The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  At sixty, Celia still had much of the birdlike quickness of movement that Stephen remembered from childhood. Her once-black hair was ivory white, but her eyes still sparkled with shoe-button brightness, and the tonic of the sea voyage had renewed her lightness of foot and spirit. Stephen had expected to find her exhausted; instead, she was so excited that she could scarcely sit still in the little parlor of the Cenacle. Stephen finally quieted her down to the point where she could bring him abreast of family history.

  “The old house at 47 Woodlawn isn’t the busy place it used to be, Son,” said Celia. “Sometimes I sit alone in the kitchen of an afternoon, remembering the times when school got out and you’d all come rushing in the back door for your bats or skates or footballs, then rush out again till supper. What a commotion! The evenings are quieter too, now that Florrie and A1 have moved out. They’ve got a nice place of their own in Roslindale. A baby or two would blend them together, but I don’t see any coming.”

  “How’s Ellen?”

  “Happier than I’ve ever seen her. It was God’s blessing that sent Father Ireton to Medford with work for her. Ah, the goodness of Father Paul! In three years he’s won everyone’s heart. He’s started a new church—it’s only a basement yet, but he’s planning to build on top of it.”

  “He’ll make it. And Bernie? I hear he’s on what they call ‘radio.’”

  Celia bobbed a puzzled head. “He sings the same songs they wouldn’t pay a dime to hear in the cafés. The ‘Irish Thrush’ they call him now. Would you believe it, Bernie’s been making fifty a week—come Murphy, go Murphy—for the past six months?”

  It was hard to believe. Then came the question that Stephen had been longing to ask. “What’s little Regina like?”

  “She’s an angel. Pretty—like Mona was. A little darker-complected maybe. Rita and Dr. John take wonderful care of her.” Celia rummaged in her bag for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “I never get over the goodness that God puts into people’s hearts. But tell me now, Son, is it true, like you said in your letter, that you work in the Vatican on the same floor with the Pope?”

  “Yes … except that he’s in another wing.”

  “Are there many others that come as near to him as that?”

  Stephen laughed. “Quite a few. It’s a big place, you know—over a thousand rooms.”

  “Will you have time to point it out to me?”

  “Point it out to you? I’m going to take you all through it. You’re going to see everything—the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s great frescoes, the Clementine Hall—and if I can arrange it, you’re going to have a private audience with the Holy Father himself.”

  Stephen arranged it. Dressed in black, veiled, with her son at her elbow, Celia slowly climbed the great staircase, waited tremulously in the papal antechamber, then knelt to the Fisherman’s ring on the pontiff’s finger. Six hundred thousand people had already kissed the ring that year. Buffeted as he was by the tidal wave of pilgrims, Achille Ratti, fourth son of a silk weaver, was still able to give an individual touch to the audience. And that touch was a surprise to Stephen. His Holiness spoke to Celia in English!

  “God has blessed you with other children, my daughter?”

  “Yes, Your Holiness. I am the mother of three boys and four girls.”

  “Has your heart a favorite among them?” asked the pontiff teasingly.

  Celia’s eyes rested on her first-born standing violet-cassocked beside her. “I am very proud of my oldest son, Your Holiness. He has brought me great joy and never caused me a moment’s sorrow.” She started to check a mother’s garrulity, then let it slip again. “When Stephen was a little boy, he used to beg me to say that I loved him more than the others. I wanted to tell him then, and I wish I could tell Your Holiness now, that he always was first in my heart. But I can’t say something that wouldn’t be fair to the others. A mother must make all her children feel that she loves them equally. Anything else would be displeasing to God.”

  Of the many words Pius XI heard that year, Celia’s moved him more poignantly than most. The pontiff recalled his own childhood plea: “Mama, say you love me best. Whisper it, Mama, so that the others won’t hear.” That plea had never been requited. His Holiness gazed curiously at Stephen, linked with him in the common fellowship of rejection. Would it really be displeasing to God, he wondered, if mothers should murmur: “Dear son [dear Achille, dear Stephen], it is you that I love beyond all others.” Yes, doubtless it would be unwise, for if such words were uttered, the sons of women would perish in too much earthly bliss.

  A chamberlain’s signal reminded the harried pontiff that others were waiting in his antechamber. From a rosewood box Pius XI took a medal of the Virgin and presented it to Celia.

  “This Mother, too, loves all her children equally,” he said, lifting his hand in papal benediction. It was the pinnacle of Celia Fermoyle’s life; the gold bar of heaven seemed very near as Stephen led her out of the pontifical chamber.

  IN SEPTEMBER of the Holy Year, Lawrence Cardinal Glennon sailed from Boston on the Canopic with a band of pious New Englanders, six hundred strong, and landed at Naples on the feast day commemorating the Jesuit saints of North America. The delegation was officially greeted by Monsignor Stephen Fermoyle arrayed in mantelletta, ring, and cross befitting the Pope’s personal representative. What a troop of dignitaries streamed off the Canopic! First came the Cardinal in full ecclesiastic regalia, followed by three venerable bishops, one of them so infirm that he had to be carried down the gangplank in a chair. Then debarked a purple squadron of monsignors, followed by a regiment of pastors and curates—the infantry of the Church. The laity was nobly represented by His Excellency the Governor of Rhode Island, four Catholic Congressmen, seven mayors, a spate of aldermen, and a generous sprinkling of lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and contractors. Among the latter was Cornelius J. Deegan, who came—gilt chain, velvet cape, and all—to assume his duties as honorary chamberlain to the Pope.

  The staff work for this huge expedition had been handled by Right Reverend Michael J. Speed, the rapidly rising Chancellor of the Archdiocese, on whom Cardinal Glennon leaned with increasing dependence in administrative affairs. The Cardinal knew well enough that his monopoly on Mike Speed’s services was drawing to an end. By seniority and deserts, the Chancellor was first in line for the next vacant bishopric. And the diocese that got him (everyone said) would be lucky indeed.

  Glennon embraced Stephen with a frank hug; Mike Speed’s greeting was kind speaking to kind. After an hour of introductions to the Catholic nobility and gentry of New England, Stephen began to look around for a certain high-marbling forehead.

  “Where’s Dick Clarahan?” he asked the Chancellor.

  Mike Speed laughed. “Someone had to run the Diocese. It’s Dicky’s big chance to practice up. Say, Steve, here’s an old friend of yours. Claims he knew you when.”

  The claimant was Dollar Bill Monaghan, Stephen’s first pastor. Ten years had not taken the steely curl out of Monaghan’s hair; at sixty-six he still had the shoulders of a champion mortgage lifter, and the appraising squint of a rector on the lookout for a serviceable assistant.

  “Welcome to Rome, Father,” said Stephen, gripping Dollar Bill’s hand. “How’s the milk route in Maiden?”

  “We’re still making house-to-house deliveries, Stephen. Curates aren’t what they used to be, though. Rome skims off the cream.” Monaghan fumbled with paternal admiration at the ribbony knot of Stephen’s cape. “Handsome rig you’re wearing, Monsignor.”

  “I’d swap it this minute for a parish somewhere north of Boston,” said Stephen. “Can’t you use your pull with His Eminence to get me transferred?” In the milling throng on the pier, they talked of St. Margaret’s and its old parishioners. What was Jeremy Splaine doing? Why, Jeremy was in his final year at the Brighton Seminary. Head of his class. Had the makings of a fine priest.

  And whatever became of Milky Lyons, Stephen wanted to know. “Ah, poor Milky,” said M
onaghan, “he went melancholy on us.”

  In strength they stood who stood. In weakness they fell who fell.

  The Cardinal’s descent on Rome was the progress of an ecclesiastical lord accompanied by his retinue. Bishops, Congressmen, and a crush of distinguished pilgrims drifted in and out of Glennon’s compartment as they sped northward on a special train. Stephen was unexpectedly homesick; the sight of so many American faces and the sound of his native tongue hit him with all the subtlety of a brass band playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

  “Send me home,” he prayed secretly, as the train whirled toward the Holy City. “Not my will but Thine. Only send me home.”

  Stephen’s work really began when the delegation reached Rome. Acting as liaison officer between the Vatican and his countrymen, he arranged group visits to the four principal basilicas and side trips to venerated shrines. The Holy Father graciously consented to say a special Mass for the Americans and—rarest of honors—gave them Holy Communion with his own hands. In the audience following the communion breakfast, Pius XI referred to Cardinal Glennon as “our noble, valiant brother.” Speaking in Italian, with Stephen standing beside and slightly behind him as interpreter, His Holiness praised the New Englanders for their stanch piety and hailed them as the largest, most loyal, and certainly the most generous band of New World Catholics ever to visit Rome.

  The pilgrimage was a roseate triumph for everyone concerned. The Governor of Rhode Island was made a Knight of Malta, and eleven other New Englanders received the insignia of papal nobility. Meanwhile Cornelius Deegan was taking his chamberlain service most gravely. Every morning, attired in cloak and sword, he presented himself for assignment to the Vatican Major-Domo. And because there was always need for a certain number of gentlemen in waiting, the Knight of St. Sylvester walked in many processions or stood ornamentally about whenever he was bidden. His tour of duty over, he gave an enormous dinner party at the Ritz-Reggia to a hundred guests lay and clerical. An emblazoned invitation was propped beside the plate of each diner. “You are most cordially invited,” the invitation ran, “to be the guest of Cornelius J. Deegan on his specially chartered yacht, the Santa Croce, on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes. R.S.V.P.”

  Acceptances were heavy. On All Souls’ Day a merry company of American Catholic gentlemen sailed out of Naples Harbor on the largest yacht that Corny could charter. Old Glory fluttered from the main truck of the Santa Croce, and just below it rippled the pennon of the Order of St. Sylvester. Corny’s orders to the captain were: “Proceed northward with dignity and dispatch to Marseille.” An Italian man of war, mistaking the Santa Croce for a royal barge of some kind, fired a twenty-one-gun salute as she cleared the harbor.

  Standing on the dock, waving his countrymen off, Stephen could have wept with loneliness and longing for America.

  ON CHRISTMAS DAY the Holy Door was bricked up for another twenty-five years. After the elaborate ceremonies were over, and the last pilgrim had departed, life in the Vatican settled down to its normal tempo. Stephen was gathering up the scattered threads of office routine when, during the Octave of Epiphany, Alfeo Quarenghi dropped in one him. Visits from Quarenghi were rare; he had little time for chatty calls. The Secretary for the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs took a chair and plunged immediately into the subject of his visit.

  “The Holy Father,” he began, “is deeply concerned about the Apostolic Delegate at Washington. The present incumbent, Archbishop Rienzi, is an extremely learned and able man, but according to advices from Cardinal Glennon and others”—Quarenghi was phrasing the matter with a diplomat’s tact—“it appears that Rienzi is somewhat out of touch with the American temper.”

  What’s he getting at? Stephen wondered.

  “For some time now,” continued Quarenghi, “the Holy See has felt the need of a fresh approach to the relationships between the Vatican and the United States. Rienzi is to be recalled and will of course be elevated to the cardinalate. Meanwhile His Holiness has honored me with the Washington assignment.” Modesty lowered Quarenghi’s eyes. “The post carries the title of archbishop.”

  Stephen was on his feet. “Congratulations, Alfeo. Apostolic Delegate to the United States! What an honor! Think of the tremendous job you can do there.”

  “There’s certainly a job to be done. The task carries almost frightening responsibilities.” Quarenghi’s quite unfrightened gaze met Stephen’s at level range. “The Holy Father has granted me the privilege of choosing my own staff. Will you come to Washington with me, Stephen, as my assistant and special adviser in American affairs?”

  Choked with joy at the prospect of returning to America, awed by the dimensions of the task ahead, Stephen could not speak. Like a man touching the haft of a sword in pledge of liege devotion, he laid his hand on Quarenghi’s shoulder.

  A week later Pius XI invested Alfeo Quarenghi as Archbishop of Mytilene and embraced him affectionately as he sailed for the United States. The pontiff’s parting words to his delegate were: “It is our most prayerful wish that you show all men how perfectly an embassy of the spirit may be carried into a country of mixed religious faiths and free political opinions.”

  STEPHEN’S FIRST VIEW of his homeland was the battlements of Manhattan emerging through gray flurries of snow as the Cunarder zoomed hoarsely into the North River. Headed by Patrick Cardinal Hayes, a detachment of overcoated American prelates met the papal delegate at the pier. During the formalities of introduction, Quarenghi’s teeth began chattering with unaccustomed cold. Cardinal Hayes whispered to a mufflered aide, “The dear man will freeze entirely in another minute. Let’s get him up to the house.” In three black limousines, preceded and flanked by police motorcycles, the little procession whirled to the Cardinal’s residence on Madison Avenue, colloquially known as “the Powerhouse.”

  While Quarenghi was resting in his room before dinner, a curly-haired Monsignor named Fergus Carroll took Stephen in tow. Monsignor Carroll was a former Holy Cross boy now attached to the Cathedral chapter. “Is there anything particular you’d like to do in the next hour or two?” he asked.

  “That’s a fine question to ask a man who’s never been in New York before,” said Stephen. “What I’d really like to do is stretch my legs—walk around the city a bit.”

  “I’ll borrow a pair of overshoes for you,” said Fergus. “There’s a lot of snow outside.”

  The air was tingling at seven or eight degrees above zero as they crunched along the still uncleared pavement of Fifth Avenue. Late-afternoon traffic was in a typical New York snarl. While snow swirled like a dotted muslin curtain in a stiff wind, a crawling paralysis seemed to grip busses and taxis. Horns, the roar of motors, and the whistles of traffic cops made a strident confusion as Stephen and Fergus dodged in and out along the crowded sidewalk. Yet it was exhilarating too, this New York tempo so markedly different from the languid Roman beat. Snow nipping his cheeks, Stephen was glad to breathe the air of his native north-temperate climate.

  A specific craving for something he had dreamed about a long time broke out in Stephen now. “Are there any drugstores around here?” he asked Fergus Carroll as they neared Forty-second Street.

  “Sure. The Grand Central district is full of them. What do you want?”

  “Don’t laugh,” said Stephen, “but I want a strawberry ice-cream soda. And bad. It’s been coming on for years.”

  “Will you take it in a booth or on a stool?”

  Stephen had his strawberry ice-cream soda on a stool. When Fergus Carroll handed him two straws, he knew that the heart of the country was sound.

  They walked up Madison Avenue to Fiftieth Street. “How’d you like to make a little visit before dinner?” asked Fergus.

  Stephen knew what his companion meant. Together they entered a side door of the Cathedral, stood for a moment in the candlelighted shadows of the south aisle. Kneeling at the epistle side of the main altar, he said a short prayer of thanksgiving, then made his
wish. A simple one: that Alfeo Quarenghi’s mission would succeed.

  Shortly after seven, Quarenghi and Stephen were escorted to the dining room by their Cardinal-host himself. The classic protocol (which decrees that twelve is the proper number for a bachelor dinner, or some unconscious observance of an even older tradition) had led to the seating of an even dozen guests. All ranks of the hierarchy were present: the Cardinal sat at the head of the table, with Archbishop Quarenghi on his right and the Auxiliary Bishop of New York at his left. Simple hospitality rather than high ceremony was the note. His Eminence murmured grace, then picked up a spoon and began operations on a thick vegetable soup. Afterwards there was roast lamb, gravy, and plenty of pan-browned potatoes, but no salad. For dessert, apple pie and coffee; cigars for those who smoked them.

  The table talk was neither exalted nor commonplace. No philosophic observations were offered and only one clerical story was told. The company discussed the approaching Eucharistic Congress in Chicago, the grave troubles of the Church in Mexico, and the overemphasis on football in certain Catholic colleges. Quarenghi made inquiries regarding the health of Cardinal Dougherty, and praised the remarkable work the Philadelphia prelate had done in the Philippines.

  Knowing the range of Quarenghi’s mind, Stephen thought that his friend might have talked more brilliantly. Yet as the dinner progressed he began to realize that the Apostolic Delegate was purposely letting his host set the conversational pace. Since Cardinal Hayes neither was a great intellect nor pretended to be one, Quarenghi accommodated himself to the prevailing gait. It was no part of the papal legate’s plan to overwhelm the Americans either with personal charm or his knowledge of Roman affairs. Frankness and courtesy marked his answers to whatever questions were asked, but he initiated no topics and disclosed nothing that could not have been gleaned by any thoughtful reader of L’Osservatore Romano. Long before the dinner ended, Stephen could see that Quarenghi’s modesty and reserve were creating a quietly soothing effect on the diners. Yet they were waiting for something, too. When the party moved into the Cardinal’s library for coffee, Stephen whispered to his friend: “I think they’re expecting you to open up a little.”