But over time, contrary to Father Vocelli’s predictions, Benito Gallo did not distinguish himself by rocketing up the ecclesiastical ladder to attain exalted status in the sanctum sanctorum of Vatican City.
The reason for his failure was the same as the reason for his success – his intellect. His mentors had quickly seen that, though his grasp of theological implications and dogma was complete and far reaching, his personal renderings and implementations of local programs for his various dioceses based on the church’s inherent beliefs, and a variety of pontifical pronouncements, were generally flawed in ways sympathetic to his own interpretations. And, these interpretations brought dissention to his calling.
In fact, whenever he spoke on church matters such as reform, he inevitably seized the moment to make his opinions known. Sadly, at the time, his ideas on church reform were thought to lightly skirt the mists of heresy.
It was obvious that this Father Gallo was too much of a free-thinker for a system based on slavish compliance, said those who ruled the Vatican. Though he obviously had the qualifications, the brain power and the talent, if he were transferred into a department such as the Curia Romana or the “Segretario di Stato” (Secretariat of State) in the Vatican, he would, no doubt, be the rotten apple in the barrel, the odd man out. Anyhow, with his manifested and sometimes brutal honesty, it was doubtful he would progress up the ladder of ecclesiastical responsibility. And the word went silently forth; they were not denying a future leader, they were heading off a giant pain in the ass.
In a convoluted but telling way, they were right. He was most certainly lacking in the manipulative and self-preservation instincts needed to thrive in any highly competitive organizational jungle where a mere a word in the right ear, or an arched eyebrow at the mention of a name, could prevent an appointment or a reward and banish the subject to a form of career purgatory. He would never be a star – more like an “also ran.”
But to be fair, Gallo also accepted the fact that he had neither the stomach nor the inclination for bickering, lobbying or politicking. In short, he preferred to serve rather than seek to be served.
Though he never really knew for certain, he’d have been an utter fool not to suspect that he’d been silently damned by his superiors. Of course, he never learned of opportunities denied him for the simple reason that, after consideration, they were never offered.
But this Benito was not the ignorant youth of a small village; he was a man of learning and discipline, a man of opinion. He began to speak out, to comment on a need for reform and to criticize the inner workings of the Curia and the Church.
The Italian press shunned him at first, honoring a long-standing, unspoken, agreement between them – the supposed guardians of free speech – and the cloistered and repressive members of the Vatican politico. To Gallo, the press and the Vatican made strange bedfellows indeed but the power of the Holy See was not to be underestimated; he soon came to expect very little in the way of acknowledgement or publicity from the Italian press.
Finally, however, a few younger, daring journalists, eager to make a name for themselves, began to see that Gallo’s opinions had merit. They listened and wrote about his ideas on church reformation. For instance: about making the Mass less mystical to help parishioners reconnect with their beliefs; his cautious but straightforward views on birth control in a world with millions already starving; and, his beliefs that celibacy should be optional in the priesthood.
Though he was years ahead in his thinking, they began to print the daring views of this young revolutionary; some even went so far as to agree with him. Soon he began receiving the full attention of the Vatican again, including the direct attention of Pope Pious XII.
In addition, he garnered the attention of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then, within a few months, he was summoned before a special gathering of the College of Cardinals and asked to account for his actions. His answer was simple and straightforward: among Christ’s many teachings was an understood plea for honesty and openness. To silence free speech would be to silence the voice of prophecy, which is the voice of God – that from which ultimately came God’s laws and the scriptures.
The esteemed members of the College were neither impressed nor amused at his simple but logical deductions. There were, among some, even angry mutterings of excommunication.
Instead, he was transferred as far from Rome as possible, to America where, over the next fifteen years, he assumed the role of parish priest in various small towns.
At first he was too busy to get into any mischief, but once routine had set in, he began to air his views publicly again. Happily he found the American press eager to listen to a priest with new ideas.
Soon his name surfaced in Rome again. A tired sigh was heard from the Holy See as disciplinary actions were discussed and discarded. Perhaps he could be persuaded to join a Monastic Holy Order with a vow of silence? This was discarded with concerns expressed that the press would see this as a gag order to muzzle the young idealist; he might become a form of martyr that, undoubtedly, would be eagerly supported by the paper and electronic media.
But then a more creative idea surfaced and was wholeheartedly endorsed by the secret commission set up to see to the problem of Father Benito Gallo.
He was asked to assume a pastor’s role in the U.S. Army. His Bishop smiled and said that they desperately needed spiritual help and Gallo was being nominated. The cards were on the table now. Of course, their prodigal son would be happy to serve where needed.
Soon after, he found himself in a variety of warring hot spots around the world. With wry amusement, he sometimes wondered if Rome was secretly in league with the army executive in choosing his postings in the hope that a stray bullet would someday end their frustrations with Gallo.
Slowly his thoughts returned to the present, and the nurse he’d just seen with the bum you could crack eggs on. Gallo continued his journey in the hospital corridor towards room 218 clutching his small black purse in hand. However, it wasn’t only the wars and death he’d seen that made him experience doubt in the wisdom of his faith, his belief in the sanctity of the Mass, and the infallibility of the Pope. Parish posting after parish posting had also insidiously eaten away at his beliefs as he was fully exposed to the realities of life, the temptations, the fears, the battles and the defeats of so many.
He’d been privy to the innermost terrors and misdeeds of his parishioners and watched them come back week-after-week to confess the same sins, take his absolution like a hot shower, and then eagerly race out to screw, steal and gossip again.
From his pseudo-omnipotent view in the confessional, there appeared to be no accountability, no learning process and certainly no improvement in their spiritual or moral lives. Obviously they felt they weren’t on earth for a long time, so they chose a form of moral turpitude from which they could recover through the sacrament of confession. So what was the point? What was his purpose on earth?
Of course, during his parish days, there had been temporary joy in certain duties, though, it would also ultimately become a source of frustration too.
As parish priest, one of his responsibilities was to visit the schools. Here he enjoyed the respect and adoration of the small children of his parish. He loved visiting the classrooms and watching the awe on their little faces as he strode in, his black skirts swishing and his beads clacking as they swung from his belt.
He enjoyed telling the little ones stories from the scriptures and reinforcing the message of the special love of Christ for children. He had no problem with this message at all. He also loved leading them through the halting recitations of their first confessions and marveled at their purity, innocence and unquestioning acceptance. Suffer the little children to come unto me, indeed. When the stories of sexual interference had first surfaced in the Church, his anger knew no bounds as reflected in his sermons. He felt that boiling in oil was too good for these so-called priests and his letters to the Vatican stressed the need
for immediate defrocking and public prosecution. Forgiveness wasn’t a strong suit of Gallo’s when it came to children.
His second disappointment came as he’d watch the children grow up, make their First Communion and finally be received fully into the church at their Confirmation ceremony. It was then puberty brought new challenges. The boys would discover cigarettes, liquor and sex. After that it was just a matter of time before they stopped coming to church.
The girls, on the other hand, kept coming, victims of the guilt heaped on them by their mothers for being female and enjoying the secret sins of youth. Tearful confessions of their first sexual experience, their second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth...would follow until ultimately they grew as tired as he of the recitations. He could understand the power of the hormones but he couldn’t very well condone them ad infinitum. When he asked them to get a handle on their sexual impulses or he would refuse them absolution, boys and girls alike inevitably abandoned the sacrament of confession in favour of the sanctity of the rear seat of an automobile.
There had also been times during Mass when he’d looked up at the raised, beatific faces of the parishioners and wanted to put down the chalice, cross to the pulpit and ask them if, as free-thinking adults, they believed all the mumbo jumbo?
But he knew that his torment merely reflected his own angst. He ached for confirmation, for a sign, for anything that would tell him he hadn’t been living a lie. But heavenly communications remained mute. There had never been a sign. Until now, at least. Until he entered room 218 more than a month ago. As a local priest, serving the VA hospital for years, he was now convinced he had finally stumbled on some proof of a supernatural presence. The nature of his find, however, continued to puzzle him.
~ 9 ~
Father Gallo stopped outside 218, and then slowly pushed open the door for what was likely his last visit. The soldier on the bed looked pale and deathly still with an oxygen feed in place. The familiar restraints had been removed. Sitting on the side of the bed, a nurse was holding his hand. Multiple plastic tubes festooned his body and disappeared under the blankets. The priest now had a final duty to perform for the man; God only knew if it would do him any good, especially if he’d been exposed to the devil’s work as he claimed in his ravings.
“Good evening, Father,” Nurse Pruett said, carefully tucking the soldier’s hand back under the blanket and standing up. “I wanted to spend some time with him during his last...” She trailed off, quite aware that supposedly comatose patients often reported that they could hear and even remember bedside comments. “It’s so awful not to have anyone with him.”
“Of course,” Gallo said, gently. “I’ll stay with him for a while.”
The nurse smiled her thanks and slipped from the room.
The priest was both saddened and disappointed the soldier was now close to death, for he had almost become convinced that Lieutenant Clay Montague might be the sign he’d so desperately yearned for throughout his priestly life – a sign of someone having encountered a supernatural presence, even if it was something from the underworld.
When the wounded officer had been brought in, he’d been in a strange post-op coma running a low-grade fever and obviously delirious as he ranted about devils and omnipresent evil.
Like all new arrivals, Gallo had paid him a visit to deliver his blessing. Because of the nature of his head wound, he had been flown from Panama to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and then to the University of Rochester Medical Center for specialized surgery
In a three-hour, highly complex operation, the doctors had removed a second, previously hidden, piece of shrapnel resting against his brain stem, installed a metal clip on a potential aneurism, and delivered an optimistic prognosis of a full recovery. In post-op, however, and later back in his room, the soldier had failed to awaken. The nurses rubbed his sternum, shouted at him, and even cruelly twisted the nipples on his chest but he continued to sleep the unblemished sleep of the innocent. An EEG surprisingly revealed normal brain activity.
Eventually, he was transferred to the chronic care neurology ward of the Finger Lakes VA Hospital. There, he thrashed about and cried out in the language of Ancient Latin: “Daemon excitavit” which translated into the warning: A demon has awakened. More than once he also cried out: “Adramelech.”
The priest spent days at the lieutenant’s bed as the young man muttered warnings in Latin to: “Beware of the demon.” As time progressed, he had become increasingly violent until doctors ordered him placed in restraints. Though patients in comas could not physically speak, this young soldier was routinely muttering, shouting and even crying. Several consulting neurologists viewed this anomaly, examined him, and deduced he was in a deep sleep rather than a coma. And yet, they could not awaken him. They clucked, shook their heads and went back to business they understood.
Nightly, Gallo had visited the young man in hope of easing his torture but each night the patient merely fought the straps and muttered in terror about Ball-Zebub’s disciple until, exhausted, he slept. Slowly, the priest became more and more certain that somewhere, somehow, this man had been touched by a profound evil.
In fact, after seven weeks, Gallo had convinced himself that Clay was part of a puzzle that might have undertones of the supernatural. For instance, where and how had the soldier learned a Latin dialect that was indigenous to the ancient Roman region of Latium? And, how did he come up with the name Adramelech, an arch demon in the hierarchy of hell? In fact, the more Father Gallo listened to the ranting, the more he became convinced that it was more than a hallucination. Indeed, that the soldier was reacting to something he had seen. Possibly something irrational in a supposedly rational world? The priest learned that the lieutenant had been the sole survivor of a night patrol killed and mutilated in curious fashion. Reportedly, not one had been shot. They all died from major traumatic injuries – injuries not even consistent with an initial mortar attack. And some had been virtually exsanguinated.
But there was something else.
When Gallo had visited Lieutenant Montague and it first happened, he’d been puzzled and put it down as coincidence. But after the third time, coincidence wouldn’t wash. And there was no rationalizing something he’d personally experienced.
It first happened when he stopped by the lieutenant’s bed to say a quiet Lord’s Prayer over the soldier. Though sound sleep, and without hearing a spoken word from the priest, the moment the prayer ended with the word Amen, the soldier’s hand had somehow extracted itself from the straps, unerringly found his own and gripped it with a strength that was almost frightening. He sensed he was being thanked for the prayer. Then, in a trembling whisper, the soldier would whisper weakly about hell’s disciple and fall back to sleep.
And visit-after-visit, gave him the same result. When Father Gallo repeated the sequence of prayer, at the exact moment he would silently whisper Amen in his mind, the hand would come up, seize his robes or hand and the young soldier would plead for salvation from the rage of the Beast.
How the lieutenant knew the exact moment he was saying Amen, when, in fact, he was praying inwardly, fascinated the priest. He tried to fool him several times; for instance by pretending to pray but deliberately keeping his mind blank.
Nothing happened.
Next he muttered gibberish.
Nothing happened.
But when he silently said the Our Father, the lieutenant’s hand grabbed him and whispered fevered warnings of an evil loosed upon the earth.
In truth, the warnings stirred at vague, uncomfortable memories and Father Gallo asked himself: Was this a sign? Was it a warning that a spiritual evil had taken secular form on earth? Or, was it the utterances of a man with brains so scrambled, he was seeing flashbacks of every horror movies he’d seen as a kid?
Then, two nights ago, he heard something else – something that made his blood run cold. The soldier’s voice had suddenly changed its timber to a hoarse, broken rasp as he whispered in an ancient Latin dialect: “I
have loosed my Beast upon the world; the Hellspawn shall take the blood of the innocent...and with all the fury of hell...make them mine!”
Shivers ran up the priest’s spine at the word Hellspawn. He’d swallowed and stared at the pale, now silent soldier, on the bed. A distant memory of a story he’d heard as a young seminarian surfaced. The story concerned the Great Battle between Lucifer and God.
Though never included in the official teachings of the Church, the story was that as Lucifer was being banished to hell for questioning God’s right to rule, he had chosen a black champion to serve him, an arch demon named Adramelech who he decreed would roam time and space until the earth was reformed. Also, that there had been an understanding between the two powers that evil would battle righteousness and earth would be the arena. Lucifer mandated that Adramelech would spread hate, confusion and fear, and serve as a time-master to determine when the Antichrist would rise.
The story said that Lucifer’s champion, through shape-shifting, often took the form of humans as well as legendary supernatural beasts. But, in fact, this creature was not a legend. It was a living, breathing spawn of hell, a direct descendant of evil that throughout history had initiated chaos and had been hunted, found, stabbed with blessed stakes in its heart, and buried...only to rise again from the grave upon the decay of its instrument of death.
Gallo remembered asking some older priests about the story. He expected to be smiled at and told not to be so foolish. They neither smiled nor made jokes. In fact, one older priest actually glared at Benito and placed a finger against his lips in a warning as he whispered: “Omerta.” Another one had quietly said for him to leave it alone lest it awaken – whatever that meant.
He heard from others that deep in the secret archives of the Vatican was the full story of the Hellspawn, a tale so disturbing that the Church refused to allow it to be made public. Still, as young people are wont to do, Father Gallo inevitably wrote it off as the seminary student’s equivalent of a good ghost story.
The Plan Page 5
