by David Perry
“Some women see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not,” said Lee, repeating the placard paraphrasing Bobby Kennedy’s eulogy from Reverend Vicky’s salon.
“She wanted to be a priest,” said Adriano with a snap of his fingers. “A Roman Catholic priest.”
“…which, of course, is quite impossible,” Don Bello interjected again, more aggressively than before. “More wine?”
“Is it?” It was Lee who asked the question, pinning Don Bello with a stare and then pulling out one of the prayer cards he had saved from Bagnoregio. He placed it gently in front of the old man.
(48) Per quelle che patiscono per causa della loro orecchie
For those who suffer because of their ears
(56) Per quei padri e quelle madri che non educano i loro figli
For those fathers and mothers who did not educate their children
(13) Per quelle per le quali il Padre desidera che si preghi accio siano
liberate da quelle pene
For those whom the Father wants freed of their pain
(43) Per quelle che frastornarono gli altri alla devozione
For those who bewildered others with devotion
Don Bello started to speak, mouth opening like a carp sucking for food at the top of a pond, but said nothing. He sighed, a defeated man, but one seemingly grateful for the defeat. “What do you want me to say?”
“These coordinates, 48.56 N; 13.43 E, are in the middle of the Danube River in Passau, the border between Germany and Austria. The site of the Danube Seven.”
“The Danube Seven?” Adriano asked.
Don Bello just stared ahead, silently.
“The Danube Seven were seven Catholic women who wanted to be priests,” Lee explained. “The Church strictly forbids the ordination of women anywhere in any country on earth. So, in 2002 the Danube Seven did it smack-dab in the middle of the Danube River, international waters, no-man’s—or I guess Vicky would say, no-women’s—land between two countries. Actually, over the years, since then, there have been others.”
“OK, I’m a bad Catholic, but it takes a bishop to consecrate priests,” Adriano slipped in. “And, the Vatican, at least unless I’ve missed something, hasn’t agreed to the ordination of women, and certainly would excommunicate any rogue bishop who performed such a ceremony.”
“Don Bello?” Lee prodded with a smile.
“Quite right.” Don Bello spoke simply and without emotion. “Any bishop, duly consecrated and so ordained is in direct line of apostolic succession and thus considered valid by the Roman Catholic Church. And, any such bishop, should his identity become known, would be instantly removed from fellowship from the Church.”
“But, to your point, as a duly consecrated bishop, his ordination of the women, spiritually and theologically speaking, would be valid, yes?” Lee continued. “The women, spiritually, would be priests. And Arnaud and Sancarlo were already bishops in 2002.”
The pastor of San Giovanale said nothing.
“So, who was it,” Adriano pushed. “Arnaud or Gio? Who ordained Vicky?” Then, answering his own question he said, “Wait. That’s easy. Arnaud is Opus Dei. He’d never ordain a woman!”
Don Bello just sat in silence. Finally, quite quietly, but with a force hitherto unwitnessed by the couple, he spoke. “I have been a priest for over seventy years. In all that time, I have never once broken the seal of the confessional and I don’t intend to start now. Having said that, there are some things that are best not known, or, rather, confirmed. Bishop Sancarlo, Bishop Arnaud, and Reverend Lewis are people of God, flawed, imperfect, humans, doing their best. I have too many sins on my own conscience to judge others for their choices. And, if I may be so bold, dear Adriano, I would not assume too much by one’s titles or official pronouncements. In my experience, most evil is done in full view, and good, in private, even in secret.” He poured them some more wine.
For a while, nothing more was said, then Lee ventured into territory whose map he had been quietly contemplating since they were in the hospital. “Magda said to ask you about Maltoni.”
Don Bello sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I have lived a long life. Too long. But I now realize that my life has become my penance. All of this is my fault. Maltoni turned against God, the Church, against everything, because of me, because of the war.”
“World War Two?” Adriano queried. “I don’t understand.”
“During the last year of the war, Orvieto was under German occupation,” Don Bello explained.
“Yes, under Magda’s father,” said Lee.
“An accidental Nazi if you wish.”
“A Nazi is a Nazi,” hissed Adriano.
“I’m not defending him,” Don Bello said grimly. “I am merely relating history.”
“Go on,” said Lee.
“Officially, of course, the government was Mussolini’s fascist regime. The local fascist leader was Cardinal Maltoni’s father, a man as troubled and conflicted as became his son. In the last few months of the war, things were going quite badly for the Germans, and, of course, for those Italians who still supported them.”
“The fascists loyal to Mussolini,” said Adriano.
Don Bello nodded. “Yes. The Allies had landed in Sicily and later Anzio as they moved up the Italian peninsula. The fighting was brutal, especially around Monte Cassino. Your friend, the gay bishop, Brian Swathmore, the one whose ashes you carry, he fought at Cassino, as I recall you telling me.”
“Yes,” Lee said. “He always said it was horrific.”
“All war is horrific,” said Don Bello gruffly. “There are no heroes in war. Only victims. Only those who die, those who survive, and those who wish they had died.”
He took another sip of wine, quite a healthy one.
“Go on,” Lee prodded gently.
“A few months before the liberation of Orvieto, the Allies were bombing the area nonstop, trying to knock out the military airport nearby, and even more importantly, the train line between Orvieto Scalo heading north. The bridge at Allerona was bombed repeatedly, but never quite destroyed until January twenty-eight, 1944.”
“You remember the exact date?” It was Adriano who spoke.
“Dear boy,” said Don Bello, smiling with wet and weary eyes. “I remember it every day at waking and every night before sleep. That, and other dates besides. Yes, that date is one that no one around Orvieto will ever forget. That morning, a trainload of Allied prisoners of war was stopped at the Orvieto train station. I went down to visit them. Offer Communion, a friendly word…doing the useless but expected machinations of a man of God.” Don Bello uttered this last with more than a bit of bile. “Maltoni’s father, ostensibly the official leader of Orvieto, ordered us to stop. He saw no reason to give ‘aid and comfort to enemies of Il Duce and enemies of the Reich,’ as he put it. He was trying very hard to impress the German high command.”
“Magda’s father?” Lee said.
“Yes. Exactly. The Bridge at Allerona would be bombed again that night, and Madga’s father thought it would be inhuman to risk sending the train over until the danger had passed. The senior Maltoni was furious at having his authority impugned. So, later that afternoon, he went back to the station, and told the Italian conductor to go ahead, that plans had been changed.”
“He lied,” Adriano stately simply.
Don Bello just nodded. “More to the point, he ordered the train to stop on the bridge.”
“As a human shield!” Lee said, suddenly understanding. “He thought if the Allies saw a train on the bridge that they would not bomb it.”
“Or perhaps,” Adriano said, “He wanted it to be bombed. If he was trying to show himself as the strongman, not being afraid to kill a trainload of prisoners just might do it.”
“Yes, perhaps, I don’t know,” said Don Bello angrily. “Who knows what his true motivations were? But I do know this. Around dusk, the train left the station. It stopped on the bridge. It w
as bombed that night. More than six hundred people were killed, mainly Allied prisoners of war, but also a number of German soldiers escorting the train. It was horrible. I went to help bury the bodies…well, what was left of the bodies. Bones, uniforms, shoes…many things…washed up on the river bank for years. There’s a memorial there now, under the bridge. The new bridge. The one that night was completely obliterated. Only part of the stone base remains.”
“What did the Nazis do to Maltoni?” asked Lee.
“Nothing.” Don Bello threw up his hands. “Nothing. Officially, he was the power in the town. Plus, the Germans had bigger problems on their hands. The Allies were quickly advancing up the peninsula.”
“But why should any of this turn Maltoni’s son into a terrorist?”
“Two months after the bombing at Allerona,” Don Bello continued, “there was an ambush attack by a group of Italian partisans on a Nazi brigade in Rome. Thirty-three Germans were killed. Hitler was outraged and ordered a reprisal to take place immediately. In less than twenty-four hours, three hundred thirty-five civilians, Jews, and Roman passers-by were rounded up, herded into the Ardeatine caves on the outskirts of Rome, and killed, each one with a bullet to the back of the head. Each five new victims were forced to kneel over the five preceding bodies. March twenty-four, 1944. It’s a date that every post-war Italian school child learns. The corpses were found a few months later. They’re still entombed there. It’s one of Italy’s most sacred sites.”
“Ten to one,” Adriano gasped.
“Yes. Tit for tat times ten, plus five,” Don Bello shook his head.
“Plus five?” Lee interjected.
“In the confusion and haste to round up enough ‘guilty’ people to meet Hitler’s demands, five extras were arrested and taken to the caves. One of the Germans started to release them, but the Nazi in charge of keeping the list had them shot. Otherwise, they would go back into the city and reveal the massacre. He actually survived the war. Erich Priebke was his name. He escaped to Argentina and lived there for over fifty years until a television reporter, of all things, found him. He admitted to everything. Said he was ‘just following orders.’ He was deported to Rome, put on trial, convicted, and found guilty.”
“And executed, I hope,” said Adriano with force.
“No,” Don Bello said, with a strange glint in this eye. “Found guilty, yes, but sentenced to life, what remained of it. He was even older than me.” At this, Don Bello polished off his wine and held out the chalice for a refill. Lee complied. “He died this past October under house arrest in Rome, of natural causes. He was one hundred years old.”
“I remember reading something about that,” Lee said. “There was a controversy about where he was to be buried.”
“Correct. Huge riots, pro- and anti-fascist, broke out. Unbelievable, that there are still ‘pro’ fascists,” Don Bello said, slamming down his cup so hard that Lee and Adriano shrank back. “He wanted to be buried in Argentina, next to his wife. Argentina refused. The German town where he was born refused, afraid it would become a pilgrimage spot for neo-Nazis. The Vatican forbade any church in Rome from receiving his body. It was unprecedented, denying burial like that.”
“So, what happened to him?”
“No one knows,” said Don Bello, this time with a wry smile. “He was buried secretly. His final resting place is a mystery.”
“Like Osama bin Laden’s,” said Lee. Adriano squeezed his hand.
“Very similar,” said the priest. “Although even the Americans were careful to give bin Laden a Muslim service, albeit a brief one aboard ship before his body was sent into the ocean.”
“But what about Maltoni’s father?” It was Lee who guided them back to the subject at hand.
“Ah, yes. Maltoni. As I have described, the last few months of World War Two were unspeakable on every front in Italy. On earth. Here in Orvieto, the Nazi hold on power was slipping. More to the point, the official fascist government led by Maltoni was becoming untenable. The people despised the Germans but knew one day that they would leave. The local fascist Italians who still supported Mussolini, like Maltoni, well, they were not trusted by their German overlords, nor by the local citizens. A few days after the Ardeatine massacre in Rome, seven local boys, local partisans, were captured by the local fascisti. They were put on trial, by Maltoni, and sentenced to death. The trial was in the same building where you’ve been staying. There’s a plaque by the door. The German colonel, Magda’s father, tried to intervene, but Maltoni insisted.”
“Again, he needed to prove that he was as tough as a Nazi,” Adriano interjected.
“Precisely,” Don Bello agreed. “Also, these seven partisans, children, were mainly communist, anti-Catholic, and Maltoni was rabidly pro-Church. He saw Mussolini as the savior of the Christianity. All the usual insanity. ‘Remember,’ he could often be heard spouting around town, ‘it was Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, who finally ended the imprisonment of the Pope in Vatican City. It was Il Duce who signed the Lateran Accords and restored the power of the Holy See.’ So, he had the seven martyrs shot. One of them was La Donna Volsini’s young beau.”
“Dear God,” said Lee, remembering the painting in Café Volsini.
“Dear God, indeed,” said Don Bello. “The Almighty was not much in evidence during the last few months of Orvieto’s occupation. Maltoni had the martyrs driven away in a truck, sitting on their own coffins, and shot them all, personally, in the little hamlet of Camorena, just down the road from here. A few months later, in June, Orvieto was liberated. And you know the rest.”
“And what became of Maltoni’s father?” Adriano asked.
“That is the reason his son hates me…hated me,” Don Bello said. “It is the reason all of this has happened. The reason that Andrea is no longer with us. The reason that, for me, purgatory would be too kind a relief. I am destined for hell.”
Adriano and Lee said nothing.
Finally, Don Bello composed himself and continued.
“After the war, Maltoni left. Where, I don’t know, but he left. If he hadn’t, the locals, Velzna Volsini and others, would have lynched him or thrown him from the rock. Then, ten years later, he returned, and took up residence in his old house, the house where the seven martyrs were sentenced to death. With a wife and a young son.”
“The future Cardinal Maltoni,” Lee said.
Don Bello just nodded. “They were shunned. No one would speak to him. His house had the windows broken. His wife and the boy were relentlessly assaulted. Finally, it became too much. One night, he drove to the bridge at Allerona with his son, took out a gun, and blew out his brains.”
“Young Maltoni saw his father commit suicide, in front of him?”
Don Bello nodded again. “Afterwards, a young farmer found the boy and brought him back to Orvieto. His mother went mad with grief and threw herself from the cliffs near Porta Romana. Dead, of course. She’s buried in the cemetery outside of town.”
“Next to her husband, the fascist,” said Lee.
“No,” said Don Bello quite simply. “No. Some of the local townspeople dragged Maltoni’s body back to town, demanding vengeance for the seven martyrs ten years before. When I tried to bless the body and give it a Christian burial, they revolted, especially La Donna Volsini. In the end, to my shame, I relented. I refused to bless him or give him a Christian burial. I don’t know what happened to Cardinal Maltoni’s father. The mob dragged away his body. I have no idea where they buried him, or not.”
“What about his son?” Lee asked.
“Young Maltoni was sent to an orphanage. From there, he disappeared. Later, I found out he had become a mercenary and then, somehow, found his way into the arms of Mother Church, clearly a perversion of vows. Only from the inside could he destroy the edifice of Christ, or so he thought. He never forgave me for refusing to bury his father. He never forgave the Church. He never forgave Orvieto. I fear the death of thousands of people can be laid at my feet, including the loss of dear
Andrea. Without my sins, Andrea would not have jumped.”
“Don Bello,” said Adriano. “As you know, I am no fan of the Church, but you are not responsible for the sins of Cardinal Maltoni…”
“…or for the death of my parents and grandmother on 9/11,” said Lee, laying his hand on the old man’s knee. “Cardinal Maltoni made his own decisions, for whatever twisted logic he could use to justify it. But now he is dead, and if there is hell, he is in it.”
“No, my son,” said Don Bello with silent tears running down his face, wrinkles now rivers of salt. “No, Cardinal Maltoni might this day be in heaven.”
“Don Bello!” Adriano recoiled. “How can you say that?”
“Cardinal Maltoni didn’t die instantly in St. Patrick’s Well. He lived long enough to confess his sins at the hospital, and for me to absolve him.”
“How could you,” said Lee with a look of horror on his face. “How, how could—”
“How could I not!” roared Don Bello. “I ignored my vows once by not sanctifying the grave of Maltoni’s father. I was not going to damn another soul because of my pride, my weakness. My job, the Church’s job, is not to forgive. That is up to God. My job, my vocation, my life, is to bring people back to God.”
“I don’t know if I understand that,” said Lee, too stunned for tears. “Even the Vatican refused to bury Erich Priebke, and yet you gave absolution to the man responsible for September eleventh?”
“For the attacks in Madrid,” said Adriano, just looking away.
“I don’t know if I can ever forgive the people who killed my family, so many families,” said Lee. “I don’t understand. I will never understand. I will not understand!”
“I know,” said Don Bello, gently stroking Lee’s head. “Unfortunately, nothing I can do, or anyone can do, can bring them back. Forgiveness is the heaviest burden of life in general, and the thorniest cross for a priest of the Church.”
Lee pulled away from Don Bello’s touch and turned on him fiercely. “Then it was good that I never became a priest. I could never forgive such evil.” He could never forgive someone who had killed his parents. Who had killed his grandmother. Suddenly, he remembered how she used to wash in her huge kitchen sink in the country. No, if that was what was required of a priest, truly, he was not up to it. Who could be?