by Ray Flynn
“I’m sorry to arrive in your country in informal dress, but this trip is apparently going to require some agility on my part,” the pope apologized.
“Your Holiness.” The airport attendant was apparently a Catholic. “Welcome to Uganda. Had we known you were coming there would be a crowd to greet you.”
“We weren’t certain ourselves.”
“Will you permit our Land Rover to pick us up out here?” Motupu asked.
“Certainly, Your Eminence.” He muttered to a man behind him, who immediately ran toward the terminal.
“You are going out to Rakai, Your Eminence?”
“His Holiness wants to see for himself what our mission is doing.”
The official shot a dubious look at the pope. “Maybe it is best not to go out to Rakai, Your Holiness. Many people are sick out here. Even I don’t go.”
“I’ll advise you about it when I get back,” the pope replied with a grin.
“Dr. Mainovic is out there now,” the airport officer added.
The pope cast a questioning look at Motupu, who quickly replied, “Dr. Marija Mainovic is a Serb woman, a doctor from Yugoslavia. She is part of a group of medical professionals and a strong Eastern Orthodox Church member, personally close to the patriarch. When the Serb president began his ethnic cleansing policy, she left her nation and has been active out here ever since. Two American Catholic Relief medical personnel trying to help our effort have died recently.”
The Land Rover came around the corner of the terminal building and stopped in front of Motupu. “In we go.” He opened the back door for the pope, who climbed in, followed by Tim Shanahan and finally Motupu, pulling the door shut behind him. They all looked more like neatly attired tourists than high-ranking clerics.
For twenty minutes the Land Rover proceeded along a wide paved highway with the bush cut back on either side over a hundred meters. In some places the view from the road was half a mile of flatland. As they turned west off the main road, Lake Victoria, to the east, quickly faded from view to their rear. Now the bush closed in on the secondary road. They pushed northeast away from the main highway and the lake.
“Between the airport and the capital city of Kampala, whoever ran the government made sure there was no place for ambush sites along the main road,” Motupu explained.
“But now, out in the bush?” Tim asked.
“No important traffic. Only us missionaries,” Motupu answered wryly.
It was over an hour from the airport to Rakai, and when they arrived in the middle of a dirt square they heard the sound of children singing. “We’ll visit the school after we’ve checked in with Sister Kaitlin,” Motupu said as they stepped out of the Land Rover.
Moments later a tired-looking young woman wearing a scarf over her head and a nondescript shirt and long skirt appeared, carrying a radio telephone. She came up to the three visitors. “Your Eminence,” she greeted Motupu and then stared at the pope for a few moments. Suddenly, “Your Holiness!” She started to kneel. “I didn’t believe Dr. Mainovic when she said you would be here.” The pope reached out for her hand and held her up.
“Sister Kaitlin, please. If anybody should be bowing it is I. What you and International Concern are doing here is indeed saintly. I will tell my dearest and oldest friend, Cardinal Comiskey, that I had the privilege of seeing your work firsthand.”
“The cardinal is indeed a great man, Your Holiness. He keeps us going here.”
“I will now see it all and personally report to him.”
A worried Cardinal Motupu interrupted. “Sister Kaitlin, what’s this about Dr. Marija Mainovic saying the Holy Father himself was on the way out here?”
“About an hour ago she got a call on her radio phone that he was on the way. None of us believed her.”
Recognizing Motupu’s concern, the pope and Tim Shanahan asked almost as one, “Who is this doctor with such a good intelligence net?”
“She’s close to the patriarch,” Sister Kaitlin explained. “She’s one of his persuasion, of course, a rabid Serb Russian Orthodox. I wouldn’t put it past her to kill an American as her president has urged and her patriarch has tacitly endorsed by saying nothing. Even down here we know what the Serbs did to the Muslim Kosovars, but this doctor only says it is all American propaganda. She is a doctor and it is good to have one here for a few days every month, but she is … possessed.” The nun crossed herself nervously. “You can hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes.” Sister Kaitlin shuddered. “It is a good thing we are not American or even NATO European. Dr. Mainovic blames the bomb destruction in her country on them. But she has given us some good medical help, not that there is much that anyone can do,” the sister concluded helplessly.
“The avviso warned that the patriarch and his Serb and Russian followers would tacitly advocate a terror campaign against Americans to repay Western military action in the Balkans,” the pope murmured to Tim. Then, to Sister Kaitlin, “May I visit your school and then the early medical treatment center?”
The nun looked fearfully at Motupu. “Your Eminence, surely we can’t let the Holy Father expose himself to the virus.” She turned to the pope. “Your Holiness, every one of the hundred children in the school has at least one parent dead of the virus, and more than a few are orphaned. They themselves die almost as fast as they are replaced by refugees coming in from the famine outside.”
“Is there some way we can slow this thing down?” the pope asked.
The sister looked at Motupu, who shrugged. “Despite our teachings we cannot get the concept of abstinence across to them. They have endless children. Perhaps we could still have slowed the outbreak back in the late 1990s if we could have said, ‘Go ahead and fulfill your natural functions, but if you want to avoid dying of the virus and having infected children, at least learn some good birth control information.’ Needless to say, when I suggest such a thing, the notion is summarily rejected in Rome. And the UN people agree that things are terrible but they don’t give us food or medicine. NGOs are not much help either.”
“Nongovernmental organizations,” Shanahan explained.
“Yes,” the sister sniffed. “They are trying to help, but they think giving everyone a year’s supply of condoms is the only answer.”
“Let’s go into the school,” the pope suggested.
He intercepted the worried glance from Sister Kaitlin to Motupu. The cardinal stood firm. “Sister Kaitlin, unless the Holy Father sees for himself what is happening here, he will not understand our danger. We are, after all, a microcosm of the African macrocosm.” Then, to the pope, “Come on into the school, Bill.” Moputu led him and Shanahan into a rough wood-and-thatch building, with children playing in the yard outside.
Inside the “school” the pope caught his breath at the ravages of the viruses in the children. It was obvious they had not caught the virus from sexual contact but had inherited it from their parents. All suffered from malnutrition because of the food shortages. And a combination of virus and starvation diets had turned them into bug-eyed stick people with swollen bellies.
“These are the innocents, victims of the several viruses afflicting us. We get enough food to provide a minimum daily survival ration. If it wasn’t for the virus we could probably keep most of them alive until the food situation improves.”
“Do you mean to say that every one of these pathetic specimens is … has AIDS?”
“Or other viruses we haven’t isolated yet, Your Holiness,” Sister Kaitlin replied.
The pope walked among the listless children and reached another nun at a table facing the class. “Sister, how long have you been here?”
“Your Holiness, I flew in from Dublin three weeks ago to replace Sister Martha.”
“Aren’t you afraid of becoming infected?”
“I am careful not to suffer superficial cuts.”
The pope let out a sigh and walked among the apathetic children. They stared at him with wide eyes from sallow faces. At the back of the
room he watched as a sister went on teaching lessons.
“Gus, aren’t there any Africans beside yourself to help these children?”
“They are orphans or have only one parent—sick, of course.”
“And is it like this in many parts of Africa?”
“I could also arrange for you to see the starvation and brutality against Christians by the Islamic extremists in southern Sudan, where for several years international rescue agencies have tried to help, but the civil war keeps going on and food distributed goes only to the soldiers or those who are willing or forced to renounce Christianity.”
The pope shook his head in disbelief. “Regarding this AIDS crisis,” the pope said. “Why is it? What can be done?”
“We are doing what we can. In the case of these exposed children and those down with the virus, we simply cannot get the medicine that relieves the symptoms. AZT and the other ingredients of the AIDS cocktails help a little. But we don’t always know which virus to treat. Some new and more powerful strain of virus, one we have never seen before, turns up every month.”
“Well, we can’t blame this on the Russian Orthodox Church,” the pope declared. “It cannot be the fault of their church that AIDS is killing this continent.”
“No. But while we are doing our best to help, the patriarch is spending his resources building up followers in the diamond mining areas and oil locations. He is backed by his civil government, Bill—secretly, of course—but making use of resources we do not have, like Russian government incentives to influence a pro-tem national leader.”
“How does that work?” the pope asked.
“You will see it in the areas where the diamonds are found. Our people in the early part of this new millennium are being converted to the Russian Church. And the Church preaches birth control and safe sex, not abstinence, which is beyond an African’s comprehension. It’s not the people that they are concerned about, but the land and our rich minerals.” Gus hit the palm of his left hand with his right fist.
At that moment a severe-looking middle-aged woman, her blond hair pulled back tightly and clasped behind her head, dressed in a denim skirt, dark cotton blouse, and bootlike shoes, entered the schoolroom. In one hand she carried a black satchel. She gave the pope an irreverent glance.
Motupu said a few words to her. “I am Cardinal Motupu.” He gestured toward the pope. “This is—”
“Yes,” the woman interrupted harshly. “Mr. Kelly of America and the Vatican. The so-called spiritual force behind the destruction of my country. What wreckage do you plan for Africa?”
Astounded, the pope was at a loss for words. Motupu, though equally surprised, quickly formed a rebuttal. “We appreciate any medical help you can offer us, Dr. Mainovic, but this is a Catholic mission and in no way affiliated with the Orthodox Church.”
“Our purpose here is constructive, Doctor,” the pope replied. “I am sorry you see fit to attach the blame for your government’s ethnic genocide of the Muslim minority in your country to people other than your own.”
In the intensity of her diatribe she virtually spit her words out in heavily accented English. “I worked hard to save the lives of my people badly injured by your bombs. Only the patriarch and his Russian Church come to our defense against your lies. It was you who killed and dispersed the Muslims of Kosovo when we tried to protect them from your air attacks.”
Such blatant distortion of the truth shook Bill Kelly. He was reminded of the Serbian officials on television who had ranted and raved, eyes wild and flashing, mouths drawn, displaying the front teeth of their lower jaws, denying their depredations upon a defenseless population in Kosovo. This invective invariably flowed immediately after positive proof had just appeared on TV screens throughout the world showing refugees in the thousands escaping Serbian genocide. Now here in Africa, a year later, was the living proof of the warning John Paul II had left for the next pope, whose reign would indeed be short if these maniacal zealots had their way.
The pope watched, dumbstruck, as the Serbian doctor approached a boy of indeterminate age squirming on a chair directly in front of him. The doctor, wearing rubber gloves, pulled the child from a crumpled fetal sprawl to an upright position, momentarily halting a coughing fit. The doctor flashed a challenging stare at the pope. Bill Kelly immediately gave way to his natural instinct and knelt beside the pitifully thin boy, cradling his head in his arms. The child, gasping for air, mouth open, teeth chattering, turned into the strong, comforting hands holding him.
In horror, the nuns and Motupu snatched the boy away from the pope, and two African attendants, closely followed by the Serbian doctor, carried him out of the room.
“Where are you taking him?” Bill asked.
“To the ward for observation,” the sister replied. Then she noticed that the skin on the back of the pope’s hand was broken where the child had bitten him.
“Your Holiness,” a worried Sister Kaitlin said hoarsely, “come into the dispensary with me and let me cauterize the spot where your skin is broken.”
The pope and Shanahan, with Motupu worriedly following, walked across the dusty square of ground between the schoolroom and the building that served as an office and residence for the nuns and the medical technicians.
“Your Holiness, this will be uncomfortable for a minute, but the skin on the back of your hand was broken by the boy’s teeth and we must try to kill any possibility of infection.” As the Serbian doctor watched, the pope held his right hand out, and the sister took a bottle from the medicine cabinet and with a piece of cotton swabbed disinfectant acid over the broken skin, where a few drops of blood had appeared.
“There, that should do it.”
“I am sorry I pulled the boy to his feet, but I had to stop his cough,” the doctor said insincerely. Motupu and Kaitlin stared after her with ill-concealed hostility as she left the sick boy in the care of an African assistant.
“I want to see the town, talk to the people a little,” the pope said. “Do they understand how viruses are transmitted?”
“We try to explain STD, but it is taking their basic human rights away to suggest continence. By now most men in this part of Africa are carriers. Sometimes they pass it on, sometimes not. We don’t possess much medicine. There isn’t much we can do.”
“And,” a second nun added, “if the international community had been more concerned about Africa even a year ago, and we had halfway decent medical supplies, we might have prevented the worst of this scourge. The world closed its eyes to our crisis even though reports have recently been widespread.”
“Not, apparently, a fanatical Serb doctor,” the pope replied. “Anyway, let me walk around this town and talk to the people.”
“Your Holiness,” Shanahan interjected, “we don’t have much time. Besides, the longer you stay here, the greater the possibility of any of us picking up a virus.”
This gave the pope pause. “If I can learn from these people, it is worth it to take that chance. But I don’t want to subject you to it, Tim. Let me visit one or two homes alone and then we will go. I need to see for myself, so I can try and convince the world about the AIDS crisis,” said Pope Bill.
“We must all stick together,” Motupu said decisively. “Come, Your Holiness, let’s call on one family together.” He turned to Sister Kaitlin. “Whom can His Holiness talk to?”
“The headman lives nearby. He is a good Catholic who knows what we’re doing and comes to the service every Sunday when the priest from Kampala says Mass.”
“Yes, a good man, Father Umtali,” Motupu said. “He does the best he can. He has several young priests to assist him but he needs resources as well.” He gave the pope a speculative glance. “It would shock the curia to see what we have to do here to keep the people’s faith. But we manage in our own way.”
“Many changes will be made when I return to the Vatican,” the pope said grimly. “So let’s visit the headman. He speaks English?”
“Indeed. The British
did a fine job here and in Kenya and Tanzania. The natives have English first names. The school system still works, and it is the one thing the independent governments have tried to maintain. Project Concern has taken on some of the teaching burden. The government was so fractured, first with Idi Amin and then his imitators, that without us the schools would have collapsed.”
The nun led them down the dusty pathway between thatched houses to a wooden structure.
“Like everyone here he has AIDS, or one of the mystery viruses,” Sister Kaitlin said. “But he still functions well, and keeps order inside the village.”
At the half-open door Motupu knocked, and a man’s frail voice called out “Come.” Motupu pushed the door open, and the others followed him into a dark room with one window in the board walls. A spare black man pulled himself out of a chair, his height emphasizing his emaciation. He was wearing a shirt and long pants held up by a thick pair of black leather suspenders that looked as though they had once been part of a uniform.
“Your Eminence.” The voice shook as he greeted Motupu, maintaining a respectful distance.
“Andrew, I have brought a visitor to see you.” Motupu stood aside and the pope approached the old man, who squinted in the dim light within the fragile structure. “Andrew, this is the Holy Father himself, come from Rome to try to help us better help ourselves.”
Andrew tried to kneel and reach out for the pope’s hand. “Your Holiness” he said hoarsely, “my home, our village, is forever blessed because you came.” The pope caught his hand and held him upright before the old African could actually bend his frail limbs.
“Andrew, we will be here henceforward in every way. A cure for your ills will be discovered and we will get it to all of you.”
“Thank you, Holiness. I wish God had found a way to help us stay healthy to begin with. Our land is beautiful, but usually now we have no clean water or any way to produce food.” The old man’s eyes were fixed on the two partially filled bottles of water Monsignor Shanahan was carrying. “When I was a boy none of this happened to us,” Andrew wheezed through his dry throat.
