Vatican Vendetta: A thrilling battle of power and politics

by Peter Watson

  The number of people visiting the Vatican picture gallery more than doubled and the lines stretched all the way down the Viale Vaticano, round the corner and into the Piazza del Risorgimento.

  Massoni’s resignation had added spice to the story. The fact that the Holy Father’s decision to sell the treasures had caused a top-level rift in Rome was irresistible to the pundits and separated them, Catholic or not, into the radicals who sided with the Pope, and the conservatives, who preferred things the way they were.

  In general the people for the Pope far outnumbered those against him. The sheer firepower of his imagination and the glamour of the paintings themselves, carried the majority with him. Indeed, it was a measure of the esteem in which the Holy Father was now held, worldwide, that so few voices were raised against him. Admittedly the Italian government, through its spokesman, made angry noises about the loss of such treasures to Italy and managed to scrape through a vote of censure against the Pope in parliament; and many Romans viewed the departure of ‘Il ventuno’ – the twenty-one – with grave misgivings. But the communist mayor, Sirianni, rapidly becoming a national figure, argued on Italian television that if the government really wanted to keep the works of art in Rome they should attend the auction in New York and buy them back. That, however, was not what the government had had in mind.

  David received a formal vote of congratulations from the board of Hamilton’s. Averne had stayed away. Even with a reduced commission of eight per cent, and assuming the sale realized “only” seven hundred million dollars, with the buyer’s commission the auction house was guaranteed a minimum income during the next year of one hundred and twenty-six million dollars. There was even talk of floating the company on the Stock Exchange but the Earl of Afton squashed that, tartly pointing out that they must not be seen to be profiteering from their association with the Vatican.

  Massoni moved out of the official apartments which he had occupied as Secretary of State but was allowed to stay on in the Vatican, where he now spent a lot of time in the Secret Archives. Only Bess, apparently, was bothered by this.

  Over a late supper at Gina’s one night, she voiced her concern to David. ‘He’s not the type to just fade away. Have you noticed his hands? Long, sinewy fingers – good for hanging on to things. What I wouldn’t give to bug Massoni’s mind. You’d think the CIA would have invented some sort of gadget by now, wouldn’t you?’

  David laughed. He was spending more time in Rome now, making arrangements for the sale, and he felt relaxed there. His relationship with Bess was inching forward. Neither of them referred to the small kiss he had given her, the night after he had recovered her money for her from Ludovisi, and there had been no repeat. But she seemed willing enough to be in his company – they were together most nights he was in the city.

  David’s Rome visits now had a sort of triangular shape, between Bess’s apartment, Gina’s, where they ate almost every meal, and the Vatican. He grew to know, and to be fond of, the minute maze of streets, alleyways, passages, and corridors which made up the city state. He extended his contacts, the chief of whom was John Rich, Cardinal Archbishop of New York. As big as a bear, and as gruff when he wanted to be, and as keen on baseball as any American priest, Rich was also an authority on ivory and had a fine collection of Far Eastern, Indian, Renaissance and Gothic carvings. The two men got on very well and before long had the details of the sale sorted out.

  Rich was also one of the prime movers behind Thomas’s forthcoming encyclical on sex, birth control and marriage. ‘Now is the time,’ Rich said to anyone who would listen. ‘With a Pope this popular, this active, this modern in his thinking, now is the time to update the Church in every possible way. Otherwise, fifty years from now there won’t be a single Catholic left north of Mexico.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Bess had scolded him one day when the three of them met for lunch at Gina’s.

  ‘Exaggeration is a national characteristic of Americans, my dear. It’s part of our charm.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I left,’ she said. ‘Exaggeration can be a form of self-deception.’

  Thomas planned to publish the encyclical as part of his Christmas message, but he was still taking soundings from around the world and it was as yet a closely guarded secret. Only a few people knew its details, even within the Vatican.

  On one occasion, after David had finished his meetings with Cardinal Rich, he stayed in Rome an extra day. He wanted to make a tour of the antique shops, to find something for Ned’s collection of fakes. Bess delighted him by asking if she could come along. ‘If I’m going to collect things – I think I’ve got the bug – I might as well learn properly,’ she said.

  They went to an early mass, then started near the Piazza Colonna and worked their way through the back streets to the Via Tomacelli near the Ponte Cavour. Early on, before they had gone very far, Bess spotted a silver photograph frame in the window of a small, rather dingy shop. Enamelled in green and blue, the frame was ornate, yellowed but otherwise in good condition. David identified it as Byzantine. ‘It probably came here via Venice,’ he said.

  ‘Genuine?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Bess bought it. ‘It’s a gift,’ she said as they came back out of the shop and into the street. ‘For Thomas,’ she added, before David could ask.

  He was surprised – to begin with, but not after Bess explained. ‘He has no family. There’s hardly anyone in the world to give him the little things we all need. I’ve got some photos of him when he was a cardinal, exercising his bad leg in the sea. I’ll put them in the frame – he’ll love it.’ She looked at David. ‘I’ve done it before, you know. Have you ever noticed his lighter? I gave him that, too.’

  They walked on. David was touched, on Thomas’s behalf. He had never really thought about the Holy Father’s private life. Bess was almost certainly right: his Holiness would love having someone treat him like a normal, ordinary soul. The gift said a lot for Bess’s understanding.

  Just before lunch, in a small shop on the Lungotevere, David spotted a Karl Becker coin. ‘Look,’ he said to Bess, drawing her over. ‘These are quite rare. Becker was a late eighteenth-century German forger of coins – he used to age his counterfeits in a metal box underneath his carriage. He’d take his brand new coins for a ride and when he came back they were old – they’d been scraped by the axle. Once you know about them, they’re easy to spot. The scratch marks are much the same on each piece.’

  Bess was entranced. ‘I’d love to see Ned’s collection,’ she said.

  It was, thought David, a move in his direction. Then he checked himself. Too often he forgot that he was married, and always would be in Bess’s eyes. She might be an American, with American attitudes, but she was first and foremost a Catholic. Even if the Pope’s reform plan succeeded, it wouldn’t be for years yet. And meanwhile, even if she wanted him, David saw that her situation was very difficult. He would get nowhere if he wasn’t understanding.

  But her interest in Ned, that deliberately placed sentence, relaxed him, and freed him to move forward at her pace, to take each meeting as it came, letting whatever feelings were there ripen slowly in their own time. On successive visits to Rome, after his meetings with Rich, Tecce or whoever it happened to be, he and Bess found time to visit a couple of antique shops. He taught her about fakes and copies – ‘Sicilian’ vases showing vegetation that could not be found in Sicily, ‘prehistoric’ Mayan seals made in the nineteenth century, red chalk ‘Renaissance’ drawings on machine-made paper. And he wouldn’t let her buy anything until she was certain about what sort of objects she really wanted to collect.

  They found that out quite by accident. Massimo Vittrice, the man who ran Hamilton’s office in Rome, had invited David to a fashion show. His wife was a designer and, he said, the show would contain some items that might interest David. David took Bess and she was entranced.

  Held in the roof restaurant of the Excelsior Hotel, it was not just a cocktail party. Nor was it a
simple fashion show. Before the modern fashions were shown, the Japanese company which had mounted the evening put on an exhibition of ancient silks. David and Bess, together with Vittrice and his wife, sat right next to the catwalk so they saw these rare fabrics at close quarters. The first was an eighteenth-century Chinese silk panel, showing dragons with five tails and waterfalls. Then came an Italian chasuble, embroidered with the Virgin, in blue, surrounded by the vivid gold fingers of the sun. Next came a Byzantine twill silk, showing men on horseback with falcons and lions, and sparkling as if covered in jewels. Bess could not take her eyes off the colours, and the amazingly varied textures.

  The fact that silk was also a modern substance, still used all over the world to make clothes or in decoration, also had something to do with Bess’s interest. For her, more than David, history came alive if it related to the present day. Silk was like the papacy, she said to David. ‘Thousands of years old, yet still valuable and in daily use.’

  After the show, she bought several books on silk. Then, with David’s guidance, she began to buy – and acquired several small pieces: an early Sicilian example, in dark blue, gold and scarlet; a watered silk from Lucca, showing red and yellow birds; a Sarogossa silk with sapphire-coloured arabesques. Gradually, her apartment began to fill with silks in richly varied colours and textures. She loved not just to look at them, but to run her hands over the weave. She would press them against her cheek.

  ‘You can’t do that with Old Master drawings,’ she teased David. ‘Is that a heathen thing to say?’

  But David was only too pleased her enthusiasm was developing.

  Two things only marred this time for David. One was Ned’s state of mind. His son still had his puzzling moods and didn’t seem to be getting better. The other sour note arose in Rome itself, from David’s attempt to organize the copying of the twenty-one great works which were to be sold.

  Copying the paintings was no problem – the Vatican’s own restoration department would do the job. If they couldn’t finish by the time the pictures went on display, they could work in St Patrick’s. That would add to the publicity. But the sculpture, especially Michelangelo’s ‘Pietà’, was a different matter. Copies in the same marble were impossible: there was simply no one alive who was capable. Making casts to use as moulds was out of the question: the originals could be damaged in the process. And carving replicas in a softer stone, one that was easier to handle, would produce a coarser, disappointing result. Reluctantly, David, and Tecce, who was working with him, concluded that no copies could be made. Their confidential recommendation was shown to Thomas who, also reluctantly, approved it.

  Once again the Vatican security system broke down. Two days later, the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero carried an article attacking this ‘confidential’ decision, and making it seem as if the Pope was being secretive, with something to hide. Under the headline, ‘The pity of the “Pietà”’, the article argued that Pope Thomas was little short of a vandal in allowing the Michelangelo and other priceless works to go abroad ‘even after it has been discovered that no copy can be made’. The article said this should have meant that all the sculptures were withdrawn from the New York auction. That they hadn’t been, ran the article, meant that the Holy Father now ranked with the other ‘unscrupulous’ Popes in history who had ‘desecrated Rome’s heritage in order to aggrandize themselves’. Such a frontal attack on a reigning Pope, in a Rome newspaper, was extremely unusual. That wasn’t the chief reason, however, why the Il Messaggero report was reprinted in newspapers around the world. The chief reason was because its author was Cardinal Ottavio Massoni.

  *

  ‘Did you take a fast plane, David?’

  David smiled at the latest American euphemism for Concorde. Trust Rich to be up with all the current fads and fashions.

  ‘Yes, Eminence. How else could I be here in time for breakfast? I’ve already had one helping of bacon and champagne, at 50,000 feet.’

  Now it was the cardinal who smiled. The two of them were breakfasting at Rich’s official residence on the corner of Madison Avenue and 50th Street. Afterwards, the cardinal would give David his first guided tour of St Patrick’s Cathedral. Bess was flying in from Rome the same day, to approve the publicity arrangements and to help organize the display of the art. But, since there was no Concorde from Rome, she wouldn’t be here for some hours yet. It was already late October and the twenty-one masterpieces were to go on show to the public in the first week of December.

  The two men chatted easily over breakfast. David had brought Rich a gift, a small ivory cup, carved with monsters.

  ‘David! How marvellous – German, seventeenth-century, by the look of it. It’s not a Maucher, is it?’

  David nodded. Johann Maucher was one of the top three baroque ivory carvers.

  ‘That was most thoughtful, David. I’m greatly in your debt. If I can ever be of assistance, kindly let me know. Now shall we go across to the cathedral?’

  David was impressed by St Patrick’s. It may not have had the history or the gravitas of the major European cathedrals, but it had dignity, superb proportions, a magnificent altar and sumptuous stained glass windows. It was also busy. There was little of the hush usual in European churches. New Yorkers weren’t overawed by stone and statues. David was impressed by that, too.

  Later in the day he brought Bess back from the airport, to the building. His plan, which she approved, was to display the pictures and sculpture in the sanctuary and in the Lady Chapel behind the altar. These areas were surprisingly well-lit by European standards, they were well-protected from a security standpoint and the windows of the chapel and the canopy over the altar made a perfect backdrop. When David had pointed to the spot where Rich and he thought the ‘Pietà’ should stand, he said to Bess: ‘What’s the latest news of Massoni? Has Thomas taken steps to shut him up?’

  ‘Good grief, no! How can you be a Pope like Thomas – American, democratic, open, radical – and not allow your opponents to have their say? You can’t fire a cardinal, at least not for criticising you about some carvings. No, Massoni’s quiet now, but he’s biding his time, I’m sure. He got massive publicity from his ‘Pietà’ article and I guess he rather relishes being the biggest thorn in Thomas’s side. He’s got a following – small, since he has no territorial power base, but Il Messaggero will give him a platform whenever he wants it. He’s not going to go away, David. Anyway, better the devil you know . . . don’t you think?’

  ‘Hmm. I’m not sure. I’d prefer it if we could shut him up at least until the big sale is safely over.’

  ‘Well, we can’t. So get used to it.’ She paused. ‘Get used to something else, too: you’ll soon be able to get divorced.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is all hush-hush,’ she whispered as they moved on around the Lady Chapel, to where David thought the Giotto should go. ‘It probably won’t be announced before Easter now but the main ideas of the encyclical seem set. Artificial birth control, by married couples, will be allowed. That should bring relief to millions of women in Asia and South America, not to mention Italy. And it should mean that a lot of people in the more developed countries – America especially – can come back to church and be Catholics again. Thomas will argue that more misery, more pain, more sin can be caused by having too many children than by practising birth control. Divorce too will be recognized as a fact of modern life. It won’t be easy; it will take months, if not years. But for the first time, the option will be there. The Church already has the infrastructure to make it work – the tribunals which consider cases for dissolution or annulment. They will be beefed up. Massoni will hate it, lots of die-hards will. But – oh David! It’s going to make such a difference.’

  ‘It’s marvellous,’ said David. ‘Wonderful.’ Personally, he was delighted. But he still secretly had his doubts, wondering if Thomas wasn’t moving too fast.

  He showed her the rest of the cathedral. It was odd, imagining all that great classical art together
in this one spot, so far from Rome. But that was Thomas’s point: Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci had all worked in the New York of their day. This was the natural, the obvious place to sell them.

  They stood at the end of the nave looking down towards the altar and sanctuary. ‘It’s so clean, this church,’ she said. ‘So unlike St Peter’s, which is full of curly lines, bits sticking out here and there, different coloured marbles, masses of statues. This is all straight lines and bright, clear colours. St Patrick’s has much more of Thomas’s personality in it than St Peter’s.’

  Their tour of the cathedral complete, David took Bess back in the gathering dusk to Hamilton’s offices on Madison Avenue and 68th Street. Most of the publicity would be handled from there and he had arranged for her to use an office in the building whenever she wanted. He introduced her to his New York secretary, Betsy, a tall, thin girl who combined amazing energy with ferocious efficiency. ‘Betsy,’ he said after the small talk was over. ‘I have a special job for you and it’s confidential. I want a list of the twenty most successful companies in America which are run by just one man. If he’s a Catholic so much the better – but I am not interested in any firm where the board has a say-so on everything: I want large, successful, rich, one-man bands. Is that clear? I want the names of each of the men and their private telephone numbers. I’ll expect to hear from you within a week.’