by David Perry
Lee looked at the photo, black-and-white, of an exceedingly handsome fifty-ish cardinal standing in front of an office desk piled high with books, a computer screen, and a fax machine.
“It’s Gorgeous George!” Lee gasped.
“Who?”
“The Vatican’s PR guy, Giorgio Maltoni. That’s his nickname—Gorgeous George. He was Pope Benedict’s right hand and is evidently still ensconced at St. Peter’s working for the new Pope, Francis, although I can’t understand why.”
“I thought working in the Vatican was like a job with the DMV,” Adriano said between sips of coffee. “Employment for life.”
“Normally, that’s the case,” said Lee. “But Giorgio was very much the former Pope’s man. When Benedict resigned and Francis was elected, G. G. wasn’t shy in his opinions. He even said that Francis wouldn’t have been his choice and was shocked at his elevation to the papacy. I remember he said something to the effect of ‘Francis is the darling of the media at the moment, but that won’t last. He’s not everyone’s darling.’ Personally, if I’d been Francis, I’d have sacked him right away for insubordination.”
“Sounds like a spurned lover. Maybe he and Papa Ben were more than just friends.”
“Don’t think so, although gay priest gossip goes with the territory,” said Lee. “Cardinal Maltoni appears to be quite straight. Used to be a professional soldier and athlete and evidently quite the ladies’ man before he was ordained, kinda the Curia’s JFK. Had some sort of sudden conversion, a real Paul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus moment. Actually, not much is known about his pre-Church life. He was an orphan supposedly, raised by Italian nuns somewhere around here in Umbria as I recall. When he was eighteen, he did a stint as a mercenary in Africa before he found God. Anyway, something happened to him, and before you know it he was on the fast-track to Vatican VIP. He’s supposed to be the kinder, gentler face of the papacy. He’s always quoted in the Catholic News Service.”
“Guess I have to renew my subscription.” Adriano looked over Lee’s shoulder at the photo. “Hmmm. I didn’t know clericals came in Gucci. What does the caption say?”
Lee read the caption. “Vatican Spokesman Giorgio Maltoni speaks to the press about Deacon Andrea Bernardone: ‘The Vatican does not intend to comment on this affair. Nor does it intend to state why it blocked his ordination. We are talking about one of the sacraments and the Holy See cannot provide any explanations. We will have no further comment.’”
“Typical.” Adriano shook his head while he poured coffee and set out some Italian meat and cheese for breakfast. “Con La Eglesia, hemos topado, amigo Sancho.”
“Beg pardon?”
“It’s from Don Quixote. Roughly translated, ‘Sancho, we have met the Church.’ How typical. The Vatican is nothing but a nest of vipers.”
“This new pope, Francis, seems better.”
“Better is a relative term.” Adriano huffed, slapping some prosciutto onto Lee’s plate. “He’s still the pope and he represents a corrupt and morally bankrupt theocracy governed by fear, bigotry, and pseudo-religious perversity.”
“Tell me how you really feel.”
“Perhaps your friend,” Adriano said, pointing to the image of Cardinal Giorgio, “has some dirt on both the popes. That could explain his job security.”
“Hmm,” Lee said in contemplation. “Possible.”
For the next hour, between bouts of salami and strong Italian coffee, Lee would urge Adriano to find out more about Deacon Andrea and his mysterious suicide. Adriano wasn’t happy about it—for all kinds of reasons. It stank of the Church, in his opinion quite rotten enough to smell quite ripe. Also, he knew that Lee was feeding an old hunger—a dangerous one—with this mystery. Like that old Star Wars cliché they both loved, Adriano had a bad feeling about this. Nonetheless, to keep the peace, for now, he continued. But, other than the few articles they had already uncovered and the mention of a refugee’s unclaimed body the day before Andrea’s jump, there was little else to be found online and most of that was almost word-for-word copy and pastes of the original article.
“It’s like the Vatican sent out a press release and everyone just picked it up, verbatim, and ran the story as is,” Lee said.
Actually, Adriano had to admit, it was exactly like that.
Besides the write-ups, someone named Dawud had posted a tribute video on YouTube, complete with spacey music and quotes about love fading in and out, with pictures of Andrea, a young, slim-but-not-overly-so Italian youth with tousled brown hair on a boat somewhere (in a modest T-shirt and shorts); Andrea with friends outside the Church of Sant’Andrea (Andrea in clericals here); Andrea eating brunch at what looked to be Cafe Marco. Adriano thought the shoulder in the upper left of the video belonged to La Donna Volsini, but he couldn’t be sure. The video montage had garnered an impressive 533 thumbs-up responses all from December of last year, right after his funeral. It looked like the sort of thing that had been put together for a memorial and then lost to the mists of the internet. Working his online magic, Adriano was able to tell that they were the first people to have looked at the video since last year. Hmmm, that’s interesting, thought Adriano. A lot of likes but no comments. Digging further, he saw that Dawud, whoever he was, had made the video so that no one could leave a note. Maybe he was afraid of online homophobes trolling the poor kid. Of course, 533 likes was nothing to sneeze at. Seems like someone would have wanted to leave a more personal commemoration. Oh well, that was life. One day you were alive, the next you were dead and the subject of a kitschy online tribute. After that, you were nothing but a digitized memory. “Wow! Check this out.”
Lee looked up from his coffee. “Whatcha got, honey?”
“The article on Andrea’s funeral.”
Lee motioned for Adriano to read aloud.
Orvieto, Sunday, 2 December 2012. In the Cathedral of Orvieto this afternoon was celebrated the funeral of Andrea Bernardone, the young deacon who committed suicide late Friday night/early Saturday morning.
“That was a year ago yesterday,” Lee interjected.
“Yeah, no wonder Orvieto is on edge. It all happened exactly a year ago this week.”
“Go on.”
Deacon Andrea’s ordination had been scheduled for this coming Saturday, December 8. However, in a dramatic and unexpected turn of events, Bernardone and his bishop received a fax from the Vatican saying that the young deacon’s ordination had been “suspended and postponed” by a direct and almost unprecedented intervention of the Holy See.
“Poor guy,” said Lee, shaking his head. “I only started to think about going into the priesthood when I was in my early teens, and the sheer volume of work and study required made my head explode. After all that, to have it yanked away at the last minute, by fax no less. No wonder he cracked.”
“That’s your Holy Roman Catholic Church for you,” Adriano said with a sneer. “Evil and cowardly. What do you expect?”
“Keep reading.”
Along with Andrea’s mother were over a thousand people, including many priests from the surrounding area and towns such as Narni and Civita di Bagnoregio. Reportedly, over forty people rode up on the early train from Rome including a cardinal whose identity was not immediately available. The light wood coffin, unadorned except for a single red rose on the lid, was placed before the altar, in line with the sacred relics from the Miracle of Bolsena in whose honor the cathedral was constructed over six hundred years previous.
“Today we are not here for a funeral, but our beloved Andrea has not really left us,” said Monsignor Giovanni Sancarlo, the Bishop of Orvieto. in his homily. “Let us make this a party—a party like we were going to have next Saturday at Andrea’s ordination.”
Later, Bishop Sancarlo, voice shaking with emotion and with tears in his eyes, spoke directly to the young deacon’s family. “Especially to Andrea’s dear mother, please let me offer not only my undying love, but also, let me ask for your forgiveness. Andrea was a son to me. I was unable to pr
event his being taken away from us so suddenly and tragically.”
In closing, the Bishop said, “Andrea will meet Christ—who is like a rock, our salvation.”
After the funeral, Andrea’s coffin was carried into the crypt of the cathedral attended by only Bishop Sancarlo, don Andrea’s mother and the Rev. Vicky Lewis, and three young local men.
The article was accompanied by two photos, one of Andrea’s coffin, a simple pine box on the cathedral floor with its lonely rosette. The other image was another view of Gorgeous George, a close-up this time, sitting behind his desk. Behind him was a Superman poster. In front of him, a bank of microphones and a sign under the fax reading “ufficio media Vaticano.” Even Lee could translate that: Vatican Press Office.
“No picture of Andrea, but Cardinal Giorgio has managed to get his foxy puss in front of the cameras again,” Adriano harrumphed.
“Look!” Lee gasped and pointed at the bookcase behind George’s photogenic image. “How much do you want to bet that’s the fax machine that sent the ’You’re fired’ letter to Andrea? And how much do you wanna bet that Gorgeous George was the unnamed cardinal who came to Andrea’s funeral?”
“According to you, everyone knows that face,” said Adriano. “He’s the Vatican’s flack. There’s no way the press wouldn’t mention his being here. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Of course it does,” Lee said. “Young, clearly beloved, gay deacon commits suicide. The Church wants to control the story, so they send the Vatican flack up to Orvieto, quietly, to deal with any press that might want to dig more into the story.”
“Is this your publicist gene taking over, or the coulda-been-a-priest one?” Adriano was teasing, but he also knew that Lee’s entire being had been infected by the story of Andrea, with all its admitted parallels to Lee’s own experience. It was like the incubus from the movie Alien, hibernating in Lee’s gut just waiting to be born in messy fashion. He had to find a way to talk Lee off this psychic ledge. But carefully.
“You’re a conspiracy theorist,” Adriano said, wagging a finger.
“Isn’t that what we’re talking about here?” Lee shot back with some heat.
Adriano opened his mouth to speak but decided against it.
For the rest of breakfast, Lee retreated to the couch while Adriano cleaned up in the kitchen. He knew that Adriano wasn’t happy about his latest obsession. He didn’t care. Adriano didn’t understand, and even after ten years together, didn’t want to. To Adriano, everything about the Church was bad, or at the very least, questionable. Of course, from what he knew about Adriano’s ultra-orthodox parents, he couldn’t blame him for feeling that way. He looked over at Brian’s ashes, the only ordained person Adriano had tolerated. Of course, he was Anglican, not Catholic. More to the point, he was Brian.
“Hey, listen to this.” Adriano had come back in, iPhone in hand. “I found something new about Andrea, kinda a sidebar to the article I missed before.”
Lee took the phone from his husband’s hands and kissed him on the nose. How sweet. He knows I’m an addict, but he’s humoring me. On the screen was a black-and-white photo of the Vatican’s publicist, Gorgeous George, and a small caption:
Reached by phone immediately after Deacon Andrea’s funeral, when asked for further clarification on the matter, Vatican spokesman Giorgio Maltoni tersely replied before hanging up on this reporter, “I told you yesterday. We will have no further comment. Roma locuta; causa finita est.”
“That’s some famous Latin phrase, right?” Adriano asked.
“Yes. Probably, the only language I know better than you,” Lee said simply with a strange feeling in the pit of his gut as he stared at Giorgio and his fax machine. “Latin is still after almost two thousand years the official language of the Vatican and used for all official pronouncements.”
“What does it mean?”
“Rome has spoken: the matter is finished.”
Why don’t I believe that, Lee thought, peering again at the fax machine in the photo, one of the original types with rolls of paper instead of individual sheets. When a message came through, an embedded blade sliced it off. It reminded him of a guillotine, its roll.
Rome has spoken: the matter is finished.
Somehow, Lee didn’t think it was finished at all.
CHAPTER XIV
Imprisoned
Tuesday, December 3, 2013, late morning, Convento dei Cappuccini
His cell was cold. Outside, an evening fog wrapped around the tower in a misty vise.
He wasn’t going anywhere. Hadn’t gone anywhere, for almost a year. He’d likely die here, alone with his thoughts. Better that way. He didn’t want to see anyone, and he was sure there was no one interested in seeing him. Well, there was at least one person who didn’t want to see him, or hear from him.
He had sanctioned enough perversity in her life—in their lives. His was a voluntary purgatory, but a living penance nonetheless. Only the living can know that death is not a punishment.
With nothing else to do, he prayed, playing out his sentence on the map of his mind:
(48) For those who suffer for because of their ears
(56) For those fathers and mothers who did not educate their children
(13) For those whom the Father wants freed of their pain
(43) For those who bewildered others with devotion
Guilty as charged, my Lord God.
As he had done for a year, Bishop Sancarlo looked out his window and stared toward the cliff.
CHAPTER XV
De Perfundis
Wednesday, December 4, 2013, early afternoon, Orvieto
“Ciao! Ciao! Hello USA!”
Adriano and Lee waved back to Marco as he swept toward them, wiping his hands on the front of his chef’s whites. The couple had almost forgotten their lunch date with the pleasantly pesky Marco, so absorbed had they been in their online research about Deacon Andrea.
“Come in! So glad you came to my-a place. Sit, sit down. Nonna! Miei amici Americani sono qui!” he cried out toward the kitchen, hidden somewhere in the bowels of the tiny and bustling restaurant squeezed into an alley in the shadow of the Tower of the Moor. Marco was bubbling with his usual enthusiasm. If his cooking was as upbeat as his mood, they were in for a treat. “What you like to eat? I bring everything. My great mother started this place right after the war. She come later. I introduce you. Nonna!”
For the next hour, a seemingly inexhaustible array of Umbrian delicacies came out of Marco’s pantry, half of them unordered. Marco was putting on the dog for the visiting stranieri.
After they had finished and were lingering over coffee and waiting for a tray of Italian liquors that Marco had pressed on them—“My gift, no money. For you. Welcome to Orvieto! I love America! USA!”—Adriano pulled out a folded sheet of computer printer paper and handed it to Lee.
“What’s this?”
“Take a look. I translated it special for you. Took a while.”
Lee opened the page and began to read.
Deacon’s Mother To Pope: “Why”?
Orvieto, Saturday, 8 December, 2012 (AKI). “Why?” is the heart-breaking cry of the mother of deacon Andrea Bernardone in a letter to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, leaked to AKI from unnamed sources. Bernardone, whose body was found a week ago at the foot of a cliff in Orvieto, 120 kilometers north of Rome, was to have been ordained a priest today, December 8, the one-year anniversary of his having become a deacon. Informed by Vatican fax that his ordination had been canceled, Bernardone apparently despaired and committed suicide following Mass on his 29th birthday in the historic Church of Sant’Andrea in the medieval Umbrian town. Though pressed for a response, the Vatican has so far refused comment via their press office.
“Wow.” Lee looked up, mouth agape. Memories of Brian flooded in. “Poor woman.”
“Keep reading. It gets better. This woman knows how to turn a screw into the papal backside. I translated it this morning.”
Lee bent bac
k to the letter.
Holy Father. I am the mother of Deacon Andrea Bernardone. I write to you today as a devoted mother and as a devout Catholic. I have just returned home from Orvieto, a city wounded from the death of my son and the betrayal of its beloved bishop.
Since the loss of my son, every day I have tried to find refuge in the Gospel, but for the first time in my life, I find none. Instead of comfort, I have found nothing but torment, such as is described in Luke, Chapter 8, verses 27-38:
They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time, this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house but had lived in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times, it had seized him, and though he was chained_hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.
Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“Legion, for we are many,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.
A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs, and he gave them permission. When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed to the cliff and threw themselves off into the lake below and were drowned.
Holy Father, what demons live in each of our hearts is known only to us and to our God. But, in my son there were no demons, no malice. His was a pure, if naïve heart. The only demons doing torment to him seem to be those from Rome: demons of bureaucracy, fear, and legalese, driven into my son at the hour of his greatest tenderness, in the hour of anticipation of his greatest joy—to become a priest in service to God—in service to his beloved bishop, and to you Holy Father.