The HolyPhone Confessional Crisis

by Charles Brett

  That Italian had had many of the marks of a Spaniard trying to speak Italian — ending words with consonants rather than the musical vowels of Italy. José Antonio had asked if he spoke Spanish and was surprised to hear a fluent response in a Madrid accent. He did not look Spanish.

  They had then started talking and, within an hour, they were still at it. José Antonio remembered the man’s first name, Davide. This, he had learnt later, was spelt in the Italian way, not the Spanish. According to Davide, his mother, now long dead, had preferred the more musical Davide to either the Spanish or English versions of David. He had been christened Davide even though he and his Spanish friends used David.

  As they continued to talk, Davide looked at his watch. José Antonio remembered he had thought Davide must be about to rush off, which he knew he would regret, as it was not often that he could speak his native tongue outside church circles. Davide had surprised him a second time by asking if there was somewhere reasonable and Italian, not full of tourists, where he might have lunch — and would the good Father join him as his guest? José Antonio was delighted to accept. He recommended a small trattoria nearby where the food was simple but tasty.

  Early on in the lunch they had finally introduced themselves. José Antonio had taken the initiative because he sensed that the man whom he only knew as Davide was hesitant in using Father.

  “Call me José Antonio, please,” he had suggested. “Forget the Father bit, especially as I am your guest.”

  Mutual introductions over, José Antonio discovered that Davide’s father was English, but had lived either in Madrid or close by since his mid-twenties. Only after his Spanish wife died did he return to England, though not very successfully, and there he succumbed when Davide was twenty-two and in his last year at university. Since then Davide had used his competence in English and Spanish to work in various places around the world, including Mexico, Argentina, the Philippines and Singapore. If José Antonio recalled correctly Davide was some sort of software or computer expert whose skills were in demand.

  The conversation flowed on. It was friendly and agreeable until José Antonio received the shock that was even now affecting him. Apparently Davide had written a light-hearted description of how the Catholic Church could save itself, improve its finances and make its staff happier. As Davide appeared uncomfortable with almost everything clerical or ecclesiastical, except church buildings themselves, this had struck José Antonio as odd. But, being polite, he had asked Davide to tell him more.

  Davide had then embarked on a short description involving mobile phones, confessionals, human resources, something called a confessional call centre and sin analysis. It had, he admitted to himself, been a rather entertaining if bizarrely other-worldly description, but not an inaccurate appraisal of some of the church’s woes.

  They had chatted for some time and could have continued for much longer, but José Antonio had had to return to prepare for a baptism in the late afternoon with remembrances to follow. Davide had given him a business card, with an Internet reference on the back, to something he called a blog. Father Giorgio also had a blog, now that he thought about it.

  Some days later, having joined Nelson for one of their irregular dinners, he recalled this agreeable lunch and its unexpected subject matter. Nelson was initially amused by the concept, particularly the notion of making money from sins. He had asked for the blog reference and José Antonio had given him the business card and thought no more about Davide or what he had described.

  Then the Santofonino concept had appeared, with Nelson asking if José Antonio would assist by participating in trying it out at Santa Maria. All had rolled on from there.

  A stray memory surfaced. Clearly Nelson had lost the business card. But HolyPhone was a not exactly a common phrase. He entered it into Google. Bad idea. Multiple references scrolled down the page, referring to the HolyPhone concept and what the Vatican had implemented. Too general.

  He thought again. What about Davide and sin analysis? To his amazement item number three on his new Google search referred to a blog with the author’s name given as Davide Shape. Could it really be the same? He clicked on the reference and was taken to a website with a miniature photo of someone who might have been Davide. He could not remember. More importantly it showed a text entitled, “Could TechOptimization+mobility automate the confessional and save the church?”

  Thursday, Monteverde

  José Antonio decided to read on, even though his English was not great.

  “In various forms of Christianity (most notably the Roman Catholic Church) confessing your sins plays a major role in the life of both priests and congregation. Yet this is, in business terms, an awkward and inefficient process. This analysis considers how (hypothetically) technology optimization — combining mobile phone, VOIP, call center and CRM technologies — could help the faithful, solve a long-term manpower problem and open up huge revenue opportunities (even if many of the latter would have Martin Luther turning in his grave).”

  José Antonio had no idea what a VOIP or CRM was. He would have to ask Father Giorgio. He did recognise, however, the phrase ‘call center’ — one of those infernal places you telephoned too often to obtain too little real help. He continued.

  “In the regular life of the Roman Catholic believer everyone is supposed to go to church to confess his or her sins to the priest, have penances administered and obtain absolution. When you enter most Roman Catholic Churches there is at least one confessional (booth) in which a priest will sit while the sinner (if you have not sinned you do not need to confess, but it is almost impossible not to be a sinner) kneels outside and talks through a grill (to preserve anonymity) about all the ill-deeds he or she has committed. The priest listens, decides what recompense (penance) the sinner must make — perhaps the recitation of twenty Hail Marys and a couple of Lord’s Prayers or to make selected readings from the Bible — and then he offers absolution. Once the penances are complete the sinner is sinless — and ready to start afresh.

  “Why is this inefficient? To start with, a sinner cannot confess without a priest present. This means that a priest must be available. But sinners do not make appointments to sin or even to confess their sins.

  “At the same time the Roman Catholic Church is suffering a serious serial decline in men offering themselves to become priests while at the same time and more and more existing priests are retiring. With fewer priests and just as many churches and faithful it becomes harder to confess. To make matters worse, the Roman Catholic Church has plentiful assets (think of its nine hundred churches in Rome alone or the Vatican treasures) but income (contributions from the faithful) is not rising as fast as costs (including those related to maintaining those assets, many of which are elderly and need special care).”

  José Antonio paused. The above resembled the crisp summary of the church’s position that he recalled Davide discussing at lunch, though expressed in a colder, pitiless way that he did not much like.

  “The business picture is clear. Possessing an inefficient manual process combined with an increasing shortage of staff plus falling income is not a good place to be.

  “Yet the church might be able to help itself. How? With a liberal dose of modern technology optimization. Rather than have a priest in a confessional, why not install a ‘smartphone’ (aka a ‘HolyPhone’ perhaps) in each confessional? The sinner would still come to church, go to the confessional, and he or she would press the ‘start-to-confess’ button. By using WiFi or 2G/3G/4G a VOIP session would be opened to what might be called the VCCC (or Vatican Confessional Call Center), where a priest would take the call, hear the confession, administer the penances, provide absolution and end the call.

  “This is a straightforward application of modern mobile and other technologies to solve multiple problems. Think of some of the additional possibilities. As soon as the call arrives at the VCCC the latter could ask in which language you wish to confess, and direct you to an Italian, Spanish, French or ot
her suitably language-equipped priest.

  “If the Vatican were to issue anonymous ‘confess-cards’ in advance, which the HolyPhone could read (QR codes, possibly), the use of CRM would enable the priest hearing the confession at the VCCC to bring up the sinner’s past sins (still anonymously), add the new sins, and apply more sophisticated sin-remediation penances (in theory improving the spiritual quality of the sinner, who would sin less — though whether this is a desirable business objective for the Roman Catholic Church could be debated). If the confess-cards had a credit or debit card authorization associated, the priest hearing confession might offer to substitute some of those Hail Marys for, say, a financial contribution to the church. This would be electronically processed with authorization at the HolyPhone (through Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal) and the contribution going straight into the Vatican’s coffers.

  “While this payment process might be innovative, the underlying concept would not be — Martin Luther railed against the selling of indulgences (in effect buying-off your sins) in the 16th Century.”

  José Antonio reflected that business-English was as arid as business-Italian was artificially florid. Nevertheless he recognised how closely the author had presented a vision of what the Santofonino had become. He was becoming intrigued, almost in spite of himself, even though words like QR codes and PayPal meant nothing to him. He even agreed that Martin Luther would have indeed been spinning in circles in his grave and that this captured the essence of the doctrinal arguments from those who had resisted the Santofonino.

  “At a stroke the Roman Catholic Church would solve three of its most critical problems — provision of confessional services, manpower challenges and income. In addition it would improve its services to sinners. By building, via the VCCC, an ever richer database of sins committed would create a resource that could be data-mined for trends about sins as well as penance optimization.

  “In turn this could have additional favorable consequences. Penances would be matched to sins and quantity of sins (though, arguably, this could also have dangers — possibly reducing the incentive to go to confession regularly). Additional income could arrive via selling broad data analysis of sins (and preferences) to retailers (think Walmart, Tesco, Carrefour, etc.) and even to governments (for sociological trends).

  “A further logical extension could envision opening a special confessional Skype or Google Voice phone number — which the faithful could use from their own personal mobile phone. This would have the advantage of replacing the infrastructure and connection cost from confessional to the VCCC whilst still enabling the VOIP session to the VCCC. Signing up for the anonymous confess-card ID could be as simple as via a web site, which would also take the payment card details (whilst preserving anonymity — the confess-card ID would be the only unique identifier).

  “Does this all sound too fanciful or hypothetical? Go and read the WSJ of May 15 with its description of the services now offered by Coastal Bank of North Carolina. Technology Optimization combined with mobility is going to impact enterprises and customers in ways you might never have contemplated … Mobility is opening up new possibilities for all sorts of enterprise businesses.”

  José Antonio finished the piece. He was shocked. First it had used the expression “analysis of sins”; sin analysis was what he remembered but this was pretty close. Second, he had not realised just how faithfully Nelson and his team had adopted the basic concepts. Although confess-cards were not SinCards, which were what some of faithful used, pretty much everything else was. Third, he wondered if this Davide Shape was really his host at lunch and if he was whether he knew that his ideas had been so faithfully copied.

  He turned back to the computer. He decided to print not only the blog but also the contact details from the site. He could not be 100 per cent certain it was the same Davide, but it must be at least 99 per cent. He wondered what to do next. Call Nelson? Probably, but he would need to be discreet.

  He picked up his personal telefonino. He had initially resisted such modernity until he found out that mobile phones made life so much simpler for parish priests. Now he could not be without it. Indeed his greatest challenge was remembering to charge it every night. Somehow including an admonition to plug it in as part of his before bed devotions seemed wrong, almost graceless.

  “Father Federico. It’s Father José Antonio in Monteverde. May the Lord’s Blessing be with you too. Is His Eminence available? Would you give him a message? Say that I think I have found what he asked me for and he can call me whenever he has a moment. No. It’s not urgent. He’ll know what to do. Buon giorno.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thursday, Vatican City

  Michele found himself back in the modest office within the Vatican City complex to which he was entitled. When he needed to impress he used his apartment in Parioli. When needing to appear as a modest part of the whole church government he used his Vatican hole, as he privately referred to it. It was neither smart nor spacious but, as befitted a recently promoted Monsignore, it was simple, white, clean and secure.

  In truth he did not remember walking to it from the cardinal’s apartment, so lost in thought was he. How did the man have such a nose for something wrong? No wonder the Holy Father relied on him.

  But, Michele re-assured himself, he was in the driving seat. Da Ferraz had made him the agent of discovery and proof. Thus he, Michele, controlled whatever would be investigated and he was certain he could point matters in the right direction and keep da Ferraz fat, happy and dumb as his fellow traders at Lehman’s would have put it.

  Nevertheless, he had some thinking to do in order to come up with a plan credible enough to make certain the Santofonino income appeared squeaky clean whilst still continuing to achieve his other objectives. The immediate issue was how to seem to deliver what da Ferraz was asking. This was an opportunity to be creative, the one aspect of his financial background in which he knew he was genuinely special.

  He did not sit at his desk. He paced up and down, down and up and even roundabout — though there was not really enough room. Access to a cool cloister would have been far preferable. Sadly they did not hand these out to minor clerics like him.

  His ideas began to sort themselves in his mind. First, he needed that short-term action plan for the meeting with da Ferraz in the coming week. Second, he must alert those special colleagues with whom he had been working that significant dangers existed. Third, he began to think that a meeting of the special colleagues would be useful. If everyone shared awareness and then applied themselves to creating a convincing solution all should be well. There had never before been such a meeting but the amount of income was now so big and their different causes so important that he sensed this would be a time to press the big yellow alert button.

  Where to meet now became the issue. Italy was out. Spain probably was too. Prelates of any form were too visible and known by too many people in both countries. Though for different specific reasons so was the East Coast of the United States and anywhere further west was too painful to reach. While the prospect did not please him, Israel was probably the logical place.

  But this might mean involving Ledda. This was a weak point.

  Except da Ferraz had indicated he was afraid that there was a Mafia connection. He wondered if they could exploit Ledda to mislead and point not to an Italian Mafia connection but a Russian or Balkan one. This was an appealing concept, one that could also offer the possibility of removing all risk of Ledda blackmailing Michele in the future, which was a fear he retained.

  There was another personal reservation. He had not seen Miriam since after they both lost out in the great financial crash and joined countless other victims who saw their jobs and wealth on Wall Street wiped out. He was still happy he had involved her. She was creative. But now that he was celibate, he was not sure how he, or she, would react.

  He knew that her third marriage had recently collapsed. Indeed, he had unintentionally contributed to the collapse of the second
one, though it had already seemed rocky. She appeared to need both a crutch and a crotch to lean on (not a very priestly way to put it, but no matter). He really did not need that sort of additional complication.

  Yet he could not avoid recalling their mutual if now forbidden to him pleasures. She was a sensual woman who knew it, and who knew how to make the most of her gifts. He presumed he could resist. Even so, he was not totally convinced, especially if he was out of his clerical uniform as he would need to be.

  He opened his laptop. Some quick emails were required and these would need encryption. No, it would be better to send simple clear text so that any chance examination would not raise the sort of questions that encrypted messages easily prompted. Sending financial information in encrypted form was okay and he was always happy to decrypt them if asked. But explaining the emails he was about to send, if encrypted, might be harder. Simple text was best. Hide the meaning in clear sight as the bank’s security people had taught.

  He brought up his email application. Thankfully he had organised in advance one special email address for everyone. Just using this was an initial indicator of an alarm or problem. He hoped that each of his collaborators still kept an eye open for this account, even if it did not do much except attract spam.

  He wrote the emails. They were short, stating that he had a minor medical issue and was going to Belvoir on Thursday week. If each visited on the Friday afternoon he would be delighted. Then he sent the emails to Miriam, her sister’s husband and the Condesa. Now he would wait.