The HolyPhone Confessional Crisis

by Charles Brett

  Thursday, Vatican City

  Da Ferraz returned to his study from a regular Curial meeting. These were essential, but were usually neither entertaining nor interesting. Too many in the Vatican loved to play clerical bureaucrat, as if this gave them an infinite reason to exist. He did not agree. He was more interested in the health and long-term well-being of his Mother Church and how it supported its faithful.

  As he entered his study Father Federico joined him. For the next two hours they went through his in-tray — yes, even cardinals had in-trays and, more importantly, an out-tray, and its companion the DIU tray (for Discard-Immediately-as-Useless) — and his diary. Astonishingly, apart from one dinner for a fellow Brazilian bishop who was visiting, his evening commitments were light this week. This was a rarity, one that he would exploit by some leisure reading, accompanied by a good Bordeaux from the Vatican Cellars. That was one of the unsung benefits of being a cardinal, access to a panoply of wines that had been well bought.

  As the formal exchange with his secretary wound down, Father Federico asked about how the lunch with Monsignor Helmut had passed. Nelson looked at Father Federico. He did not need to be suspicious. He knew that, behind his austere exterior, Father Federico delighted in da Ferraz’s private descriptions of his fellow priests, and the more acid the better.

  It had become almost a tradition. Father Federico would arrange meetings to minimise the pain to Nelson and as a reward Nelson had to provide the acerbic commentary. Equally unsaid was the ever-present threat. If you do not entertain me afterwards I will make sure you get the bores, one by one. He had once commented on this to Father Federico, who had smiled so innocently that no piece of butter would have dared to melt in such a mouth.

  “Well. Where do I start? I think by thanking you for asking Sister Clara to join us. That was a stroke of genius.

  “Did you know that Helmut is scared of women, even those in Holy Orders? You probably did. She was a dream. She challenged him from the first moment and it was pure pleasure to watch him squirm. But what was even more satisfying was seeing him lose his threads of thought. He can think. Normally he is a model of clarity in presenting any proposition, albeit in that thick Viennese accent of his.

  “Today over the salad he was agreeably underwhelming. I did not have to say much except gently encouraging Sister Clara to continue. During the pasta he began to recover his poise, perhaps because it was spaghetti and that forced Sister Clara to concentrate on eating it, permitting him to re-arrange his mental gears. By the time we reached the meat he had recovered, forgetting me in his enthusiasm to explain to her why she was wrong. The effect – and you must remind me to send Sister Clara a personal note of appreciation – was that when our espressos arrived there was no longer enough time to discuss whatever it was he wanted to lecture me about. Do you happen to know what is was? Important?”

  Father Federico shook his head whilst the rest of him quivered in amusement at Nelson’s description.

  “I thought not. Well, a certainly tedious formal meeting turned into an entertainment over lunch for me. Obrigado.”

  “Prego.

  “One other thing, Eminence, while I remember. Father José Antonio called late this morning, saying he’d found something you wanted. He did not think it was important enough to leave a message. He just said that you could call him back whenever suited you. He didn’t seem very bothered.”

  “I should call. I did ask him to look for a document that we once argued over. I imagine that he put Father Giorgio on to it, given José Antonio’s reluctance to make use of the Internet. You remember that I told you what José Antonio was telling me, of Father Giorgio’s conviction that social media and Facebook and Twitter are the way forward to a new Jerusalem? He may be right. The Holy Father now has his own Twitter handle, though who knows who actually writes what goes out under his name? Thus far that remains one of the Vatican’s better kept secrets.

  “Thank you, Father Federico. I think I will pause now, to pray and to think. I will see you tomorrow at breakfast.”

  Father Federico departed. He was puzzled about José Antonio’s call but neither his cardinal nor the parish priest seemed to make a fuss of it. At least now he could catch the bus across Rome to his modest church apartment near San Giovanni di Laterano. He wondered what his mother was cooking for dinner and hoped she would not start to whine about the cost of tomatoes or pasta, as was happening ever more often. The dementia was still at an early stage and mostly she was okay. Yet the doctors had confirmed two weeks previously that the long-term progression was only downhill, unless a miracle occurred. After more than twenty years in the Vatican he knew that miracles were more common in the deceased (and when not needed) and were sadly too rare when required in real life.

  Thursday, Rome

  “José Antonio. It’s Nelson. I gather you found what I asked you to look for. Great. I’ve changed my mind a little. Would you mind making the initial contact and see if he might come to Rome? I’ll cover any expenses.”

  “But, Nelson. Have you not thought about his reaction when he knows how we have used his ideas? Might he not be offended? Might not our church be open to legal action or at least embarrassment?”

  “I’m not worried about that. It was a public document, yes? So his ideas were out in the open. We’re not exposed. Indeed, on thinking about this, why not ask if he would like to see his ideas in action in Santa Maria? That would be innocent enough.”

  “Va bene. I will email this evening and be in touch if I receive a reply.”

  Thursday, Madrid

  In Madrid Inmaculada Concepción, Condesa de Arenas de Ávila, prepared for bed. It had been a tiring day and the email from Michele had taken her by surprise. Just receiving such a message indicated that something was wrong. She would have to wait until the following week before learning what. Unfortunately, now was not a good time for uncertainty.

  As a relatively senior member of Opus Dei, an organisation within the organisation of the Catholic Church, she knew the latter in Spain was about to find itself in deep trouble. Franco was still reaching out from his grave in the Valle de los Caidos to diminish, admittedly without intending to, her beloved church. His policy of encouraging the forcible taking of babies from Republican mothers and giving those to good Nationalist women who would not otherwise conceive might have seemed clever back in the 1940s and later.

  Today it seemed heartless at best and a public relations disaster in the making as information increasingly spilled out.

  At the same time the scandals about priests molesting children that had come to light in Ireland, in the United States, in Holland, in Germany and in too many other places were about to surface in Spain. The cost to the Spanish Church was going to be horrendous, both in terms of reputation and the price of making payoffs. Thank goodness her patrón, Mariano, had foreseen the possibilities and had secretly started Opus Dei down a path of saving for what was going to be an extremely rainy series of years in a country where, at least according to George Bernard Shaw, “the rain fell mainly on the plain”.

  Inma – for that is what she told everyone who knew her well to call her – was reasonably self-aware. That was one of the strengths of Opus Dei and the church. It trained you to know yourself. At the same time as being a devout Catholic she was also a professional, a specialist in the arcane part of finance known as reinsurance. Another of the strengths of Opus Dei was the way in which the saintly Josémaria Escrivá, its founder, had promoted work and encouraged lay members to have careers and to use their consequent influence for the benefit of Opus Dei and the church. To some this made it a secret society, even though Pope John Paul II had approved it and the concept of its leader assuming a personal prelature.

  That she was a countess was an accident, one which she would much have preferred to avoid. Now in her early forties she had a long, almost prototypically miserable Spanish face that might have been taken from Ribera or Velazquez. That lugubrious face, however, could change in an i
nstant when she smiled or laughed with true pleasure, something that few saw often.

  When born she was the third of the five official children sired by her father. The oldest two were boys. As she grew up, Jorge – the eldest – was being groomed by his father to become the fourth count on the latter’s death and to assume all the pretentions of a typical middle-ranking, largely cash-absent Spanish noble family with too many commitments based on too many financially useless assets. That Jorge had followed their father’s example in growing up to be a hopeless spendthrift was hardly surprising.

  What nobody had expected was Jorge would be in a car driven by their younger brother, Jesús, which would be hit by a 30-ton articulated truck on a rainy night on the A6 between Ávila and Madrid. The truck driver was over the drink limit. He survived and received a jail sentence. Her brothers, for once, were both sober, as Jesús also liked to party. Each died instantly.

  Aged twenty-three, about to commit herself to Opus Dei and just beginning her career in reinsurance, she had found that she was going to inherit the obligations of being countess on her father’s death — with responsibility for her mother, sisters, and all the many and other various forms that she had never expected. To make matters worse, her father had already been drinking himself towards a premature grave. That grave beckoned even earlier with the loss of the two boys, which accelerated while breaking the heart of their mother. Within two years both had joined their sons in the family tomb. She unwillingly was proclaimed as la Condesa de Arenas de Ávila.

  Her two sisters had tried to give support, but they were still in their teens and struggling, not least with their names. Their mother had inflicted on her daughters, and even as a good Christian Inma could not think of it any other way than inflict, the names Immaculate Conception, Sorrows of the Virgin, and Purification. In twenty-first century Spain these sounded wildly out of date. In English, French or Italian they were downright ridiculous. She was thankful that Inma was an acceptable shortening of Inmaculada Concepción, and she did her best to hide the reality. In that the title of countess was useful at all, it was for making restaurant reservations and being upgraded for free on flights.

  Her years between twenty-five and thirty-five had been all about hard work, with minimal time for herself except when participating in Opus Dei. Looking back she knew she had succeeded, though she was never quite sure how much Opus Dei assistance behind the scenes had helped. Not only had she become the first female director of a Spanish reinsurance company but she had rescued the family finances. By judicious disposals of most of the properties that her grandfather and father had clung on to even when all these amounted to, from an income perspective, was an annual tax bill she had paid off all family debts and still found enough for extravagant weddings for first Dolores and then Purificación.

  For her the end result was a small decent finca estate located on the southern side of the Gredos mountains, near where Carlos I was buried, a large apartment as well as a smaller one in Madrid. The larger apartment she rented out to various diplomats or business people posted to Madrid, who paid well for its central location. This produced a substantial income each year, which she paid to Opus Dei.

  The smaller apartment she now used herself. For a long time she had lived in Opus Dei housing, as Numeraries were obliged to do. When she had to do more business entertaining she had moved out and now was classed as an Associate, in Opus Dei terms.

  Besides the sudden summons to Belvoir and its possible implications for Opus Dei and her church in Spain, the only cloud on her horizon was an increasing sense of discomfort that she could not quite pin down. It was almost as if all those personal feelings that she had denied herself so successfully when she became celibate for Opus Dei were determined to find an exit.

  What made this worse was she knew, despite her unattractive face with its tortoiseshell glasses and the deepest black hair, her years of exercise to sublimate physical temptation combined with an absence of the ungenerous after-effects of pregnancy, meant she had created a stunning body shape. Of this she was both ashamed and proud. She was, when she admitted it to herself, almost voluptuous. But this was the self-disciplined voluptuousness produced by thousands of hours in the gym, which had produced a finely-toned, flexible body. It was exactly not the casual excess of flesh of a Rubens or Titian.

  Yet she deliberately dressed badly to hide this, despite her 1m 70 height, tall for her generation in Spain. For some reason she had not inherited that native elegant Spanish taste that possessed her sisters. Even now they laughed at just how poor her dress sense was, not seeing that this was a form of camouflage that had served her well within Opus Dei and in her business career. No one could accuse her of glamour or of sleeping her way to the top. She had never slept with anyone except her mother and her sisters when she was young.

  Before getting into bed she could not resist a moment admiring herself in the mirror. Though sinful, she thought she would be spared too much damnation for such an innocent, and very private, sin. She was not thin. If anything she was heavy in the hips and thighs, compared to her sisters. But there was not a trace of fat.

  Thursday, New Jersey

  Miriam Smith was in a foul mood. She had just finished a ten-mile run in a poor time, perhaps because it had been raining and she was sodden and cold. The email about Belvoir had turned a bad day into what was shaping up to be an awful one. The last thing she needed was to have to pay for an international flight and then sit on a plane for twelve hours to go see, amongst others, an ex-lover-turned-priest and a sister who had gone local and to seed.

  “What a mess,” she said to herself. But she had no choice. Her father’s ‘movement’ desperately needed the monies that supported the promotion of his version of an imminent Second Coming, his The Lord’s Church of the Second Coming with Our Redemption. Without external financial support his particular form of fundamentalist Christian Zionism would simply fall apart. Sometimes she just wished she had never heard of Orde Wingate. Yet, curiously, she would be booking her United Airlines ticket to the one place in the world where they seemed to venerate him.

  The only good element in all this was that her father could not come. He would love to, but she could not tell him where she was going, and of course he had his Ministry to sustain. That this was in West Virginia was another blessing: it was far enough away that he was not able to drop by. Given her social life, which was a mess yet again, this counted as a big plus.

  She took stock while drying after her shower.

  Her third marriage had recently hit the wall. She should never have married John, but cohabiting in sin was not a proposition he could cope with (nor her father, for that matter). While sex with him had been rewarding, at least initially, living with him had turned into a living purgatory. The fact that he was the one who had walked out, protesting that he could take no more of “all that Christian Zionist crap”, had saved the day.

  At least she still possessed her own place to live, a decent enough house in a suburban part of New Jersey that she had paid for long ago. She still made a reasonable income from being a realtor.

  Yet the sad truth was that she missed the buzz of Wall Street. That had come to a messy end with the collapse of Lehman Brothers when she and many others had been ‘let go’, ‘given her pink slip’ or whatever other euphemism management chose. She still thanked that boyfriend from college who had been taking his own state realtor exams and who had encouraged her to do the same while introducing her to many varieties of sexual possibility as they studied together. Given their mutual distraction it was a miracle that either had passed their exams.

  Those qualifications had come in handy when there was no other income after the bank crashed and burned. Nevertheless, selling and renting property during a financial crisis was hardly making her rich.

  Then she had received a call from Michele Severino. His method of coping with the financial meltdown had been bizarre. It was to start down the path to becoming a Roman Catholic priest. Sh
e did not understand then — and even less now — that he was ordained. But by some trick, or clever use of his background as a second generation Italian with good Chicago Catholic connections, he had ended up in Rome — advising on banking of all things. Some people had all the luck, though having to commit to being celibate was not something she could consider.

  Michele had once commented, in those brief months before Lehman collapsed and taken their mutual attractions with it, that she had a sexual appetite as broad as a Great Lake. She was still unsure if this was a compliment or not. She took it to be because she knew she was demanding. She needed sex often, which was the real reason she had married number three.

  The one thing, unlike some of those Hollywood actors, she knew she could not afford was sex addiction therapy. She also knew, deep inside where it mattered most, that even if she could afford it she would not waste her money on denying a facet of herself that gave so much pleasure, even if it brought subsequent pain.

  Three marriages and all had been worthless. Might she and Michele have made it? They had shared the same outright lust (passion was too generous) as well as a common interest in money. But that was in the past, especially with him being some form of fancy priest and no longer allowed to have a sex life.

  That call of his to God had, however unexpectedly, opened up other opportunities. Her father had long been pressing her to help his church. She sort of believed in Christian Zionism, the notion that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and even the creation of the country of Israel, conformed to biblical prophecy. The idea that an ‘ingathering’ of Jews to Israel was a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus seemed ridiculous to her. But her father’s obsession with Orde Wingate, the successful British general who as a deeply religious Christian saw it as his religious and moral duty to re-establish the Jews in Palestine, only added a dimension to her father’s conviction that he was one of the world’s great preachers and teachers.