The HolyPhone Confessional Crisis

by Charles Brett

  Nelson’s quick inspection of the wine list followed by some pointed questions established that Ristorante did indeed have a good Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. This he ordered along with some acqua gassata — San Pellegrino if available.

  While Giovanna left to bring the wine and water, the two friends considered what to eat. They kept it simple. Fiori de Zucchino followed by an insalata verde. José Antonio opted for his preferred risotto al fegato. Nelson ordered the swordfish. Even though the wine would be red and strong, a good Pesce Spada would hold its own. According to what José Antonio had told him in the past, this was the sort of ristorante where straightforward, unfussy good food was normal.

  Having tasted the Vino Nobile it was pronounced more than excellent. Giovanna took their orders. Now they could talk.

  “So, how is everything with you?”

  They started pretty much as they had done whenever they had met after Nelson became an archbishop and translated from his native Sao Paolo to Rome. As with previous occasions, they exchanged smiles at their little ritual. This time Nelson insisted José Antonio go first.

  “You may be surprised, Nelson, but I was thinking about this only the other day when walking back along the Gianicolo after visiting an ill parishioner in hospital. I have come to realise that your Santofonino really is a blessing in disguise. When I first mentioned it to you as that impractical proposition from the quaint musings of a tourist I thought your subsequent interest was in effect making your personal reservation at the equivalent of the local lunatic asylum.”

  “Yes, I remember your comments,” responded Nelson. “They did hurt, though I cannot even now disagree that what I was suggesting seemed unlikely to be a success. But tell me, why do you like it now when you didn’t back then?”

  “I know I hurt you with my comments. I’m still sorry for that. But it was what I believed at the time. What’s changed my thinking? Simple practical experience.

  “As you will no doubt remember, for you forget little, I was frustrated, unhappy, and above all exhausted. What I have always liked best about being a priest is helping people.

  “Did I ever tell you of the story a Protestant told me about an English parish with an evangelical Anglican as its rector? No? I am surprised. Apparently this Anglican rector was a decent enough person in general. But he possessed a missionary zeal to convert non-believers, especially those he thought were lapsed or, worse still, reluctant believers. One day he visited a parishioner who, soon after his arrival, had to invite him to leave. Apparently the rector had gone beyond the bounds of common courtesy (you know how the English prize this) in trying to force belief down this unbeliever’s throat.

  “But what I have always remembered about this particular story was the follow-up comment — that the unbeliever felt the rector’s efforts to attract new souls were more important to him than supporting his own parishioners, that he preferred the challenge of convincing the unconvinced to ministering to the already faithful who were in need. I couldn’t be like that. I want to help my parishioners. This is what has always fulfilled me in my calling.

  “So, what does this have to do with your original question? When you first introduced me to the concept of what we all know here as the Santofonino, but which you then called by its original HolyPhone name, all I could envisage was another horrible piece of technology, like a television or a VCR or a microwave. My fear was that it would be just another gadget to annoy and frustrate me as I was forced to try to make it work.

  “I was also, at the point you asked me to try it, at my lowest ebb in my ministry. I do not think I ever told you but I was summoning up the courage to approach my bishop to ask him to let me retire early and return to Denia or somewhere in Spain. I thought I had had enough here, even though the idea of going back to a small parochial place like Denia, however outwardly pleasant, appalled me. All I had there then were distant cousins, now dead. I might have been welcomed, or I might not.

  “Yet I also knew that if I did this I would be undermining our Mother Church, by becoming just one more priest among so many who had given up by retiring. You, appearing with all your usual enthusiasm for an as yet unproven electronic toy, seemed almost like the straw to break my back.”

  “Oh dear. I’m so sorry, José Antonio. This I did not understand. No, that’s not quite right. I did understand that you were unhappy and even more that you were tired. What never occurred to me was that you looked on my plans for the HolyPhone with such dislike. Perhaps I should never have approached you. Forgive me.”

  “Of course, Nelson; and there’s nothing to forgive. What did surprise me, and possibly you, was how my own enthusiasm grew once I began to understand what you were trying to do with your Santofonino and how it could make such a difference to my own life and to my ministry.”

  Wednesday, Monteverde

  Giovanna appeared beside their table bringing their Fiori di Zucchino and insalata. She had clearly decided that if there was a cardinal in her ristorante then she had to serve him herself.

  She told them, “I have a cousin who grows these Fiori for me. You are lucky. They are perfectly in season and I hope you will not mind that I have added a few extra to your plates. I adore them. I hope you do too.”

  The cardinal poured each of them another glass of wine and looked at the Fiori.

  “They do look special. Shall we start?”

  “Why not?” smiled José Antonio and started on the first of his Fiori. “She was right. These are delicious, perhaps even better than that. It is good that such delicacies are seasonal. Otherwise I would eat these all year, and in so doing probably go off them.”

  “I agree,” responded Nelson. “Anyhow, tell me more of why you came to like the Santofonino.”

  “The reality is rather simple, and echoed exactly the reasoning you originally described to me when you first asked me to help. To repeat myself a moment, I was then a tired priest on the cusp of deciding to ask to retire. In that I was just another one among many of our kind who are older and feeling less and less that we could deliver what our congregations wanted. Part of the problem, as that strange tourist guest of mine had so accurately analysed, was the church had, and has, the ongoing obligation to provide the rite of confession to our faithful when they want it. Yet, at that time, our church increasingly does not have sufficient priests to provide what the faithful expected. As we both know, more and more priests are retiring or dying, certainly more than the numbers of replacement priests coming forward for ordination.

  “If that was one part of the problem, the other was the amount of time involved in being available to hear confession. I know that I should have been grateful for the opportunity to say my daily office in the confessional whenever there was nobody who wanted to confess.

  But this did not change the fact that sitting in an uncomfortable wooden cubicle at prescribed hours struck me as wasteful of time that I might better use. I wanted to be out with my congregation, not waiting for a penitent or two. The sick and the dying or the bereaved or otherwise needy did not really understand why set times for confession meant that during those hours I could not be available to them. Even in a large parish, like we have here in Monteverde with its additional priests, we couldn’t cope. Looking back it was this sense that time could be better spent, which was both depressing and frustrating me.

  “With the arrival of your Santofonino a huge change occurred. Once we had explained to our much-puzzled parishioners how it would work and that this meant being able to go to confession whenever they wanted, not when we priests in the parish were available, the acceptance was nothing short of miraculous.

  “The effect on me and my colleagues was just as significant. We no longer had to take it in shifts to sit and wait in those confessional coffins. Sorry, I know that is the wrong way to describe them, but it does convey a measure of my frustration.

  “Now it is different. Your HolyPhone changed how we work. We can be out within our community offering the support it requires
when it needs it.

  “As the Americans like to say, you created a win-win situation, and so it seems to us still. For myself it was like an unexpected rejuvenation. Instead of feeling obliged to do something that my head told me was my duty but my soul thought was too often a useless effort, I can now say I feel fulfilled again. I think – I hope – my parishioners feel the same.”

  ”If I understand your conversion correctly,” responded Nelson, “what you are telling me is that the Santofonino — and yes we now use that term even in the Curia — released you from one form of commitment while improving the availability of your wider services to your parishioners in the ways which they had expected but did not expect to receive.”

  “Exactly. You describe it perfectly.”

  “You don’t know how happy that makes me. I have to tell you that I hear the same story almost everywhere I go. It does not matter whether it is here in Italy or elsewhere in Europe or in the United States. It is the same in those parts of the Americas as well as Africa where we have tried it out. The impact of the Santofonino is becoming global. I for one would never have thought that such a simple idea could mean so much at both the practical level and for the finances of our church.

  “But this is also why I am here tonight. I have the feeling that something has gone wrong. I don’t know what it is but my Curial bureaucrat’s instinct tells me that our Holy Church is, to use an ugly phrase, being ripped off in some way. The trouble is that I cannot see how or where or even why.”

  Nelson’s bafflement was plain to see.

  “What has happened to make you think this?” asked José Antonio. “It must be something truly awful for you to raise this with someone as unimportant as myself.” He paused and reflected for a few seconds. “Oh no. Don’t tell me you suspect the Mafia is involved somehow?”

  At this suggestion Nelson’s colour left his face.

  “You have gone white, Nelson. Is that what you fear? How can this be?”

  Wednesday, Monteverde

  By this time the Fiori de Zucchino and the Insalata Verde had long been eaten. Giovanna reappeared, this time with a niece in tow to take away their used plates and for her to serve their main courses. She did not pause to talk or ask questions. She sensed a distress, not so much between them as about whatever they were discussing.

  At the other end of the room the Spanish Ambassador had noticed something too. A tension seemed to have entered the prelates’ dinner, one that had not been there only minutes before when the round priest had seemed effusive. Now they seemed not to be talking. He wondered what could have caused this, not that it was any of his business.

  Nelson and José Antonio worked through their fish and risotto in silence. For different reasons both needed time to think. José Antonio had never truly been exposed to the Mafia, nor any of the several variants from outside Sicily like the Neapolitan Camorra or the dreaded ’Ndragheta from Calabria. For this he was grateful. Now it seemed that his innocence might disappear. Should he again think of asking for retirement to Spain? Might this be the time?

  “No,” he said to himself. “I owe Nelson much and cannot think of leaving him.”

  Simultaneously, as he ate his Pesce Spada, Nelson worried that he was exposing his old friend to something that was beyond his experience. He had not expected José Antonio to understand so fast. It was a reminder that, though José Antonio was only a parish priest, it did not mean he was stupid. Yet again he had proved that he was not immune to worldly insights. His perception was as acute as ever.

  He had expected this, but certainly not this fast — before they had even finished their dinner. In one sense Nelson felt ashamed that he had even raised the subject. On the other hand many people regarded the Santofonino as his, Nelson’s, greatest contribution to Mother Church even if almost as many remained suspicious or railed against what it represented. They finished their risotto and fish.

  With no more to eat the silence persisted and became more uncomfortable. It was not, however, an antagonistic one. Rather it was one of those when two friends or relatives want to start talking again after something awkward has occurred and neither quite knows how to get going again. For these two this was a novelty. José Antonio was definitely a man for anybody who needed his parish services. Nelson in contrast was a prince of the church and more accustomed to directing a situation than finding himself dominated by it.

  Just like two people walking towards each other in the street who, in trying to pass each other, inadvertently turn towards each other at the same moment instead of in opposite directions, both began to talk at the same time. Both stopped on hearing the other start.

  Fortunately for them Giovanna chose that moment to reappear. If she had spotted something specific, she was a good enough restaurateuse to know when not to seem to notice anything wrong.

  “How was the risotto, Father? As good as your paella?” she asked of José Antonio. “And the Spada, your Eminence? To your taste? What can I offer you now? More Vino Nobile? Dolci? Liquori?”

  The silence was thoroughly broken, to the obvious relief of both men.

  “Giovanna, as always your risotto was what paella is not. How often have I tried to explain to you and you don’t seem to understand the difference. I will try again.

  “In Valencia we cook paella using much the same rice as you use for risotto. The other ingredients may change. But what makes the real difference is not so much the ingredients or even the cooking. It is what happens when you are served. In Valencia we use large paelleras, those big, wide black but tin dishes to cook the paella. The difficulty for me is that I am a man. When the paellera is taken off the heat and brought to the table its tin cools fast, because the metal is thin. Women and children are served first and so what they receive is hot. The men have to wait. By the time we get a plate the rice and its components have congealed into a cool soggy, glutinous mess.

  “Now compare that image to what you have just given me. Your risotto arrives on a hot plate, is fresh and tasty and is only for me. That’s the difference.”

  “Bravo, José Antonio! What a description. Signora, I’m afraid he’s right. Maybe paella is not quite so grim as he makes it out to be but he’s closer to a universal truth about risotto that I hadn’t appreciated before. As for my Pesce Spada, it was delightful.

  “Now, José Antonio. Do we have that second bottle of Vino Nobile or something stronger to bolster our spirits? No pun intended, of course. Allow me to decide. For me, I think a grappa, Signora; the same for you, José Antonio? Yes. Good.”

  Giovanna bustled off, perhaps a little disappointed that she could not sell another of her expensive, and exquisitely profitable, Montepulcianos. Another time, perhaps.

  Wednesday, Monteverde

  The two glasses of grappa arrived, yet again brought to them by Giovanna. They were more than generous in size and both Nelson and José Antonio looked mildly appalled. Nelson even looked around for a suitable potted plant but none were near enough.

  José Antonio shrugged his shoulders, recognising what Nelson wanted to do.

  “I think we will have to drink what she has brought. Anyhow, what do you do next? Do you know?”

  Nelson frowned.

  “As so often you have hit the proverbial nail on its head with your sledgehammer. No, I’m not sure what exactly to do next but I need to start asking questions. That is my task for tomorrow morning. You remember Michele Severino? He is where I will have to start, albeit reluctantly.”

  “Severino … Isn’t he the American banker-turned-Monsignore, despite the Italian name?”

  “That’s him,” confirmed Nelson.

  “The one time I met him, when he was coming out of your study, I can’t say I warmed to him. There was something oily about him. It’s probably just my ignorance of his background but I did not feel good about him. I hope you will tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Sadly no. Your summation is pretty much accurate. Actually, he reminds me of some of the less pleasant chara
cters from the favelas of my youth in San Paolo. He has that disagreeable habit of being awash in public sanctity combined with an air of being equally capable of causing injury. That said, he has been a good servant behind the scenes, delivering of all the parts of the Santofonino credit card payments and banking processes — not something that priests normally know much about.

  “His financial expertise has been invaluable to me and our church. He has smoothed many paths while also keeping us honest and untainted by all the various scandals associated with the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, the ‘Vatican Bank’, as you know the rest of the world prefer to call it.

  “The Holy Father was good enough to accept my recommendation that setting up a different contributions structure was wholly necessary if the shadows of Sindona, Calvi and Marcinkus were not to fall on the Santofonino before its arrival. In truth it was Severino himself who convinced me that we needed to be different. Using the obvious resource of the Vatican Bank was one error I believe we avoided. However, I need to know more.

  “I have, therefore, a request of you, if you don’t object. I think it’s simple but it may not be.”

  “Of course I won’t object. Anything I can do to help and you know you only have to ask.”

  “Thank you. It’s appreciated.”

  Da Ferraz paused.

  “Do you think you can find the man who originally described the HolyPhone idea? His original concept was a stroke of ingenious genius and I have this feeling that we may need more of that before we reach the bottom of what is starting to feel like a deep, deep pit.”

  “You mean the strange Englishman with whom I once had lunch? Yes? But I don’t have his contact details. We never did stay in touch. Shouldn’t you worry that he may be offended that our church took his ideas without any credit accruing to him? But I can certainly try. He did say that he had written the original idea up somewhere. Perhaps it is online, not that I am very good with this Internet thing. However, one of my younger colleagues in the Parish seems to understand what he is doing in the online world. I’ll ask him to help me. Do you want me to make contact if I do find him? Or do you want to do that? I assume you want to talk with him?”