The Accidental Pope

by Ray Flynn

  Bill paused, as though reliving the sequence. “She spoke to me and told me of the challenges that the Church and society face. Now, when it comes to plain old dreams, the Church gets nervous, doesn’t it? Yet think of all the dreams we claim were sent from God after the fact. I’m not saying I’m any kind of scriptural scholar, but remember, I went through seminary with you and learned something there. And I didn’t stop reading when I came here. Heck, I read a book on every fishing trip, not to mention what I read at home. Learning about God’s history with man has always been my favorite subject. I may be a bit odd in my own ideas about the Scriptures, but by God, they are my thoughts! No one else’s.”

  Brian realized he had touched some personal nerve deep within his friend he’d never encountered before. “Bill,” he began after a moment’s contemplation, “I don’t know how to reply. As you obviously noticed, I was somewhat taken aback hearing your first words to me. The notion of a direct communication from God hit me at that moment. So let’s examine it all and see what we have. Tell me how you really, honestly, view all this.”

  Thoughtfully, Bill put one foot in front of the other and walked along the deck toward the bow of the fishing trawler. He paused to look out at the waves gently rolling in on the tide. Then, startled, his eyes fell on the shrine, the “grotto” his dear friend and Portuguese first mate for many years, Rogerio Oliveri, had built on the side of the dock to honor Our Lady of Fatima. It was the ordinary statue displayed in most Portuguese-American homes. It had been there for years before Rogerio was lost at sea after he bought his own boat. The flowers, placed there by Portuguese fishermen, were wilted, but would soon be replaced. Until this moment Bill had ignored them. He thought now of the third prophecy for the beginning of the third millennium, recently revealed to the world outside the Vatican … something about the attempted assassination in 1981 of John Paul II and how it may symbolize an attack on the Church with drastic changes in the world. After a few thoughtful moments, he turned from the grotto and walked back to his friend.

  “Look,” he began, “you’ve always been my closest friend in the world. You know that. You’re the only one who ever accepted me, and Mary, as we were. I guess I’ll never get over the fact that I am a priest who failed to measure up to my vows.”

  Bill looked across the dock and up at the sturdy, cozy home he had built. “Certainly I know God loves and forgives me. But the loss of Mary changed me—and it changed the kids. It makes me wonder, is that all there is to it? I keep asking myself, is God finished with me because of some interpretation of Church law? Or will he show me a new way to minister unto others? I believe, you see, the Church was founded by Christ and we must obey His teachings and rules. It’s just that … I guess I’m confused because I so want to serve Him.”

  Bill took several deep breaths of fresh air to get hold of himself. “So much has changed in the Church. A great deal, as we both know, is not new. It’s merely going back to the way it was in the early centuries.”

  He remained quiet for several moments until Brian prompted him with a question. “What is your message for me to take back to Rome, Bill?”

  Tears welled again in Bill’s eyes and drifted down his weatherworn cheeks. “Cardinal Comiskey, you may tell your colleagues in the conclave that I accept your inspired vote. I feel that’s what it all means. God help us and continue to guide us in all that happens from now on.”

  The cardinal struggled to hold back tears himself. “Are you aware of what you are telling me? Do you have any idea what will happen to you if you accept? I can’t even conceive of the cardinals accepting you. You have no idea of the explosive effect starting at the Vatican and spreading throughout the world were I to go back and tell them this. Are you sure you don’t want to think about it? Discuss it more? I could give you some appalling stories about the inside workings of the Vatican and the back-stabbing that goes on among”—his voice wrung out sarcastically—“these men of God. John Paul I, for instance, died in 1978, just thirty-three days after his election. A lot of people don’t believe it was from natural causes, but autopsies of deceased popes are forbidden. You haven’t a clue what you’d be getting into. It’s a huge institution and it has more than its share of enemies. You surely read about all this Vatican Bank stuff and Nazi gold! That’s why Pope John Paul II’s historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land was so important for us in building on the positive relations between Christians and Jews. A challenge and an opportunity. The chair of St. Peter must be filled by a person of hope and experience.”

  “Wow!” Bill exclaimed. “This is certainly going to be an interesting venture!” His grin reappeared. He was in control again. “It’s like that curve ball I taught you to hit, ol’ buddy. Just step into the sucker and swing.” They both laughed, almost desperately, recalling carefree days at the seminary.

  From above, shattering their mood, they heard Colleen’s shrill voice calling. “Uncle Brian, a phone call for you.” Her voice was unemotional. “Someone is saying Bishop Sean Patrick needs to talk to you.”

  “Ask him to hold on.” Then, “I guess, Bill, we need to talk … a lot … later.” He smiled benevolently. “Your Holiness.”

  “Cut the holiness stuff. You better see what the bishop wants.”

  Brian followed Bill up the steps to the house. Colleen was unimpressed. “The bishop is waiting on the line.”

  Brian nodded, walked to the telephone, and picked it up. “Yes, Sean,” they heard him say. “Harborside Hyatt Hotel?” Brian listened. “I’ll call him, and please don’t go away from your phone until you hear back from me.”

  He hung up and turned to Bill and Colleen. “A friend of mine called. He’s in Boston.” A serious look came over the cardinal’s face. “Have you got another telephone I can use?” He glanced at his watch. One-thirty in the afternoon. Ambassador Kirby was right on time, Brian thought, thankful for his earlier premonition that he might need Ed in Boston.

  “Sure. The children’s phone is out back,” Bill said.

  “When will the kids be home from school?” Brian asked.

  “In half an hour or less,” Colleen answered.

  “How about Ryan?”

  “I guess I know where to reach him,” Colleen said.

  “Get him here as quick as you can,” Brian commanded.

  “Sure, Uncle Brian.” Colleen was aware that something very unusual was in the wind. “I’ll call Ryan from here. Take the other line out back.” Colleen picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

  Brian gave Bill a serious, almost severe look. “You want to brief Colleen before the others get here? Meanwhile I’ll be making some necessary arrangements.”

  Colleen’s voice had a commanding timbre as her brother came on the other end of the line. “Family conference, Ryan. At home. Now!” She hung up imperiously.

  “What’s going on, Uncle Brian? Dad?”

  Bill looked to Brian for support. The cardinal cleared his throat. “I’ll do my telephoning.” He smiled, turned, and left for the back of the house.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Colleen asked coolly.

  “Well, Colleen, I need to go to Rome.”

  “When, Dad?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Why the big rush? I mean, what has Uncle Brian got to do with it?”

  “Well, impossible though it may seem, I’ve been elected pope.”

  “P-p-p-p-pope?” Colleen screamed with laughter. “Daddy, stop kidding me.” She calmed down. “There’s no God, no virgin birth to begin with. But I guess popes get good money. How did you get the nod? They were looking for another fisherman?” She saw the pain in her father’s face but couldn’t stop one last barb. “Dad, remember what happened to the last fisherman who left his family and traipsed off to Rome to become pope? He got nailed upside down to a tree!”

  The depth of his daughter Colleen’s hurt and loss of faith when her mother died had never been so apparent to Bill Kelly. Then she became serious. “Dad, if you have to go to Rome
on business, no problem. Between Ryan and myself we can hold the fort here. I get back and forth to classes at college in time to see that Roger and Meghan get fed and go to bed and do their homework.” Colleen’s eyes sparkled. “I’d love to visit Rome sometime. My course in Renaissance Art and Lit has taught me what to look for in the museums.”

  “If all goes well, you’ll have an apartment in Rome whenever you want it.”

  “Daddy, how exciting! What kind of job has Uncle Brian found for you? It seems like a tough time for him to visit us. Must be important.”

  “I’ll let him explain when the others get here.”

  Ryan arrived within ten minutes of receiving the call from Colleen. Bill thought it best to explain to his two oldest children, before the two younger ones arrived, what might be about to take place.

  Ryan was delighted at being immediately promoted to captain and Colleen assured her father that the house and family would be well looked after. It seemed so far-fetched, so impossible that their father would actually become the pope, that they considered it a family joke, not to be mentioned to anyone without explicit instructions from Bishop Sean Patrick.

  In awe of his decision, Bill Kelly was still trying to explain it to Brian. “I didn’t know exactly how to react to what I knew was an apparition of Our Lady until I saw you. Now I am positive that, as Shakespeare put it in Julius Caesar, ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.’” Bill turned to Brian and Colleen. “Can you understand?”

  Colleen turned a wry smile to Brian. “My father is quite the poet, no?”

  “And now, Your Eminence,” Bill asked, “where do we go from here?”

  “I don’t know the final result, but your next stop is Rome. And we can’t go together. Even though you were elected, the cardinals might figure out a way to go back on their protocol. But if you feel God calling you so urgently, and”—his tone betrayed genuine awe and wonderment—“in the light of this astounding conclave, then be assured I’ll do my part to put you on St. Peter’s throne.”

  Bill nodded. “Your reward is in heaven, Brian.”

  “He’s sounding like some kind of pope already,” Colleen snorted.

  Cardinal Brian Comiskey leveled a long, deadly serious gaze at his old friend. “I know you are and always were a serious-minded fellow, Bill. But what you are embarking on now will change everything forever. Are you ready for the criticism you and your family will endure, justified or not?”

  Bill nodded slowly, somberly, and bowed his head.

  “This is the highest prolife position and you will be wide open to constant criticism and abuse from the enemies of the Church. Look what the press does to the priesthood and the profile politicians, never mind the pope. One slipup in your family and it’s instant and sustained headlines. Are you absolutely convinced that you know what you are doing? Are you prepared to share the consequences, good or bad, exhilarating or soul-searing, that will shape your life from this moment on?”

  Bill drew a deep breath. “I am more aware than you can imagine of what I have chosen to confront in accepting, in not denying, this God-decreed mission. Without realizing it, I have been preparing for this quest most of my life. But without my children I would be hard-pressed to carry out this mandate. God’s call, perhaps.”

  Ignoring the plea, Brian continued relentlessly. “Others, I’m sorry to say, will grumble that it is the Devil’s handiwork.”

  “I’ll make them understand that God’s joke is in reality God’s call,” Bill pursued.

  “So it is, then,” Brian breathed. “All right, let me make a plane reservation for myself on the evening flight to Rome and then call back the gentleman you are going to get to know very well these next few days. If the conclave abides by its rules, this gentleman, the American ambassador to the Vatican, will be extremely important in your life. Are you ready to meet him over there tomorrow? Ambassador Kirby will see that you get there, if you still choose to accept the offer. And bear in mind, dear old friend, the college of cardinals could yet rescind it.”

  “Brian, I believe sincerely that I must go. If God changes his mind, then it is not that I will have spurned him.”

  “All right,” Brian sighed. “OK. The worst that can happen is that you get a free visit to Rome.” He realized that in all liklihood the story of the conclave farce must eventually surface. But he was counting on being back in his relatively quiet native Ireland when the news broke. And Bill would secretly have arrived back in Buzzards Bay as clandestinely he had reached the eternal city.

  “Now, do we have time for some of Colleen’s lobster stew before I am off?”

  10

  KIRBY CHECKS IN

  The telephone ringing in his room at Logan Airport’s Harborside Hyatt Hotel interrupted the noon Channel 4 news broadcast Ed Kirby was watching. An interview with Cardinal Comiskey from that morning was the lead story. Knowledgeable people whom the station contacted for their expert and considered opinions offered wild speculations. By then it was known that Comiskey had been driven to Fall River to meet with the respected Bishop Sean Patrick. Was some information needed about Boston’s Cardinal Cushman, as he was on the verge of being elected, that only Bishop McCarrick could supply?

  The Boston Herald and the New York Post reported that a highly placed source had been informed that a major scandal was unfolding within the Church, and that Cardinal Comiskey had come to the United States carrying $50,000 to try to settle it before it became public.

  Another story amused Kirby when he read in the New York Times that the State Department had been trying to locate him to help explain the confusion at the conclave. An unnamed top State Department source said that he had left Rome and they didn’t know where he had gone. Nobody had suggested, however, that it had anything to do with the papal election.

  Kirby was deeply concerned at the article. Although he had spent several years successfully turning back State Department efforts to discredit him, it was disquieting to once again read himself publicly targeted by the denizens of Foggy Bottom with innuendos that indicated he was not doing his job.

  The ambassador was following all developments closely as reported in the Rome press. He had read the newspaper reports on his flight from Rome and was watching reruns of the airport interviews with Brian Comiskey. Each statement the cardinal made was notable for its dearth of information.

  On the second ring Kirby snatched the telephone up. Brian was returning the call put through to the bishop. He listened attentively as Brian relayed his instructions.

  “It’s lucky I went to college in the area you’re talking about,” Ed said.

  “You once told me that the best place to go to college to get a good education and play big-time college basketball was Providence College, so I knew you were familiar with this area,” Brian replied with a laugh. “Now I’m going to put you on with Bill directly. The two of you decide where you should pick him up in a rental car.”

  When Ed Kirby had finished speaking to Bill Kelly, he went into action. He was an old hand at working out travel plans incognito, having been both the key member of the Democratic National Committee during two presidential campaigns and a streetwise Chicago politician. He’d had to make travel plans for Vice President Humphrey in the 1968 campaign during the violent anti-Vietnam protests by Students for a Democratic Society radicals. His vast experience had made him a very alert and expert planner.

  For a reason Ed could not fathom, Comiskey wanted a New England fisherman named Kelly brought to Rome immediately and in great secrecy. Had he not known his fellow Irishman so well he would have thought the cardinal was playing games with him, perhaps using the ambassador to throw off the scent of the press bloodhounds.

  * * *

  In Buzzards Bay, Brian’s last attempt to dissuade Bill proved unsuccessful. With steadying hugs from Meghan and Colleen Kelly, Brian left the house. It remained sunny
this memorable October fourth, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Brian felt he had executed his assignment as well as it could be done.

  Bishop Sean Patrick was waiting as Brian, smiling and nodding to the horde of journalists who had tracked him down to Fall River, laughed inwardly. The press had missed turning up even a hint of the real story in Buzzards Bay. Father Charlie Burke was standing with Bishop Sean Patrick. The cardinal climbed out of the car he had borrowed earlier and strode toward them.

  “I guess you won’t have any time to visit with us, Brian.” The bishop glanced at his watch. “It may take a while to get to the airport in this afternoon traffic.” Brian turned to Father Burke. “Charlie, could you wait in the car for me? I just need to speak to the bishop a moment.”

  “Of course, Your Eminence.”

  Inside the bishop’s residence Brian pulled a long white envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to the bishop. “I’m sorry about the reporters and cameras all over your residence, Sean. Put this in your desk drawer and don’t take it out until it’s time to open it.”

  “And when will that be, Brian?”

  “I know it sounds odd, but I’m sure you will know exactly when to open it. Trust me on this one. And, Sean Patrick, let me apologize again for not being able to spend some time with you on this special day.”

  As Sean Patrick slapped the envelope meditatively against the palm of his left hand, Brian left the perplexed bishop looking after him and walked out to his car.

  The ride to the airport with Father Burke broke all records. They left a wake of pursuing media vehicles and made it all the way to Quincy, on the outskirts of Boston, before being stopped by a state trooper. The combination of a Roman collar, a short explanation and a supportive officer facilitated a high-speed run through the Ted Williams Tunnel and over the final mile to Logan Airport. Cardinal Comiskey thanked the trooper, noting that he had forty-five minutes left before takeoff time.

  He checked through the ticketing area, then sat down in the boarding area of Alitalia Airlines. He would have liked to meet with Ed Kirby on the Cape, but the ambassador and Bill Kelly were on a tight schedule themselves, driving to Kennedy Airport in New York in time to catch the late flight to Rome. Besides, the chances of being seen by the press and perhaps being traced to a meeting with the ambassador would have been deadly, both for Kirby’s diplomatic status and the media speculations on what the cardinal and the ambassador were doing together in Boston during the conclave at the Vatican.