The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  Glennon remembered his first encounter with Stephen. “Singularly without fear,” he agreed.

  “Yet—how shall we put it—not arrogant or overweening?”

  A thousand memories of Stephen’s docility and loving-kindness supplied Glennon’s answer. “Father Fermoyle is a curious combination, Your Holiness. He has a soft heart and a hard mind. He can bend neck and knee in obedience—but for stiffness of spine, I have never met his equal.”

  His Holiness weighed the mixed testimonial. “Bene, bene, dear Brother. It occurs to us that Father Fermoyle might perform valuable liaison services in the Vatican Secretariat of State. Have you any objections to such an arrangement?”

  Glennon gazed at the ring in the palm of his hand.

  Gained a jewel, lost a jewel, he thought. Aloud he replied: “Your request has the force of a command, Holy Father. Sorry as I am to lose my secretary, I rejoice at the opportunity for wider service that the Holy See offers him.”

  A week later—almost seven years, to the day, since his ordination as a priest—Stephen received a papal brief appointing him a domestic prelate with the title of Monsignor. The appointment entitled him to wear the violet cassock and mantelletta, and assigned him to duty as a clerk in the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.

  AS A FAREWELL GIFT Lawrence Glennon sent Stephen to the best ecclesiastical tailor in Rome. “Get two of everything. See that they’re the finest,” were the Cardinal’s orders. “We’ll have none of this out-at-the-elbow business among our American clergy in Rome.” And when the violet capes and cassocks were delivered after many fittings, it was Glennon himself who fingered the watered silk critically and showed Stephen how the new regalia should be worn.

  RICHARD CLARAHAN, summoned by cablegram, had the honor of escorting the Cardinal back to Boston via the famous shrine at Lourdes. Because Clarahan had never been to Rome, Stephen extended himself to make his classmate’s visit something of a busman’s holiday. To spare Clarahan the pangs of envy, Stephen refrained from wearing his new clerical outfit. Between these two promising clerics, obviously marked for advancement in the Church, a cavalier truce existed. They could afford to be generous about each other’s successes. Only once did Clarahan slip beyond the bounds of good taste. After a courtesy call on Alfeo Quarenghi, Stephen’s immediate chief in the Secretariat of State, Clarahan came away with a query in his fine voice and forehead.

  “Isn’t Quarenghi the chap whose book you did into English?”

  “That’s right.”

  Clarahan was busy aligning the edges of the new facts at his disposal. “Your translation must have helped, eh?”

  “It certainly didn’t hurt,” said Stephen, and let it go at that.

  Loading Glennon onto the train for Lourdes was the last secretarial service that Stephen performed for His Eminence. The Cardinal’s farewell was a potpourri of Polonius etceteras. “Try not to make enemies … engage your friends with hoops of steel … give every man thine ear but few thy tongue”—such was the gist of Glennon’s advice. At the end he lapsed into a gruff moisture of eyes and larynx. “Stay a good priest, Stephen. Don’t let the dye of your cassock seep into the lining of your heart.” He tugged affectionately at the ribbon of Stephen’s cape. “Good-by, my Son.”

  “Good-by, Your Eminence.” Stephen wanted to fling his arms around the old man’s bulky torso. Instead, he knelt for his blessing.

  BOOK FOUR

  Seventh Station

  CHAPTER 1

  IN THE VAST and intricately geared mechanism of the Roman Curia—that ensemble of ministries and tribunals which assists the Sovereign Pontiff in governing the Church, Monsignor Stephen Fermoyle became an obscure cog. As a clerk in Quarenghi’s division of the papal Secretariat of State he was given a desk in a cubbyhole on the top floor of the Vatican Palace. His office was a no-period cubicle, one of many others carved out of an attic unused until the time of Leo XIII, just before the turn of the century. Its masonry floor was covered by uncarpeted duckboards; from damasked walls originally gold-colored but now rusty and faded, two steel engravings of former secretaries of state gazed formidably at Stephen. His desk was a hand-me-down of someone’s former grandeur; its rococo legs and mother-of-pearl top contrasted oddly with the telephone, wire baskets, and Remington typewriter that went with the job.

  A preliminary briefing by Alfeo Quarenghi instructed the new clerk in the large outlines of Vatican diplomacy. “The Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs,” said Quarenghi, “devotes itself to maintaining friendly relations between the Holy See and sovereign powers throughout the world. Whether these powers be monarchies, republics, or democracies makes no essential difference to the Holy See. The Church accommodates herself to all forms of governments and civil institutions, provided the rights of God and the Christian conscience are left intact. I want to make it clear to you, moreover, that the internal politics of these governments, their commercial, military, and diplomatic arrangements with other countries, are of no interest to the Vatican unless they threaten the free exercise of the Catholic faith.”

  The priest in Quarenghi shone through the ecclesiastic administrator. “Supporting the entire structure of Vatican diplomacy is the frank intention to preserve and extend, through the mediacy of the Church, Christ’s promises to man. Every papal brief and encyclical, every bull and concordat, merely repeat and emphasize this motive.” One of Quarenghi’s rare smiles took the dogmatic edge off his remarks. “With these brief instructions you are qualified, Stefano, to begin making your share of human blunders as an attache of the Vatican Secretariat of State.”

  Stephen’s first assignment was to sort and distribute the huge volume of mail that poured into Quarenghi’s section of the Secretariat of State. Every morning an official from the Vatican post office would deposit two or three mail sacks on the floor of Stephen’s office. Dumping an armful of letters onto his mother-of-pearl desk, Stephen would slit the envelopes, rapidly scrutinize the contents, and route them to the proper office. Thus, all communications from European governments (excluding Italy) were sent directly to Monsignor Quarenghi. Letters from North and South America were placed in a wire basket for Monsignor Guardiano, Quarenghi’s segretario or chief clerk. Communications from India, China, and Japan were forwarded to the Secretary for Oriental Affairs. Finally, all documents bearing on Italian matters were bundled together and delivered to the magnificent apartment of Pietro Cardinal Giacobbi on the floor directly below.

  The mere physical handling of this huge volume of mail was in itself an education. The scope and variety of Vatican contacts with other countries amazed Stephen; even his hasty scanning of the correspondence streaming into the papal Foreign Office gave him a world’s-eye view of the Universal Church in action. Across his desk flowed a torrent of reports from Apostolic delegates, nuncios, and foreign envoys accredited to the Holy See. Skillfully phrased notes schooled him in the forms as well as the content of Vatican diplomacy. Opening a letter postmarked The Hague, Stephen might read: “Her Majesty’s Government wishes to explore with the Holy See the implication of recent Catholic missionary activities in Batavia, with a view to defining the pre-existent rights of Protestant missions in this field.” The note would go to Quarenghi, who in turn would bring the question up in his daily conference with Giacobbi. A Mexican bishop might plead for the restoration of Church property seized by the Mexican government; his plea would go to Monsignor Guardiano. The papal nuncio to Warsaw, after detailing Communist interference with a religious procession, would urge the Vatican to remind the Polish government of its engagements to the Holy See, clearly stated in the Constitution of 1919. Stephen rarely learned the final outcome of these affairs, but at least he glimpsed the nature and scope of Vatican affairs of state.

  From the jigsaw puzzle of correspondence placed on his desk every morning, Stephen was able to form an over-all picture of the role played by the Church in her relationships with foreign governments. He learned that the Church
, though one and indivisible, addressed mankind on two levels: by means of the sacraments she spoke to the most intimate and mysterious part of the human soul; by methods of diplomacy the Church concerned herself with such temporal arrangements as would guarantee maximum freedom in the task of preparing men for eternal happiness with God. Faced by shifting human complexities, the Vatican attempted, with varying success, to remind the world of the one unchanging, nonpolitical, and divine truth: God is.

  Gradually Stephen’s duties were increased. Quarenghi began asking him to make condensations of diplomatic documents and to prepare lists of dubia, or questions that might rise in his mind concerning them. (These questions guided Quarenghi in his later discussions with the Cardinal Secretary of State or the Supreme Pontiff.) To condense and translate a report required from six to twelve hours; the preparation of carefully conceived dubia was even more exacting. Stephen spent long days in the Vatican library, making researches that would enable him to frame the queries that would high-light matters for his chief.

  ALONG with junior attachés of other congregations, Stephen lived in the Camera di Diplomazia, a kind of ecclesiastical boardinghouse in Trastevere. It was a polyglot crew that gathered around the dinner table every evening; although Italian was the dominant tongue, an international babel always arose when the talk became controversial. At the head of the table sat Monsignor Miklos Korbay, an iron-throated Hungarian attached to the Sacred Congregation of the Fabric of St. Peter’s. Korbay’s duty was the maintenance and repair of the great Basilica—a task demanding special knowledge in a field lying somewhere between architecture and engineering. Long command over an army of repairmen had given the Hungarian the manners of a drill sergeant and the voice of a badly cast bell. He was animated by two notions: first, that St. Peter’s dome would collapse unless he, Korbay, personally supervised its repair; second, that all nobility except Hungarian was nouveau if not spurious. On these two themes he was compulsive; Stephen never heard him discuss a general idea. Once, however, while making a sightseeing tour of the Basilica, Stephen saw the Hungarian suspended on an aerial scaffolding in the vast cupola, some four hundred feet above the cathedral floor. Cassock tucked under the belt of his trousers, Korbay resembled a high-wire trapezist performing his act without benefit of a net. Then and there Stephen decided that the Hungarian had a right to brag, if he wanted to, about his special relations with the dome.

  At the foot of the dinner table sat Alphonse Birrebon, a bilious little Frenchman, whose training in canon law made him a priceless secretary to the Rota, but a frightfully pedantic legalist in matters of table talk. His pedantry was offset by the Celtic wit of Padraic Logue, who sat beside him. Next to Logue sat Monsignor Carlos Mendoza y Tindaro, a gloomy Spaniard attached to the Sacred Congregation Rites. Monsignor Tindaro took a dark view of democracy, and predicted that it would one day overwhelm the twin institutions of throne and altar. He held stubbornly to the Hapsburg formula that the tide should, indeed ought to, be swept back with repressive brooms, and listened sourly when Stephen suggested that there was no necessary contradiction between the ballot box and a lively devotion to the sacraments.

  Most attractive to Stephen was Roberto Braggiotti, subsecretary of the powerful Consistorial Congregation. Braggiotti was a native Roman of old family; born in an ancient palace halfway between St. Peter’s and the Quirinal, he had no desire to scale the social ladder because he was already perched on its topmost rung. This captivating Roman in his middle thirties was unquestionably the best informed man at the table. His volatility and intense patriotism reminded Stephen of Orselli, but the brilliant churchman possessed intellectual and moral dimensions that the Florentine Captain lacked.

  The talk that spring turned chiefly on the impending collapse of the Italian government. Events were sliding down an inclined plane; apparently nothing could stop them. The long-serviceable coalition between great landowners in the south and manufacturers in the north was cracking under pressure of popular demand for reform. Successive Quirinal ministries, unable to withstand postwar assaults on throne and lira, had crumbled pitifully. Meanwhile down the length of the peninsula, Mussolini’s voice was thundering:

  “Leaders, legionaries, Blackshirts of Milan and Italy! A day of glory is coming for the Italian people. We must conquer. Fascism demands power and will have it. Viva Italia! Viva fascismo!”

  “Who is this firebrand?” asked Stephen one night at supper. “Is he demagogue or man of destiny?”

  “Neither,” rasped Korbay. “He is an arriviste … a man of no family. …”

  “Whose battle hymn,” added Tindaro, “merely hastens the day of rabblement.”

  Logue slid his thrippenny bit across the table. “God preserve the man from cross cows and rabbit holes. The Sinn Feiners will rally round his broomstick after he cleans up Italy. … Speaking of broomsticks, have you heard the one about the Catholic priest who caught an old woman sweeping her front steps on Sunday?”

  Braggiotti quietly took charge of the subject. “Remove your spectacles of bias and blinkers of wit, gentlemen. Look clearly at this Mussolini, and you will see that he is bred of historic necessity. Italy is a bundle of loose rods lying in a quagmire of defeat. Mussolini will gather up the rods of power, bind them together with cords of discipline into the ancient Roman symbol of authority.”

  Patrician arrogance made Braggiotti’s voice ring like a coin of imperial mintage. “At the head of a resolute elite, Mussolini will restore Italy internally, deal harshly with her foes, avenge her wrongs, and emerge as the savior of our national honor.”

  Monsignor Birrebon masked his Gallic fear of a strong Italy with the question: “How would the Church fare under such a regime?”

  “Better than she has fared under the House of Savoy. Could she be poorer, less honored than during the last fifty years?”

  “But Mussolini is an atheist, an avowed anticlerical,” persisted Birrebon.

  “He is also an anti-Communist,” countered Braggiotti. “I saw him quell a Communist riot in Milan with only a few lightning-forked words. But these matters are accidental. Mussolini realizes, both as a patriot and a politician, that the prestige of the Church is Italy’s soundest asset.” He riddled Birrebon with the shrapnel of quotation. “Did not II Duce say in Parliament last year: ‘The development of Roman Catholicism throughout the world, the fact that four hundred million people in every land have their eyes fixed on Rome—these are matters that must fill every Italian with pride, and attract the interest of every Italian politician’?” Braggiotti delivered his coup de grâce. “A Frenchman wouldn’t understand that.”

  The peacemaker in Stephen sought to snatch the argument from the pit of nationalism. “How does His Holiness regard Mussolini?” he asked.

  “Realistically! How else?” Braggiotti put on the dangerous mantle of prophecy. “I predict that if Mussolini knocks on the bronze gates of the Vatican, they will be opened to him.”

  “You are wrong, I tell you!” said Birrebon.

  Braggiotti’s reply blasted his opponent off the table. “Non me lo dica, perchè io sono Romano” (Don’t tell me, I’m a Roman.)

  Only a man with two thousand years of imperial tradition behind him could have said such a thing. It was probably the most arrogant statement that Stephen had ever heard. Yet Braggiotti had not intended to be overbearing. Unconsciously he had made the assumption that the Roman habit of mind was the criterion for all other thinking.

  Comparing himself with Alfeo Quarenghi and Roberto Braggiotti, Stephen was aware of their richer texture, more profound knowledge, surer touch. What mysterious gifts had made Rome the lawgiver and moral governor of the Western world?

  Stephen earnestly sought an answer to this question. He did not find it immediately or completely, but the question itself took on a sharper definition when he collided personally with the massive bulk of Pietro Giacobbi, papal Secretary of State.

  THE COLLISION took place at a Thursday-morning meeting of the Congregation fo
r Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.

  Every Thursday the Congregation met in the Cardinal Secretary’s office on the second floor of the Vatican Palace. Stephen did not usually attend these conferences, but Quarenghi sometimes invited him for the experience to be gained in watching an important Vatican committee at work. The gathering reminded Stephen of Glennon’s meetings with his diocesan consultors, except that Giacobbi’s diocese was the world, and his advisers a corps of veteran diplomats. There were other features, too, not to be found in Boston. As Giacobbi came down the corridor from his private apartment, his favorite parrot might be heard screeching: “Truffatore di carte” (you old cardsharper)—a bizarre yet oddly pertinent leitmotiv for the deliberations that followed.

  On this particular May morning, as Giacobbi strode across a Bruges tapestry-carpet to his desk, he reminded Stephen of a veteran matador about to dispatch his usual quota of bulls. He sat down at his huge Quattrocento desk and surveyed his assistants, violet-cassocked for the most part, seated in a semicircle before him. Quarenghi and Guardiano, the active elements of the Congregation, occupied smaller desks at opposite horns of the crescent. Stephen, rawest of apprentices, had the end chair in the second row. The Cardinal Secretary whipped a pair of hornrimmed bifocals onto the ridge of his beaked nose and plunged without overture into the grim business of Poland.

  Warsaw, early in 1922, was a source of grave concern to the Holy See. Persecution of Catholic priests had increased in severity; since the last meeting of Giacobbi’s Congregation the situation had notably worsened.

  The Cardinal absorbed Quarenghi’s report on Poland in three swift glances, and addressed his colleagues with a harsh-heavy voice. “I am advised by Cardinal Puzynka that during the past week three churches were burned in the suburbs of Warsaw and seven religious schools closed throughout the country. I need not tell you, monsignori, that the Constitution of 1919 has been torn up by Soviet anticlericalists. A crisis impends.”