The Last Pope

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  It was almost noon now. He walked on Miesczanska toward Chiebnicka, turned right and then left, on the way to Długie Pobrzeze. He was having dinner at the Gdanska Restaurant, as if it were a familiar place, though he had never patronized it. The sumptuous setting resembled a palace dining room more than a restaurant.

  “Na zdrowie,” the impeccably dressed waiter greeted him.

  “Dzie dobry,” he answered politely. It had been a long time since he had greeted anybody in his native tongue. He ordered the specialty of the house for two, and a bottle of red wine.

  The food came quickly, efficiently, and the waiter departed with a friendly “Smacznego.”

  “How are you?” a voice behind him asked.

  “Very well, sir,” the man answered, getting up obsequiously. Someone who had seen him a few moments before wouldn’t think he was the same man. His self-assurance was transformed into subservience before this newcomer, who sat down across from him. He was wearing an elegant Armani suit, discreetly black, similar to that of the man who’d arrived first. There was no doubt he was the boss.

  “You have done a good job.”

  “Thank you. It’s an honor to serve you.”

  They were speaking Italian.

  “The Great Master as usual will know how to reward your efforts. He will soon summon you to his presence.”

  “I’ll be honored.”

  “You’re right. It’s an honor not many enjoy. And very few live to tell about it. Only those closest to him and those who serve him with dignity, like you.”

  The Polish man lowered his head in acknowledgment and, pulling out an envelope from an inside pocket, he placed it on the table.

  “This is what I found in Buenos Aires. The photo I told you about. It’s a simple trick. Under ultraviolet light, another image appears. Take a look.”

  The other man examined the photo. “Interesting what these people can come up with,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the Pole. “It won’t be long before we find a name for this face.”

  Now it was the boss’s turn to hand over an envelope, which he did, placing it on the table without any attempt to disguise his action.

  “Here are your orders to go ahead. Everything you need is inside,” he said, returning the photo. “Take it with you. The plan is on. Beware of traitors, many people are after this. Don’t arouse suspicions, and do not fail. So long.”

  He left without another word, without even touching his food. The one who stayed took the envelope and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He wolfed down the house specialty, enjoyed the wine, and, once satiated, paid the check, leaving a generous tip. A celebration was in order. He who served well, deserved to be well rewarded.

  “Dzikuj,” the waiter said gratefully, happy to see the green American dollars that the well-dressed man deposited on the silver tray.

  “See you tomorrow,” the man said.

  By the Wisła, he opened the envelope and examined its contents. A document with his photo and his new identity, a plane ticket from Frankfurt, and some papers. He added the photo he had brought from Buenos Aires.

  “Now it’s your turn,” he said in a paternal tone, not so much addressing the personage in the photo as the task ahead, which he intended to carry out meticulously, as he had all the previous ones. He decided to go for a walk in the small Sunday market, perhaps to enjoy for the last time the flavor of a city he might not see again. He took off his jacket and his short-sleeved shirt revealed the tattoo of a serpent that extended down to his wrist. He put everything back in the envelope, after taking another look at the photo he had obtained in Buenos Aires from the home of the parish priest, Padre Pablo. The priest had another home now, a more permanent one, underground. The photo, if anyone was watching, showed only the face of Pope Benedict XVI.

  8

  CONCLAVE OF AUGUST 26, 1978

  Let the peace of the Lord be with you, because I did absolutely nothing to get where I am.

  ALBINO LUCIANI TO HIS FAMILY AFTER HE WAS ELECTED POPE

  Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: habemus papam,” Cardinal Pericle Felici proclaimed from the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica on the twenty-sixth of August 1978.

  But in order for the Holy Spirit to decide who would be the next pontiff, the 111 cardinals had to have numerous meetings disguised as luncheons and come to many agreements disguised as inconsequential, polite chats. No one in the Vatican would admit that immediately after the death of Pope Paul VI, an aggressive electoral campaign had been launched. Those humble promotional ventures were modestly disguised by a false lack of interest.

  Some prelates remembered with a smile the evening Cardinal Pignedoli, surrounded by his peers in the College of Cardinals, declared himself unqualified for the role being proposed for him. He declared it was best to vote for Cardinal Gantin, a black prelate from Benin. In this manner, the necessary scrutiny could be carried out by elimination rather than by selection. Acts like this didn’t single out any particular cardinal because many prelates did the same thing, declaring their humility and submission only to remind the others that actually they were the best option. Not all of the cardinals were aware of these electoral manipulations, posturing, and declarations of religious fervor. Albino Luciani, for example, in his disregard for these matters, took advantage of his stay in Rome to arrange repairs for his Lancia 2000, a vehicle that had served only to make his trips miserable. He told Diego Lorenzi, his assistant, that he wanted the car ready by the twenty-ninth, the day the conclave was supposed to be over, in order to return to Venice early that morning.

  Though it was possible to guess the will of the cardinals, no one could be sure of the choice of the Holy Spirit. And this time an unexpected outcome seemed more likely, a decision arrived at in collaboration by the prelates and the Holy Spirit. Once more, the mysterious ways of the Lord demonstrated how unpredictable events could be.

  After the morning vote was over, Albino Luciani was kneeling in prayer in cell number sixty. The results had not been conclusive, but there had been some unexpected results, such as the thirty votes Luciani received on the second scrutiny. As he prayed, he felt great uneasiness in the pit of his stomach, so instead of asking Divine Providence for courage and clarity of thought when voting for the best cardinal to occupy that position, he implored God to please take care of it and relieve him of a great burden. He prayed that the cardinals would cease voting for him, and for the Holy Spirit to inspire the prelates to write the name of Cardinal Siri on their cards. At last count, Cardinal Siri was only five points away from him. The third on the list of reluctant candidates was Cardinal Pignedoli, who, despite having lost prestige, received fifteen votes. He was followed by the Brazilian Cardinal Lorscheider, with twelve. Nineteen of the remaining votes were distributed among the Italian cardinals Bertoli and Felici, with a few for the Polish Karol Wojtyla, the Argentine Pironio, Monsignor Cordeiro (archbishop from Pakistan), and the Austrian Franz Koenig.

  An unintended competition arose between Siri and Luciani. Cardinal Siri wanted to win, while the cardinal from Venice, Albino Luciani, wanted to flee, and might have done so had the doors to the Sistine Chapel not been closed.

  Before entering the conclave, Don Albino told those present, as well as his relatives and friends, that if elected, he would utter the well-known formula, “I decline, for which I ask for your forgiveness.” But this was a possibility that he, like most others, considered very remote. However, His Holiness Pope Paul VI, on a visit in Venice to the Adriatic Queen, had not only granted Luciani a stole, but had personally placed it on his shoulders. That public gesture in the presence of a large group was quite unusual for Paul VI, and was his way of acknowledging the Venetian cardinal’s loyalty and his defense—due more to obligation than to devotion—of the encyclical Humanae vitae, one of the most unfortunate in history. In July 1968, Paul VI had issued that totally radical pastoral letter banning any device or method of birth control, of course including abortion, sterilization, and even the i
nterruption of pregnancy when there was evident danger to the mother’s life. In Humanae vitae everything was up to a supposed divine order, to an improbable marital responsibility, and if need be, to chastity. As the pope decreed, the divine plan could not be subject to social, political, or psychological conditions.

  These recollections of the past would have been irrelevant, were it not that Paul VI was among those mainly responsible for Albino Luciani’s dread of being elected by his peers and by the Holy Spirit.

  “Let them choose Siri,” Luciani begged the Creator. “I have so much to do in Venice!” Paul VI, consciously or not, had placed Albino Luciani in that difficult situation. He had made him cardinal, made a public display of his preference, and graced him in word and gesture. But that responsibility could not be solely ascribed to him. Had John XXIII not made him bishop, he’d never have come to this, and had his mother, Bartola, not given birth to him (in Canale d’Agordo on October 17, 1912), he wouldn’t find himself in this position, either. He had to dismiss all these thoughts. God alone would be the one to decide. Everything must be following some divine plan. Otherwise, his hometown priest, Filippo Carli, wouldn’t have encouraged him to enter the seminary in Feltre.

  After the first vote, Cardinal Luciani understood he was being swept up in the current of the conclave, and that it was not possible to ignore such an unfortunate situation, though he had naively attempted to go unnoticed, which had succeeded before, in different circumstances. On this occasion, his natural reserve and shyness had provided no escape, and the process was completely incomprehensible to him. How could he have expected twenty-three votes in the first scrutiny, two fewer than Siri and five more than Pignedoli? As required by regulation, after each scrutiny all the ballots were gathered and burned in the furnace.

  Paul VI had foreseen every detail of the conclave, nothing had escaped him. The preceding pope was the one to make the regulations, and this pope, for the first time, had ruled that cardinals over eighty years old could not participate in the conclave. In the apostolic constitution Romano pontifice eligendo, Paul VI had set this limitation for religious reasons. The responsibilities of being elected the Church’s shepherd would no longer be added to the physical woes of being eighty. There were no frivolous concerns. The governance of the Church of Christ could not be left to chance. Some ignorant people lamented the fact that some pontiffs devoted themselves to practical matters instead of spiritual ones. But the Church didn’t depend solely on Hail Marys, as one American cardinal pointed out.

  After finishing his prayers, Cardinal Luciani got up and left his cell. Joseph Malula, the cardinal from Zaire, congratulated him warmly, but Luciano nodded in sadness, continuing on his way to the Sistine Chapel for the third vote.

  “I feel I’m at the center of a great whirlwind,” he lamented. After the third scrutiny, Albino Luciani received sixty-eight votes, and Siri, fifteen. Albino was but eight votes away from being declared pontiff.

  “No, please, no,” Luciani again prayed, under his breath. A few cardinals seated nearby heard their friend’s sigh. Prelate Willebrands tried to calm him with uplifting words.

  “Coraggio, Cardinal Luciani. The Lord weighs us down, but He also gives us the strength to bear up.”

  Felici came up to the nervous cardinal and handed him an envelope.

  “A message for the new pope,” he said.

  To Albino Luciani this was a surprising commentary, particularly from someone who had always voted for Siri.

  The handwritten message mentioned the words Via Crucis, The Way of the Cross, symbol and reminder of Christ’s Passion. All the cardinals felt the same trepidation and unrest in the presence of Michelangelo’s imposing frescoes. The prelates knew that they were part of a transcendental ritual in the history of the Church and, given the circumstances, in the history of the world.

  Everything had been according to tradition. The Holy Spirit had come to the participants in the conclave and had stopped over the figure of one of them, or at least that was what the majority thought.

  It was God’s will.

  Luciani received ninety-nine votes, Cardinal Siri eleven, and Lorscheider one (Luciani had voted for him). Destiny had been fulfilled. The cardinals erupted in fervent applause. They had scarcely taken one day to elect their pope among 111 cardinals, and that success was attributed, of course, to divine inspiration. By five minutes past six, the whole thing was over, a little before dinnertime.

  The doors to the Sistine Chapel opened, and the masters of ceremony came in, following the Cardinal Camerlengo, Jean-Marie Villot, secretary of state of the Vatican with the preceding pontiff and keeper of Saint Peter’s keys until the conclave ended. All the prelates, according to the secular tradition, surrounded Albino Luciani.

  “Do you accept your canonic election to become the Holy Roman Pontiff?” the French cardinal asked.

  The eyes of all the cardinals were fixed on the timid man. Even Michelangelo’s figures seemed to adopt a more severe expression, lacking joy manifesting an almost unbearable sense of heaviness. Cardinals Ribeiro and Willebrand offered looks of encouragement to the Venetian priest, and Villot repeated his question.

  “May the Lord forgive you for what you have done to me,” Luciani finally responded. “I accept.”

  Everything continued according to the protocol established centuries before. The grave, imposing ritual proceeded with overwhelming precision.

  “By what name do you wish to be known?”

  Luciani hesitated again, and after a few seconds, smiling for the first time, he spoke the name he had chosen for himself in the historical records.

  “Ioannes Paulus the First.”

  In the Vatican it was presumed that the name chosen by a new pontiff partly indicated the religious and political direction he wished his papacy to follow. The most experienced understood that Albino Luciani had started in an unusual way and that his papacy would be an exceptional one.

  “Nothing will be the same,” they said. His papacy was to begin with an innovation. In almost two thousand years of history, no other pope had used a combined name. Luciani was the only one who dared to go against tradition and in this way render homage both to the man who named him bishop and to the one who designated him cardinal.

  “Congratulations, Your Holiness,” Cardinal Karol Wojtyla proclaimed.

  There was a great bustle in the Sistine Chapel. Everything had been ready for days, but always some detail would come up that demanded attention—a fringe to be fixed, or an untimely visit to take care of. The cardinals distributed the chores among themselves, moving to and fro, with the urgency of those who know they are taking part in a historical decision.

  Luciani was taken to the vestry to conclude the required rituals, and to finish his prayers according to tradition. Other prelates burned the ballots of the last scrutiny, adding to the fire the chemical products needed to whiten the fumata. But after a few white puffs, the faithful thousands waiting in Saint Peter’s Square observed that the smoke was turning black again, perhaps because of accumulated dirt in the chimney. Or perhaps because there was no new pope.

  The brothers Gammarelli, tailors to the Vatican, bickered while trying to find a white vestment appropriate for the occasion. For decades now, the most famous tailor shop in Rome made sure to have on hand three cassocks—small, medium, and large—before each conclave. On this occasion, however, they had added a fourth—extra large—just in case. There had been rumors about the possible election of a heavy monsignor. The one chosen, however, had very narrow shoulders, and his name didn’t even appear on the list of the most prominent, as culled by newspaper and television analysts. After trying several garments on Albino Luciani and circling him again and again, the tailors were more or less satisfied. Luciani finally appeared wearing white vestments to present himself to the world as the new Holy Father of the Catholic Church.

  Cardinal Suenens approached Luciani to congratulate him.

  “Holy Father, thanks for having a
ccepted.”

  Luciani smiled, “Perhaps it would have been better to refuse.”

  Why didn’t he? his conscience wondered. He wanted to refuse but didn’t have the courage. In fact, his own true humility had been overwhelmed by the speed at which everything had evolved, and by the forceful will of the majority. But ultimately he accepted because he felt capable of executing the difficult task ahead of him. If he truly had not, he told himself, he would have declined.

  The cardinals began intoning the Te Deum.

  In the plaza, the groups of the faithful had begun to disperse. For them, it seemed that the cardinals hadn’t reached an agreement, or that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit had not yet come to them, since apparently there was no new pope. The fumata had been dark, no doubt about it, symbolizing the indecision of the conclave.

  The Vatican radio commentators reported that the smoke was black and white, and so they couldn’t tell.

  The commander of the Swiss Guard, who had to receive the new pontiff with a loyal salute in the name of all his men, did not even have the escort ready to accompany him through the corridors leading to the balcony on Saint Peter’s Square.