Having come from a devout Catholic family and schooled by the nuns at Our Lady of Mercy School in Rock Island, Quebec, and those at Sacred Heart High School in Newport, Vermont, Maria had taken a deep interest in religion after high school and ultimately graduated from university with a degree in theology. From there she attended teachers’ college. After graduation, she had become a lay teacher for the Sisters, content to be near them and their world which seemed so peaceful and serene.
As she taught her daily classes of Catechism and English, she felt less and less association with the secular world. It was as though she would find peace only through a closer relationship with God and His workers. She often lay awake at night feeling there was something she was destined to accomplish but not having the foggiest notion of what it was.
A year later, she had joined the order as a postulant at 26, spent one full year as a novice and then taken her temporary vows just short of her 29th birthday.
Indeed, she had just turned 29, and was attending a religious seminar at Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal, when something happened that created headlines in the Montreal newspapers and elsewhere.
Maria’s fellow sisters were taking her for a birthday lunch at Place Jacques-Cartier in Old Montreal. Suddenly she saw a car careening down the hill, swerving drunkenly from side-to-side on the cobblestones and heading for one of the open-air restaurant patios bordering the square. She had taken flight calling to the people to run and look out for the car that was going to hit them. They gaped blankly at her, forks and wine glasses half raised to their open mouths. Suddenly one of the other sisters pulled her back and asked what she was doing? Surprised, she stopped and looked about. There was no car swerving down the street towards the diners. Nothing was amiss except for the cessation of jovial conversation and the curious looks of the restaurant patrons. Then, content that things were as they should be, they shrugged and went back to their conversations and food. Maria’s companions quickly closed ranks and shielded her from some lingering stares as they tried to calm her.
They had barely turned away when it happened. The roar of the automobile, the squeal of tires and a Cadillac Seville, with the driver already dead of a heart attack at the wheel, smashed into the patio she’d just identified. Tables, chairs and people went flying.
All the sisters had immediately waded into the melee of broken bodies and smashed furniture to help. Fire trucks, police and ambulances arrived in minutes and the Urgences Santé paramedics went to work. One of the unhurt patrons, however, said something to a stocky police officer questioning witnesses. He pointed out Maria. She was immediately taken aside and questioned as to how she had been able to forewarn the diners.
A young reporter had snapped a picture of the nun as the officer questioned her. Maria tried to pass it off as a vague premonition but was forced to give her full name, address, where she’d been born and other statistics to the police with the nearby reporter furiously scribbled notes. The man took more photos as she tried to hide her face.
The next morning she was on the front page of the Montreal Star under the headline: PSYCHIC NUN TRIES TO WARN OF DEATH CAR. And worse yet, the enterprising newsman had back-tracked her to her hometown of Beebe and dug up the story of her childhood friend and how Maria had foretold of her death as well.
The story brought unwelcome publicity to the convent and Maria was roundly censured. Sister Superior had angrily said that no person should know the future; it was a not a gift from God, but a curse from the devil. Maria was to spend the next week at her devotions praying that God would somehow spare her the onus of this curse. Interview requests were resolutely turned down by Sister Superior.
But the story was picked up by The Canadian Press, Reuters and The Associated Press, briefly reaching international mention. Apparently, it was also the reason she had been hastily summoned to her initial audience with the cardinal in Vatican City.
The first request for her presence had been both brief and cryptic; Sister Maria Lapierre was needed in Rome. No reason was given and Maria herself could shed no light on the strange request. Sister Superior was against letting her travel by herself since she believed that each member of the order needed constant companionship and support in their holy vows. Rome, however, insisted Maria come, sans escort and in civilian clothing. Her visit was to be a clandestine affair and under no circumstances were the press to be allowed to know. Sister Superior had finally agreed and Maria was off on her adventure. Surprisingly, both her first and second visits had turned out to be non-adventures with the cardinal seeming to just want to get to know her better.
But tonight, she had been promised, was to be different. When the Air Canada jet landed in Rome near midnight, a rather plump Brother Guy Fagan of the St. Francis of Assisi Order had informed her she was going directly to Vatican City. His companion, a tall, severe-looking Irishman who introduced himself as Father Dermottt Murphy, helped pack her bags away with a gruff welcome. They carefully sat in the front seat of a limousine, while she sat in the back as dictated by traditional church etiquette. As she was whisked through the relatively quiet streets of Rome to her appointment with Cardinal Malachi, her excitement grew. What would this visit bring?
Brother Fagan, the more talkative of the two and a Scot from his accent, seemed to feel it was his duty to keep up a running commentary during the journey, particularly when he found out she’d never visited the Holy City. Murphy, concentrating on driving, merely grunted periodically taking issue with Fagan’s diatribe but not taking his arguments any further than monosyllabic comments indicating doubt, disbelief and even disenchantment with both history and the brother’s observations. Obviously used to this, Fagan took no notice. Maria categorized Murphy as a contrarian.
Though she knew much of its history, she allowed Fagan to continue unabated as he told her that Il Strato della Città del Vaticano or, Vatican City, was all of 109 acres, built on the tomb of Saint Peter and was the world’s smallest independent state. In 1960, the United Nations had declared the Vatican city-state to be a “war-free zone” an enclave off limits to all military belligerents. It is a state, Brother Fagan said proudly, free of violent crime, welfare, decaying streets and graffiti. “The only thing it’s not free of is politics,” he added, with a smile.
He rattled on with facts and figures, the occasional one catching Maria’s attention as they swerved around corners and accelerated past other cars. What was the hurry, she wondered?
As they approached Vatican City, she gasped at the magnificence of the illuminated dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.
“I’ve always dreamed of visiting St. Peter’s Cathedral,” Maria said, obviously awestruck.
Brother Fagan turned and smiled. “St. Peter’s is not actually, in the strictest sense of the word, a cathedral since it’s not the seat of a bishop,” he said, not unkindly. “Officially it’s really a papal basilica. The Archbasilica of St. John Lateran is really the cathedral church of the Dioceses of Rome. And the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome – His Holiness.”
“Score another one for Fagan the Most Exalted,” Father Murphy said, dryly.
Maria stifled a chuckle and before she knew it, the dome vanished from sight and they were at what Fagan called the Porta Sant’Anna – the St. Anne Gate. The limo ground to a halt before a huge, ornate, filigreed, iron-barred gate flanked with two ionic columns topped with eagles. Two blue, red and yellow striped-uniformed Swiss Guards examined the Brother’s plastic ID cards.
Maria peeked surreptitiously from the backseat at them and couldn’t help thinking they looked somewhat ancient and silly in their tin hats, pantaloons and ceremonial amour. The huge gate was slowly swung open with a metallic grinding and creaking.
“Special protocols these days,” Murphy muttered, as the automobile accelerated and Maria felt goose bumps rising on her arms with the realization that she had just entered Vatican City.
“Saint Anne of the Palafrenieri, where we attend Mass,” Fagan had s
aid tightly, as he gestured to a small, baroque-looking church off to their right. His voice now seemed more perfunctory, less the host and more that of a man with a mission. Old buildings, religious statues commemorating biblical history, and ornate fountains peopled with marble renditions of saints and sinners loomed out of the night and faded away just as quickly; the car occasionally bumped over cobblestoned streets.
Maria glimpsed another stone building to her left and noticed members of the Swiss Guard entering and leaving. White fluorescent light spilled into the street as the door opened and shut. Some only wore parts of their Medici-inspired uniforms as they stood outside in small tight groups and smoked. Perhaps it was their barracks, she guessed. Or those special protocols mentioned.
Though it was one o’clock in the morning, a few robed priests and the occasional pair of nuns glided silently through the narrow streets appearing bent on important and mysterious missions.
The automobile twisted and turned so often she wondered if they were doubling back on their course. Finally they lurched to a halt before a large grey stone building.
While Murphy waited, Fagan quickly led Maria through a magnificent stone archway, into a giant foyer decorated with gold leaf framed religious paintings, colored tiles and cracked but impressive marble floors. They made their way up multiple sets of stairs and along ancient looking corridors of polished marble or granite, all lit by small-wattage, flickering light bulbs.
After a few minutes, they stopped near a single stone column along one of the corridors and Fagan pushed at something near the back of the column.
He watched Maria’s expression as a ragged section of a polished stone facade released and slipped smoothly back from the column. Clearly enjoying her reaction, Fagan pushed it sideways until it revealed a stone passageway lit by small light bulbs linked by a heavy black cable. The bulbs were yellowed by time and dust.
“Shortcut,” he had said with a grin as they entered and he pushed it closed behind them. They made their way up rickety-thin wooden staircases hugging stone walls, along narrow dusty hallways, and through portal after portal. Fagan told her that many of the buildings in the Vatican had secret chambers and passageways – escape routes for ancient popes who were often assassinated or imprisoned as consequences of failed political maneuvers or because of competitive ambitions or jealousies. This mostly happened from the ninth to the 14th centuries. To be sure, conspiracy theories even surrounded the death of John Paul I in 1978 but, in the end, no concrete evidence of foul play had been provided.
A few minutes later, they entered an antechamber through a heavy velvet-curtained doorway. His Eminence, Mustavias Cardinal Malachi, clothed in a simple black robe with a cowl at its neck, rose from a thick wooden table around which six other similarly-garbed, somber-looking clerics sat. He moved forward to greet Maria with a friendly grin.
This room, contrary to the normal splendor of the Vatican she’d viewed in books and via DVDs, was sparsely furnished and lacked any sign of decoration at all. The stone floor was half-covered by a threadbare throw rug under the table, its pattern almost worn to invisibility. The only decoration on the walls was a simple wooden cross sprouting obviously old palm frond’s from a Palm Sunday Mass far too many years ago. She also noted that the room was damp and rather cool.
The other six men sitting around the ancient and much scarred oak table on severe-looking wooden chairs now scrambled to their feet and shuffled forward. She couldn’t tell if they were priests, bishops or cardinals since they were all garbed in black cassocks, devoid of any piping, colors or other badges of rank.
There was a single, large brass pitcher of something and silver-colored wine goblets set before each chair. On the table was a scarlet cloth seemingly hastily arranged over a rectangular shape, possibly a very large book or a box of some sort. Was it to conceal it from her eyes, she wondered?
Malachi was an impressive man, well over six feet with hazel eyes that twinkled with good humor. A thick and unruly thatch of iron grey hair covered his head and he brushed nervously at it the whole time Maria stood before him. He looked very much like British actor James Mason, she thought. The other clerics, an assortment of bald, fat, short, tall, bearded and clean-shaven men, none under sixty she was sure, now flanked the cardinal but remained mute.
They had stood by silently as Malachi noted her shaking hands and bade her welcome. “My child, so lovely to see you again but you do look utterly exhausted. Are you all right?”
“Yes, Your Eminence...I’m just a little nervous,” she said, quickly clasping her hands behind her back to stop them shaking. “So nice to see you again as well.”
He laughed and lightly touched her shoulder for a second. “Please...again, I ask you to call me Mustavias. Everyone else here does. And, I shall continue to call you Maria.”
“Oh...I couldn’t your–?”
“Mustavias,” he said with a wide smile. “Since Vatican II we’ve been ordered to become more egalitarian whether we want to or not. Down from our golden thrones to join the proletariat.”
“Yes...sir...Mustavias,” she said. The name rolled off her tongue like a spoiled oyster.
“My dear, I shall not introduce you to this band of ragamuffins behind me tonight as you would never remember who is who anyhow. You will get to know them all over time. Now we know you are safe, we’ll all give you a hearty wave and send you off to your bed.”
The group, obviously bone-tired, lifted heavy hands to Maria and gave her a communal wave. She couldn’t help but giggle which brought huge smiles to their weary faces. Fortunately they didn’t know she was seeing them as human renditions of Disney’s Seven Dwarfs.
“Now off with you and we shall talk in the morning,” Malachi said. He told Brother Fagan to ensure that Maria was fed and properly housed where he had asked. Then, without further explanation, he bid her a warm goodnight, and politely shooed her out to be taken to her quarters.
Maria was a little disappointed that she hadn’t learned the mystery of why she had been summoned such a great distance. And what did he mean by saying they were happy to know she was safe? Why wouldn’t she be safe?
Brother Fagan made no comments as he led her back to the limo and they resumed their wild ride with the grim-lipped Murphy at the wheel.
Expecting to be housed with one of the many religious orders in the city, Maria found herself instead driven out of Vatican City and housed in, of all things, the Holiday Inn Rome West. She was told that if she was hungry, there was a limited room service menu available at that hour and bid good night. All charges would be covered, she’d been told, so order what she liked. Still disappointed over still being kept in the dark as to the purpose of her journey, she soothed her irritation by eating several chocolate bars from the mini fridge and treating herself to a two-hour, bubbling soak in the Jacuzzi tub. These sorts of luxuries were certainly foreign to her experience at the convent.
The next morning, she dressed in her habit, was picked up by Brother Fagan and a different but still silent driver, taken back to the Vatican and dropped off just behind the Basilica. Fagan had pointed towards a small garden to the right. Maria walked over and found herself in a park-like setting surrounded by a hedge and divided by stretches of low stone walls, and walkways. It featured several statues of saints, an ornate fountain and gravel walkways. A hot sun blazed down.
Across from her was a bed of red roses, many standing in the shade of olive trees. She saw Cardinal Malachi, now resplendent in a heavy black cassock with cloth-covered red buttons, a cape fringed with red piping, and a red watered-silk ribbon cummerbund circling his waist. In his hand he toyed with a small scarlet skullcap, also of red watered-silk that Maria knew replaced the biretta headpiece which was only worn with choral dress. As with most things into which she had delved, Maria had also made it a point to study the various habits and uniforms of the Church.
He turned and looked her way as the sun glinted off a heavy golden Crucifix hanging from a chain about h
is neck. As she advanced to meet him in the garden, he lifted a hand in greeting. On reaching him she held out the skirt of her habit and knelt to kiss his signet ring. She remembered that though these ecclesiastical rings had once contained a sapphire, they now were simply gold and featured the scene of the crucifixion. She waited for him to tell her to rise.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Sister,” he said, and she looked up in surprise to see him grinning mischievously down at her.
Face flushed, Maria regained her feet, now self-conscious and embarrassed by the solemn importance she had attached to the occasion, juxtaposed against his cavalier and irreverent treatment of her devotion.
Seeing her dismay, Malachi felt like a heel. He immediately apologized explaining that despite the trappings, he wasn’t much one for ceremony. He bade her to relax and join him in a stroll through the garden. As her Sister Superior had warned him, she certainly was an innocent with a trusting nature. Was he making a mistake? Did she have the fortitude to do what he asked?
There were a few minutes of polite conversation and he pointed out statues and the history of various saints as they walked. Then he got right to the point and referenced their prior discussions. “What I have to know, Sister, is simple: These powers we’ve discussed, would you be willing to use them to help us?” He paused for a moment and then continued: “In short, we need your precognitive gift to help the Church.”
She nodded silently, eyes downcast. “Sister Superior says it is a curse, not a gift.”
“Be that as it may, you do see bad things occurring before they happen.”
“Yes. But I have no control over these visions.”
He nodded. “So tell me again how do they present themselves to you?” He stared at her intently, no trace of a smile now.
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