The Accidental Pope

by Ray Flynn

  Motupu smiled ruefully and shrugged. “So I decided to come back here. This was my rectory when I was a priest. I sent the new pastor to live in my comparatively sumptuous place in the capital and had my things sent back here where I feel comfortable. I do all my paperwork here and only go to the city for solemn occasions or for meetings with visiting bishops and priests.”

  “And do you appear at these meetings in the habit in which you greeted us?” Cardinal Bellotti asked.

  “No, Your Eminence. That was for the cameras. It does wonders for my priests and deacons out in the villages to see their cardinal appear sometimes as one of them as well as in his grand Italianate robes.”

  Monsignor Cippolini looked around the spacious thatched building, a dubious expression on his face. Motupu chuckled. “I thought you would prefer the quiet surroundings out here where we are closer to the outlying parishes. I want you to visit some of them before we go on to the Republic of Congo and its restless neighboring states where the serious problems lie.”

  “As you know, we have over twenty people with us, Gus,” Al said. “I thought we were all staying on a floor of the new hotel in Luanda.”

  “Oh a floor of the new hotel is reserved for all of you,” Motupu assured the papal housekeeper. “I just wanted everyone to see the real Africa, where we have the bulk of our work to do.”

  “Good thinking, Gus,” the pope complimented him. “I, for one, will stay out here with you and work the territory.”

  A worried look came over Tim Shanahan’s wide, usually cheerful features. “Your Eminence,” he addressed the African cardinal, “while we know that for the moment this area is safe, between power struggles for a time, at least, do you think it safe or even dignified for His Holiness to be ‘camping out,’ so to speak?”

  “Ninety-nine percent of the African population would consider this luxurious beyond compare.” Motupu swept the round structure with a gesture. “I am trying to give you a feel for what the Church faces on this continent.”

  “Gus, you’re right,” the pope agreed. Then to Shanahan and a shocked Bellotti he avowed, “I’ll stay out here with our cardinal and start trying to comprehend the problems we have to contend with. I’m just sorry Ed Kirby isn’t with us.”

  “The U.S. State Department would finally have managed to fire him if he had come along,” Tim said. “The situation is so volatile here, with one dictator overturning the next and competition among the great powers so intense for a piece of the mineral wealth here that the U.S. does not want to officially support this expedition.”

  Several servants came into the reception hall bearing bowls of tiny, tender-looking morsels and wine. “Try some of these good things,” Motupu said.

  The pope approached a bowl on the table full of roasted delicacies and smelling somewhat nutty. He delicately pinched a few from the bowl and nibbled cautiously. Then with a grunt of pleasure he plunged a hand into the bowl and came up with his fingers full of the nutlike morsels and chewed on them. The others followed the pope’s lead and as they munched were each handed glasses of wine by the crisply clothed servants.

  “This is really a sophisticated household.” Cippolini gratefully sipped his wine.

  “You must all be hungry after seven hours in the air,” Motupu said. “We shall have a meal after Mass for the people out there and then we can decide last-minute scheduling. There are a few changes and additions I would like to make to the final schedule Monsignor Shanahan sent me by satellite last night. And let me say at the outset that only to this unique pope whom we are fortunate enough to have on the throne of St. Peter would I even attempt to make such a presentation as I have planned for his Holiness Pope Peter II.” Motupu lifted his glass. “For his Holiness Pope Peter II.”

  “We will be attentive, Gus,” Al Cippolini assured their host.

  “I hope Your Eminence has not veered too far from the schedule Father Tucci and I worked out with Secretary of State Robitelli,” Cardinal Bellotti intoned. The black pupils of his eyes gleamed in the lean face, a peak of black hair protruding almost between his eyes. “Never in the recorded history of the papacy has so”—he paused, considering his words—“impetuous a foreign tour been embarked upon.”

  “As I said, Your Eminence,” Motupu replied, “the uniqueness of this pope to recognize and help to overcome these vast problems is indeed heaven sent. ‘God’s joke’ turned out to be ‘God’s call’ for sure!” He gestured toward the table set for the meal. “Shall we sit down? Your Holiness, please sit at the head of the table. I’ll sit at the foot and everyone else can take any seat they wish.”

  When all of Motupu’s guests were seated and the wine poured, they continued to reach into the bowls before them and chew on the tasty morsels while they sipped wine, waiting for the first course.

  Cardinal Bellotti, seated to Motupu’s right, reached for the bowl and popped a few more morsels into his mouth, drinking from his wineglass. He looked at Monsignor Cippolini, who was swallowing a long draft from his glass. A servant immediately filled it. Bellotti gave Cippolini an avuncular smile. “You better have some of these nuts to fill your belly, Alonso, if you are going to drink more of this Portuguese wine.”

  The monsignor looked from Motupu to the pope, and then with a grin answered Bellotti’s rebuke. “I would have some if they were nuts, Your Eminence, but they’re not.”

  The cardinal’s eyes shifted to Motupu from Cippolini, and then to the morsels he was holding. “What … what are they?”

  Motupu was enjoying the whole scene. He reached for the bowl and popped a few more into his mouth. “Why, Your Eminence, I thought that I should put only the best for the pope’s visit. These are our favorite … roasted red ants.”

  Cardinal Bellotti stared at his smiling host, looked down at his hand, and watched the tiny gems fall to the table. His thick torso shook noticeably.

  The pope gazed at Cippolini with a hint of a grin and then back at Motupu. “I suspected I was eating an unknown entity when Al didn’t avail himself. He usually cleans out my nut bowl every time he comes to my office. I just had to trust you weren’t trying to poison me.” He held one of the morsels between thumb and forefinger, examining it closely. “Wow, you grow them big down here. I’m afraid to ask what the main course is going to be.”

  “After our Mass we’ll enjoy roast pork and yams. Very ‘civilized’ and fresh, I might add. I wanted chicken but my cook caught the pig on the way over yesterday. But now, before we start, I would like to take us out to the parish where we will say Mass for our people.”

  “Gus, we are quite close to the Republic of Congo border here, are we not?” the pope asked.

  “That we are,” Motupu replied. “I tend to several parishes and dioceses inside that border.”

  “What do you do when one of these rulers starts lethal disputes with his counterpart on the other side?” the pope asked. “It seems to happen regularly. I mean, here we are just a short distance from the Congo. For three years the rulers here in Angola and in the Congo, then across into Rwanda, Sudan, and Uganda, have been fighting each other. There’s constant unrest between rival tribes and leaders. What is it they’re fighting over?”

  “It all comes down to something that is unfortunately endemic among Africans. I call it the ‘Me da boss—no, me da boss’ syndrome. Everyone wants to be da boss man.”

  “You said it, Gus,” the pope said. “But it’s hard not to agree.”

  “As a Catholic cleric first and anything else second, my job is to look after these people’s souls and their physical well-being as much as possible. We have had four bosses in the past five years in the Congo as we find ourselves in the third millennium. Each one has raped her natural resources until another one comes along who wants his turn on Congo’s nipple. In Rwanda and here in Angola the situation has been almost the same. Rival tribes want their share of the loot while they’re washing their spears in each other’s blood. Just imagine what we could do—food, water, jobs, housing, educa
tion, and health care. So much,” Motupu mourned.

  “Why are we here, Gus?” the pope asked. “What can we do?”

  “I try to believe that if we could make them all Christians, Catholics, it would help,” Motupu said. “That’s why, Bill, I felt that it was important to have the pope himself make an appearance, to help my priests and lay teachers and me preserve the faith.”

  “We will do our best, Gus. Unify the Africans. Has it ever happened?”

  Moputu sighed deeply. “The closest we came to keeping this continent stable was during colonial rule. No boss thought he could take over another’s land without running into European might. White man’s rule, even though it is black heresy to admit it, kept artificial famines, caused by rivalry between tribes or religions, from occurring. What keeps happening in Sudan, where the Arab Islamic north is in constant war with the south, never happened when the British were there. Colonialism kept small despots from torturing their enemies. And it went a long way toward abolishing the washing of the spears among the tribes. Islam versus infidel, hacking each other to death wholesale, is more prevalent in the past decade than in the recorded history of this continent.”

  “What good can we do now”—the pope’s eyes swept his rustic surroundings—“now that we are actually in Africa?”

  “Being seen by great crowds on TV helps a lot. And of course we haven’t discussed the Russian patriarch’s plans since we met in Rome.”

  “What is the latest on that front?” the pope asked.

  “Right now the ‘Mad Monk’ is in Congo—oh, I shouldn’t be so disrespectful—Bishop Yussotov, that is. He is trying to persuade the latest tinhorn dictator up there to make Orthodoxy the state religion. What the Russians were unable to accomplish using the old Communist terror tactics they are now attempting through religion. They take all the work we have done and pervert our teaching to suit the African temperament, far more obtrusively than we do it. Before you know it they will get the people, and thus the political leaders, on their side.”

  Motupu glanced around the table meaningfully. “Where are they making real strides in converting the populace? In the diamond- and oil-producing areas. The Russians have diamonds in great quantity, but they are not the gemstones that come from here. So it’s a three-way battle for black African souls between Islam, our Church, and Russian Orthodoxy.”

  The pope stared down the table at his host. “Let me tell you what Ed Kirby said, just before we left, of what I might expect from this Kremlin crowd. Based on everything he’s read and heard, Kirby believes that Pope John Paul II was shot by Mehmet Ali Agca, who was a paid killer employed by the KGB in Russia. Foggy Bottom called Ed on the carpet for reopening this closed case. He told them, and I quote him, ‘A moron could see that this assassination attempt was a carefully orchestrated plot led by Yuri Andropov,’ who was at that time directing the KGB.”

  After a pause the pope continued, “And my predecessor, John Paul II, was also convinced of this even though he never publicly said as much. The Vatican is no different than any other government. If we don’t want the story out, we just ignore or deny it. Kirby told me the Vatican wanted to protect Pope John Paul II’s reputation as a man of peace, and it didn’t help his image for people to suspect that other religions and other countries were out there trying to assassinate him.”

  Motupu took a long sip of wine, and the others followed his example as he stood up and stepped out of his thatched rectory for a stroll through the area in which his diocese was located. “I just can’t find doctors, nurses, engineers, or educators to assist these people,” he said sadly. “In Africa, the patriarch allows Bishop Yussotov or any other Russian Orthodox representative to personally ordain any man into the Orthodox priesthood and send him out to gather in more parishioners. They also train men and women in health care.”

  As they picked their way through the heavy bush, a loud chatter of voices rose in volume, coming from somewhere beyond the jungle outgrowth. Suddenly Bill, Gus, and the others emerged upon a large clearing in the center of which was another circular, thatched-over area. Well over two hundred Africans, dressed in what had to be the best clothing they owned, had filled the benches and were standing patiently, waiting for some sort of momentous event.

  “Our local Church, Your Holiness,” Motupu explained. “I promised the parishioners that just after sunset they would see the Holy Father himself, who came all the way from Rome to say Mass for them.”

  “I’m glad you prepared me for this, Gus,” the pope said dryly.

  “I wasn’t sure of two things, Bill,” Gus replied. “One, whether or not we would get a turnout; it depends upon political problems which I will explain. Second, I wasn’t sure that if I asked you ahead of time, you would be allowed by the planners in Rome to say Mass out here. I’m sure that Cardinal Robitelli or Farther Tucci, who disapproves the haste with which you agreed to this visit, would not have permitted an evening Mass in the jungle your first day in Africa.”

  The pope looked around at the expectant crowd, reverently hushed as he appeared before them. “Will the congregation understand my broken Portuguese, Gus?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Now, let us get started! The others will need to get back to the comforts of the hotel before it gets too late for a safe trip.”

  “Thank you, Bill. The word will go out all over Africa that the Holy Father from Rome himself appeared before these parishioners.”

  The pope and Cardinal Motupu, along with a local priest, walked to the front of the Church and sat down beside the altar, two large candles burning behind them. The rest of the pope’s entourage sat down off to the right of the altar. At a signal from Motupu a group of drummers began rhythmically pounding their tom-toms. The “people in the pews” swayed and chanted. The Catholic Mass, African style, was under way.

  Bill looked out over the throng of black parishioners and was pleased to see so many young people there, men and boys particularly. Slowly the drums came to a stop and a foot pump organ swelled as the parishioners stood up and sang a familiar hymn in Portuguese. They sat down and Motupu addressed them in their native African tongue for some moments. He then turned to the pope, who greeted the people in fluent if accented Portuguese, his New Bedford fisherman’s fluency refined for the occasion.

  The hushed crowd was astonished to be addressed in a language they understood. As the pope commenced the Mass, two bright, ebony-faced altar boys served him, each wearing the proper white smock over his shirt and pants.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the Mass, shouts were heard from outside the makeshift African Church. The pope saw fear etched on the faces of the altar boys and the young men in the benches and those standing at the rear. All gave beseeching looks to the cardinal, who, with a gesture of upraised arms, dismissed them. The young men and older boys ran helter-skelter from the service and silently disappeared into the jungle.

  Looking after them, perplexed a few moments, the pope turned to Motupu. The cardinal shook his head sadly. “Your Holiness, I’m sorry. I never thought the president would allow this to happen while you were here, in the middle of Mass. But that’s Africa,” he sighed.

  The pope noticed that the old men and women who had been standing now quickly filled the empty seats as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. “What has happened?” the pope asked.

  “Please go on. I’ll explain later.”

  Cippolini, Tim Shanahan, Cardinal Bellotti, and the other visitors from Rome watched in trepidation as Pope Peter pressed on. As he and Moputu were about to give Communion, the open thatched Church was surrounded suddenly by uniformed troops, although it was done as respectfully as possible. Officers and government officials watched quietly as the majority of the parishioners walked down the aisle to take Communion from the pope himself. Then the service was cordoned off. The faithful came up to hear the pope say “Corpus Christi” to each one as he held up the wafer. Not a single person at the Mass took the symbolic body of Christ in
their hand, as had become standard procedure in Catholic Churches in America. Each opened his or her mouth and received the wafer from the pope’s hand directly on the tongue. This was a moment that would go down in each family’s history—receiving full Communion directly from the Holy Father himself.

  When the last communicant had received the Body of Christ and returned to his bench, kneeling directly on the ground in front of his seat, Cardinal Motupu said the benediction and led the procession up the aisle, the Vatican visitors following. The soldiers and officers surrounding the congregation stood aside respectfully, bowing their heads as the pope and his entourage walked by.

  Then the troops ordered the congregation to walk through them in a line, inspecting each man as he walked by, the other soldiers spreading out through the surrounding terrain, probing and searching. For what, the pope did not understand, until Motupu led them back to his thatched and rustic rectory.

  “The government has suffered a defeat by the rebels to the southeast and is in need of fresh troops,” the cardinal explained. “This never-ending rebellion has been waged by Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA guerrillas for fifteen years. He says he will take over the government or die. Both sides need fresh fighters. Where we stand, the government is the culprit. The president, that evil fat man who met you after you landed today, knew you’d attract this crowd, and he sent this gang out to scoop up a bunch of youngsters to draft into his army.”

  “How did the boys know that the troops were on the way?” the pope asked.

  “They have quite a spy network out on the roads. When they see government vehicles and buses coming this way, they beat their drums. Other drummers relay the signals. By the time the government gets here, the boys are long gone.” Motupu chuckled mirthlessly. “I guess the draft gang thought you would keep the attention of the youngsters here until they could grab a dozen or so and take them back, teach them to shoot, put them in uniform.”