“A special Motu Proprio of mine will suspend all meetings and activities of all Bishops’ Conferences, local and regional. This whole initiative of Bishops’ Conferences has proved to be a seedbed of heresy, schism and theological error; and it has been one of the chief instruments in the hands of the anti-Church partisans in their quest to depapalize the Roman Catholic institutional organization.
“Lastly, there is the question of correcting and reformulating the attitude of the Roman Catholic worldwide organization and institution to the modern world. Unfortunately, what the Second Vatican Council stated in this regard was modeled on what Pope Paul VI formulated. Unfortunately, that Pontiff’s formulation was fashioned for him by men of the Vatican and men and women outside the Vatican who had one aim and one aim only: to liquidate the essence of Catholicism and make our human organization of this Church the handmaiden of total secularization of Roman Catholicism. This attitude—already widespread and accepted by bishops, priests, religious and layfolk—must be purged from the Church.
“Your Eminences will be the first to receive all the relevant documents of my Papal Plan. But for the moment, the preceding explanations will suffice.
“Venerable Brothers, all I have outlined may sound like strong medicine. If you think that, you think accurately. It is strong medicine for the virulent disease slowly eating the vitals of the Church Universal.”
Valeska was now gathering his papers into the folder. The cardinals were very quiet, most of them still under the impact of the Pontiff’s words, some of them trying to answer the all-important question: What changes does this new attitude of this Pope augur in this Pope’s foreign policy? One or two felt like asking the question in the silence that followed Valeska’s abrupt ending, but they thought better of it.
“Leave them hanging in that wind, Holy Father,” Frankevic said under his breath up in the study. “Let them swing a little in the winds of doubt and uncertainty.”
The same thought was on Valeska’s mind, but he thought better of it. About to turn on his heel and depart, he stopped. “I should perhaps add two further points, very briefly,” he said. He put down his folder and folded his arms.
“I would remind Your Eminences that, as Pope, I hold the Keys of this Sacred Blood, and that the Holy See can wait and wait and wait and wait. For as long as is necessary. If I depart this life, when I depart this life, my successor here will wait and wait and wait. What power on earth can wait like that? Which of Your Eminences or of my bishops can wait as long as that? The strength of those Keys will never weaken. The perfection of that Blood will never be diluted.
“I am now proceeding to the Basilica. I expect all of you to join me there in silent prayer.” Before his audience had realized what was happening, he had traversed the distance between his place on the dais and the exit, and was disappearing between four security men.
Some twenty minutes later, the last of Their Eminences straggled into the Basilica by the main doors and were motioned reverentially but firmly by security guards to travel up all 630 feet of the nave toward the central place of the Basilica, where the 449-foot-long transept crosses the nave. There the High Altar stands facing east beneath Bernini’s all-bronze canopy. In front of the altar is the circular marble balustrade and staircase leading down to an ancient chapel that holds the bronze sarcophagus of Simon Peter. This whole section of the Basilica is called the Confession of St. Peter, because the band of Greek and Latin inscriptions running around the upper walls there records Simon Peter’s confession: “You are Christ, the Son of the Living God….”
Even from the main doors and up that enormous nave, the entering cardinals could see the white-robed figure: Frozen by the distance, it seemed dimly to be draped on the balustrade because of the whiteness of that beautiful marble. Actually, Papa Valeska was kneeling there, his cupped hands, fingers intertwined with a Rosary, resting on the balustrade, his eyes fixed on Canova’s kneeling statue of Pope Pius VI, who, the most recent pope to be kidnapped, was taken into exile, held prisoner for four years by the dictators of the French Republic, and died in a miserable barracks room of the citadel of Valence, France, in 1802, far from the Tomb of the Apostles.
The moment Valeska had entered the Basilica, all security walkie-talkies rattled with the red-alert code: “The dove is loose! The dove is loose!” A cordon of security guards appeared as if by magic and ringed around the Confession, surrounding Valeska. All exit and entry points of the Basilica were barred and heavily guarded.
Three jeeploads of armed carabinieri tore at breakneck speed across St. Peter’s Square and screeched to a halt outside the main doors of the Basilica. The command helicopter appeared, slowly circling above the Basilica, the sharpshooters balancing at its doors and watching with readied weapons. Plainclothes police, male and female, circulated among the people caught in the Basilica by the security emergency. Behind the cordon, the chance pilgrims and visitors, speaking a babel of languages, gathered quickly, eyeing this unannounced event and wondering what was happening.
For some of the cardinals, the walk up that nave was the longest walk of their lives. They knew that place quite well, knew all the hoary memories clinging to its walls. The also knew this Pope. They had learned to expect two things from him: a deluge of well-chosen words and a panoply of gestures heavily laden with symbolism. They had just had one half hour’s deluge of those words. Now surely must come the symbolism in gesture.
One by one, or in small groups, some with muttered complaints, some wearing a quiet but obvious air of resentment, one or two with barely suppressed small supercilious smiles, the cardinals arrived at the Confession; and eventually all but a dozen sank gingerly and awkwardly to their knees on the marble intarsia around the balustrade. That holdout dozen bunched together to one side, carrying on a staccato conversation in whispers. They had gone along, noblesse oblige, with the farce of the so-called Consistory. Stone-faced security officers informed them they could not leave the Basilica or exit from the security cordon. They were prisoners; but they had no obligation and certainly no intention of following the lead of this Polish Bishop, as if they were nothing more than a bunch of junior seminarians flocking docilely on the heels of their spiritual director.
But they especially, as well as some others, were severely shaken by old and cranky Luis Cardinal Suva. They could not take their eyes off him. He was ludicrous, and he was a reproach to them. Suva was last in. He made his way slowly, laboriously, agonizingly, pausing every two or three steps, glaring at the cardinals in his way, breathing heavily and talking to himself, eventually reaching the balustrade. He could not kneel down. So he leaned his aching frame on the balustrade to Valeska’s right and buried his face in his hands. Suva was crying quietly, unashamedly, as if he were totally alone, as only an old man can do with an inviolable sense of privacy.
Frankevic arrived at the tail end of all of them. He stood at the very back, inside the cordon, keeping his eyes on that motionless white-robed kneeling figure surrounded by a ragged hemicircle sea of purple. After a while, as the minutes passed, the secretary relaxed, staring pointedly at the standing cardinals as if each one of them was an unhealthy excrescence, and praying. Surely some of these Eminences will get the Holy Father’s message and meaning—this was his prayer. But his attention was mainly held by the kneeling cardinals.
He noted any and all of their movements, and where their heads turned, and who signaled to whom and what they were signaling. Yes, Frankevic concluded, at least some of them were slowly putting it all together, letting their surroundings and what they had just been told by Valeska sink into their spirits.
There was no escape from the significance of their surroundings: The kneeling statue of that worthy but worldly Pope whose physical beauty was ruined by hardship and whose pride was humbled by imprisonment and death in the contemptuous hands of his mortal enemies. The flickering lights of the ninety-five lamps that burn night and day around the entrance to the Tomb of the Apostles. The four massive
ninety-five-footlong bronze pillars, containing the bones of 31,000 ancient Roman martyrs and sustaining the 700-ton weight of Bernini’s canopy, brooding over the majesty of the High Altar. Above it all, the band of black lettering in Greek and Latin running around the upper walls and announcing Christ’s momentous supreme choice in answer to Peter’s confession of faith: “You are Peter. Upon this rock, I will build my Church. And the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it….”
But after some ten minutes, Frankevic began to worry: How would or could all this be ended decorously, fittingly? He need not have worried.
Eventually, the silent posture of Pope and cardinals affected the onlookers behind the cordon of security guards. It was a group of German pilgrims who first broke into a softly sung version of the old Catholic hymn “Salve Regina,” the medieval world’s universally known and loved canticle of praise and supplication to the Virgin Mary. As they sang, more and more voices joined in. But in the vast expanse of the Basilica, the chant remained a thin piping chorus of voices wafting up into the ample spaces of that huge nave, echoing in the spanning dome and dying away in gently receding waves of appeal and hope and painful expectation.
When the last few notes were still simmering in all ears, it was the old weeping Chilean who took the initiative. To everybody’s surprise, and to the horror of the few very formal-minded cardinals present, Suva tapped Valeska lightly on the shoulder with a knobby, bony finger. The sequence of events that followed could have been conceived by an expert choreographer.
In the eyes of the onlookers, the actions and expressions of Pope and cardinal were so unusual and spontaneous that they passed in front of the pilgrims and visitors like a series of sharply defined segments in a filmed drama, a series of slow-motion images designed to convey a spiritual vision and message.
Silva tapping the Pontiffs shoulder … Valeska craning around, smiling, listening to the old man … Suva’s bulging eyes and moving lips … Valeska shaking his head, still smiling … Suva nodding vigorously, his mouth open in protest, every line of his gaunt, parchment-like face wreathed in vehemence … Valeska rising slowly and turning around to face the cardinals … Suva trying to kneel down, but instead falling with a little cry, like a thrown bundle of scarlet robes, at Valeska’s feet, his lips touching the instep of Valeska’s right shoe, one hand fumbling desperately for Valeska’s hand as the Pope stretched it down to help him … Suva seizing it and kissing the Fisherman’s Ring on the fourth finger … some Vatican aides rushing with shocked faces to pick the old man up and carry him away between them….
After that, what happened etched itself even more graphically in onlookers’ memories: Cardinals rising slowly to their feet. Some standing and looking around. Some moving forward immediately to kneel and kiss Valeska’s instep and ring. Others, once on their feet, whispering and gesticulating with colleagues, shooting half-frightened glances in Valeska’s direction. Other cardinals standing by themselves, at a total loss. Many lining up in a rough queue in order to perform that double obeisance. Many others backing away as from a dangerous situation, in groups of fives and sevens, eventually piercing the security cordon and leaving the scene with stiffly closed mouths and hooded eyes. They wanted no truck with this act of theater, or with this Pope’s real character, now plainly known to them. Now their attitude was a matter of public record too. Why not? All was clear and in the light of day, for their colleagues, for Valeska, for the people.
Throughout it all, Valeska stood mute, motionless, a look of deep tiredness veiling his face, apparently not seeing anyone or anything in particular, withdrawn into some invisible sanctum of his own, some holy of holies, not even reacting as each cardinal held his hand momentarily, kissed it, kissed his instep, and withdrew. Some few gave a quick upward glance at his face, then looked away and departed. Valeska was oblivious to all this, apparently. He did not know how many came forward, and how many turned their backs on him. But Frankevic was assiduously counting and identifying the recalcitrants—actually forty-six of them, and not one surprise among them.
Eventually, it came to an end. Only Valeska remained, his back to the balustrade, Frankevic and Vatican aides standing to one side. The Pope motioned to the officials standing by. He walked over to the marble staircase and disappeared slowly down into the crypt below, as the great bells of St. Peter’s starting tolling out the noon Angelus in their inimitable ocean-deep tones. The security cordon drew near, surrounding the High Altar and the balustrade. Other security officers persuaded most of the onlookers to move on.
Frankevic stood apart, tears of joy and frustration blinding him. At least, he reasoned, all was clear now. Friend and foe were on notice. Even if His Holiness had failed to rally all his cardinals, as he had failed in the past to rally all his bishops; and even if his pontificate was reckoned a failure on the human scale; still, ambiguity had been dispelled. Frankevic remembered the sense, but not the exact words, of a desperate plea and prayer made by the Greek warrior Ajax, forced to fight superior odds on a darkened plain:
Father in Heaven,
Deliver us from this darkness.
And make our skies clear.
If we must die,
Let us die in the Light.
Index
Abalkin, Leonid, 387, 642
Abatov, Georgi A., 397
abortion, 262, 263, 11, 340, 361, 364, 623, 632, 673–74
Abraham, 133, 139, 670
Acheson, Dean, 334
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), 188, 330, 379
Act of Krakow (1433), 506
Act of Union (1413), 505, 514, 531
Acton, John Emerich Edward
Dalberg-Acton, Baron, 112, 178
Acts, 686
Adalbert, Saint, 102
Adolphus Gustavus II, King of Sweden, 524, 525
Advent Christian Church, 286
Adventists, 285, 286
Adzhubei, Aleksei, 144, 434, 583
Adzhubei, Rada Nikitichna, 421
Afanasyev, Yuri N., 469
Afghanistan, 184, 443, 467, 471–72, 478
Soviet aid to, 392
Soviet withdrawal from, 369, 648
Africa:
aid and loans to, 165–66
AIDS in, 188
decolonization of, 153
famine in, 160, 167–68
John Paul II’s visit to, 475–76
nationalism in, 267
World Bank report on, 167–68
African National Congress (ANC), 67, 649
aggiornamento, 143, 145, 264
Ahlstrom, Krister, 268
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), 188, 330, 379
Albania, 186, 233, 252, 449, 498
Alchemist Society of Nuremberg, 525
alchemy, 520, 527
Alexander I, Czar of Russia, 533
Alexandra, Czarina of Russia, 211
Ali Agca, Mehmet, 46, 47, 49, 439, 625, 634, 638
Alliluyeva, Nadezhda, 228
All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission to Counteract
Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, see CHEKA
American Economic Association, 171
American Trade Consortium, 389
ANC (African National Congress), 67, 649
Andrews, Dwayne, 388
Andriessen, Frans, 642
Andropov, Yuri, 377, 387
death of, 242
as General Secretary, 197, 253
Gorbachev’s career aided by, 27, 383, 390, 393, 418, 624
Angelists, 284–85, 287, 643
Angell, Wayne, 643
Anglican community, 141, 288
Angola, 161, 166, 184, 392
animists, 259, 289
Antonios of Florence, 505
Antunez, Jaime, 274
apartheid, 290
APO (Asian-Pacific Organization), 324
Apostles, 132, 133, 135, 140, 661, 676
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 42, 79, 505
Aquino Corazon, 15
4
Arab League, 185
Arab nations, 161
Arafat, Yasir, 649
Aral Sea, 400
Araskog, Rand, 643
Archer-Daniels-Midland, 389
ARE (Assembly of Regions of Europe), 324
Argentina, 69, 166
Armenia, 110, 544
Bolshevik domination of, 231
Church of, 141
earthquake in, 414, 419
nationalist movement in, 30, 272, 442, 648
Turkish atrocities in, 163
arms race, 179, 180
Arns, Paulo Evaristo Cardinal, 612, 615, 683
ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations), 324
Asia:
aid and loans to, 165–66
decolonization of, 153
Tiger nations of, 161, 289, 324, 648
Asian-Pacific Organization (APO), 324
Aspin, Les, 427
Assad, Hafez, 37
Assembly of Regions of Europe (ARE), 324
Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), 324
atomic bomb, 240, 335
Augustine, Saint, 79
Augustus III, King of Poland, 528
Ausable Club, 336
Auschwitz, 105
Australia, 329
Austria, 438, 529, 530, 538
auto industry, 320, 328
Autumn of the Patriarch, The (García Márquez), 107
Axelrod, P. B.,195
Azerbaijan, 30, 231, 272, 442, 544
Babonikov, Ratmir S., 155
Bacci, Cardinal, 680
Bacon, Francis, 519–20
Baha’i, 139, 300
Baha’U’llah, 300–301, 306, 307
Baker, James, III, 34, 5, 457, 467, 471–72, 649
balance, principle of, 175–76, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 188, 198, 199
Ball, George, 393
Baltic States, 176, 182, 272, 442, 453, 466, 645, 648 see also Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania
Bangladesh, 407
Bankers Trust, 386
banking industry, 328, 643
Bank of America, 386
Baptists, 285
Baraniak, Bishop Anton, 549
Barrett, J. Patrick, 314
Barth, Karl, 362
Keys of This Blood Page 91