the balcony. The late summer evening, the lights reflecting on the water of the canal, and the gondolas gliding by silently made them forget about the election.
After a sip of his Campari and soda, he set the drink down on the railing and pulled Brigid toward him. He wrapped her in his arms for a while, stroking her back and hair. Just as he bent down to kiss her, he heard a “pop,” like the sound of a rifle. A glass pane in the French doors behind them shattered, and a bullet buried itself into the wall of their hotel room.
Nate pushed Brigid down behind the balcony railing, and a second bullet whizzed overhead and shattered another pane in the door. They lay there safe for a moment behind the brick wall of the balcony rail, terrified. Brigid started screaming. Then she started cursing. “This goddamn Church is going to get us all killed,” she yelled.
Nate covered her mouth. “Be quiet. We need to figure out where it is coming from.” From the delayed sound of the gunfire, the shooter was some distance away.
They lay there for a minute or two. No more bullets came. Nate whispered to Brigid, “Let’s crawl into the room and get to the bathroom. There is a phone in there.”
Once in the bathroom, they called the desk. “Call the police,” Nate told the desk. “Someone is shooting at us.”
“Subito,” said the man at the desk.
32
ORPHANED
TO EVERYONE’S SURPRISE, O’TOOLE BOARDED THE BUS back to the casa along with the other cardinals, foregoing the customary limo. The papal apartments, sealed up after Pope Thomas died, remained sealed. The new pope’s toothbrush, medicines, and clothes were all back at the casa, so he returned with the boys on the bus.
In the dining room, all the cardinals were in high spirits. Cardinal Amiot was positively giddy. A few cardinals, notably Mendoza, were absent from dinner.
O’Toole found himself embarrassed as cardinal after cardinal rose to propose a toast to him during dinner. Pope Michael did not get back to his room until well past 11:00 p.m. He was emotionally and physically exhausted. He hooked up his CPAP machine and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning was a Saturday. The phone in Pope Michael’s room rang while he was shaving. It was Jim Kelleher.
“Good morning, Your Holiness,” he said.
O’Toole was taken aback for a second by the title of address. “I’m still Mike to you, Jim.”
Strange Gods Page 34