“Do you think . . . ?” Txema said under his breath.
“What else could it be?”
“Looks like a recent effort,” Txema said, as if making an apology for the painting.
“And so it is!” a woman’s voice piped up behind them. The iron grille separating the rooms had swung open; Carlos and Txema found themselves face-to-face with two nuns in white habits.
“It was painted by a sister from New Mexico who lived with us for two years,” said the nun standing closer to the two men.
The two nuns introduced themselves as Sister Ana María and Sister María Margarita. They seemed as though they had just descended from another world, or at least another era, greeting their unexpected guests with large smiles while their hands remained hidden inside the sleeves of their billowing garments.
“And how can we help you?” one of the two interjected, after inviting the journalists to sit down.
“We want to learn about María Jesús de Ágreda.”
“Ah! The Venerable María!”
Sister María Margarita’s face shone with a generous smile, but it was the other nun who, from the outset, had taken the reins of the conversation.
Sister Ana María moved slowly, possessed of a serene demeanor, but she kept her eyes peeled like a mother watching her children from a park bench. Her indulgent expression and elegant deportment were the first things the men noticed. María Margarita was, based on first impressions, entirely different. Small in stature, with vivacious eyes and a chipper, biting voice, she looked every bit the young troublemaker, ready for an adventure at the drop of a hat.
The two nuns regarded their visitors with a mixture of curiosity and tenderness.
“And what exactly is it that you are interested in knowing about Mother Ágreda?” Sister Ana María asked them, after they had introduced themselves.
“Well,” Carlos began, and then hesitated. “Actually, we’d like to know if Mother Ágreda was really in America, as some legends say.”
The nun retained her equanimity as she stared directly at him.
“Those are not legends, my son. Our sister and founder had the gift of bilocation. She could be in two places at once, traveling to America without leaving her cell or ignoring her obligations here at the monastery.”
“She bilocated?”
Like a good student, the photographer turned to face the painting that depicted the nun surrounded by Indians. The two nuns watched as he did so, finding him amusing.
“Of course! And many times! That was one of her first mystical demonstrations given outside the monastery, and she did it when she was very young, just after taking her vows here in this very monastery,” Sister María Margarita blurted out, while pointing at the canvas that Txema was examining. “You should know that her case was closely watched in her time, and even entailed having Mother Ágreda successfully defend herself before the Inquisition.”
“Is that so?” Carlos was still having difficulty accepting that without intending to he had stumbled into the house where “his” nun had lived.
“Absolutely.”
“And how was it done? I mean, the other times, where did Mother Ágreda appear?”
“Well, as we told you, she in fact bilocated.” Sister Ana María liked to be as precise as possible. “We believe that she revealed herself in New Mexico, where she visited the various tribes that lived along the Rio Grande. A report published in 1630 collected various facts about the incidents.”
Carlos gave the nun a questioning look. She continued speaking.
“It was assembled by a Franciscan named Friar Alonso de Benavides, who spread the word of Christ in those lands in the seventeenth century. He was surprised to find that many of the natives he encountered in that region had already learned the catechism from a mysterious woman who had revealed herself to them.”
“How did she reveal herself?” Txema repeated, astonished.
“Just picture it yourself!” María Margarita answered him in an imperious tone. “A woman all on her own, surrounded by natives, to whom she brought the teachings of Our Lord!”
Her passionate outburst made everyone smile. When the enthusiasm subsided, Sister Ana María sweetly turned the conversation around.
“What Friar Benavides wrote was that on many evenings a woman dressed in a blue habit appeared before the natives; she spoke to them about the Son of God who died on the cross, promising eternal life to those who believed in him. They had never been baptized, had never laid eyes on a white man. And the woman went so far as to tell them that representatives of the Savior would soon arrive in their lands in order to give them the good news.”
“Did you say that this report was published?”
“It was indeed. It was printed in 1630 in Madrid, at Philip the Fourth’s Royal Printing House. It is rumored that the king himself took a great interest in the book.”
“Sister!” Txema, who was cradling his camera bag in his lap while he warmed up by the stove, suddenly jumped to his feet. “Just a minute ago you said that the bilocations were only the first external indication of Mother Ágreda’s gifts.”
“The first demonstration of her gifts,” she corrected him, and then went on. “In fact, in her prayers Mother Ágreda asked God to free her from such phenomena. You must not think that the life of a mystic is pleasant. The events peculiar to the contemplative life always make things more difficult. Because of her, there were rumors running wild all over the province, with crowds of people turning up, curiosity seekers who wanted to gawk at her as she fell into an ecstatic state.”
“Ah! So she also fell into trances?” For Carlos, it was one surprise after another.
“Naturally. And you would be wrong if you believed they stopped happening after her bilocations came to an end. Many years later, Our Lady appeared to Mother Ágreda in a trance in order to dictate the story of her life, about which we knew nothing from the Gospels. The Venerable wrote the story of her life by hand, in eight thick volumes that we still possess in our library, and that later were published under the title The Mystical City of God.”
Carlos was writing down everything as fast as he could.
Sister Ana María continued, “In that book she reveals that Our Lady is, in fact, in the city where the Heavenly Father himself resides. The subject is as great a mystery as the Trinity.”
“But . . .” Carlos looked up from his notebook with a very intense expression on his face. “Forgive me, Sister, but something here makes no sense to me. When I tried to obtain information on your founder, I consulted several databases and rare-book catalogs, simply to see if I could locate any of her works, and frankly, I came up empty-handed. Unless perhaps I made a dumb mistake or had the wrong information.”
The nun smiled.
“You are very lucky. The book I’m speaking of has just been published in a new edition, although I feel sure you will be more interested in one of the original editions, in which the story of our sister’s life is recounted. Am I right?”
“If it were possible . . .”
“Of course!” The nun smiled yet again. “Don’t worry. We will look for this volume and will send you a photocopy of it wherever you tell us to.”
Carlos was grateful for the offer and after writing down his address on a piece of paper, he asked one final, innocent question.
“Maybe you could clear up another matter that I cannot figure out. I don’t remember having seen her name in any of the Calendars or Lives of the Saints. When was Sister María Jesús beatified?”
He had hit a sore spot.
The faces of his conversational partners suddenly clouded over and, as if threatening clouds from the Cameros had discharged their wrath across the valley, the two nuns lowered their heads, slipped their hands inside their sleeves once again, and let an interminable moment of silence pass before responding.
Finally, María Margarita spoke.
“See here,” she said as she cleared her throat. “In her book, Mother Ágreda re
vealed that the Virgin conceived Our Savior without sin, and as you know, this was a topic of great discussion among the theologians of the time. It was even a heretical idea. Our sister went even further, taking up certain political issues with Philip the Fourth, writing to him with great regularity and becoming his true spiritual adviser.”
“And so . . . ?” Carlos was intrigued.
“Well, these matters did not sit well with Rome. The Vatican delayed the process of her beatification for three centuries. The only success we achieved was when Pope Clement the Tenth allowed private religious devotions to Madre Ágreda, awarding her the rank of Venerable a few years after she died. It was, if I remember correctly,” she said, leafing through the pamphlet in her hands, “the twenty-eighth of January 1673. And since then, nothing. Not a single ecclesiastical recognition.”
“This has something to do with Rome?”
“With the Vatican.”
“And nothing can be done to correct this error?”
“Indeed.” This time it was a more animated Sister Ana María who responded. “There is a priest in Bilbao, Father Amadeo Tejada, who is handling the paperwork for the Venerable’s rehabilitation and the process of beatification.”
“So all is not lost.”
“No, no. Father Tejada is blessed with a great deal of willpower, thank God. He is a virtuous man, intelligent, and has worked on the new editions of our Mother’s works. He, too, is a holy man.”
Carlos’s eyes shone. “An expert!” he thought. Txema could hardly contain his laughter as he watched his friend make his request, his voice shaking.
“Do you think I could possibly interview Father Tejada?”
“Of course. He lives in a residence run by the Passionist fathers in Bilbao, which is located next to a primary school, although he’s a professor at the university,” María Margarita clarified in her dulcet voice.
“If you were to visit him, please send our best wishes, and encourage him to continue,” her companion requested. “Campaigns on behalf of saints are difficult undertakings God uses to put man’s patience to the test.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him, don’t worry.”
“May God bless you,” whispered the nun while crossing herself.
TWENTY-THREE
SAN ANTONIO MISSION, NEW MEXICO
SUMMER 1629
Ascorching wind struck the Camino Real leading out of Santa Fe, bringing with it a dense cloud of sand and dust. It was midday. As the first gusts of the sandstorm tore through the juniper trees that lined the edge of the road, two lizards scurried for shelter under a rock. Friar Esteban de Perea, well acquainted with the desert, knew how to read the signs. Pausing for a second to look around, and before the unmistakable odor of dust reached his nostrils, he gave the order.
“Cover yourselves! Hurry!”
The ten friars of the Franciscan order followed as one, unfolding their sleeves and sheltering their heads as he had taught them. They wore heavy woolen habits with hoods, a rope belt, and leather sandals, garments that by all accounts offered little resistance to the gusts of fine-grained silica, as fatal as a downpour of steel knives.
“Stay where you are!” he exhorted them in the same voice, as the air around them plunged into darkness.
The storm, as black as a plague of locusts, pounced upon the friars for a few short minutes. But suddenly, one of the friars, standing toward the end of the caravan, called out.
“Holy Jesus! I hear music! I hear music!”
“So do I!” another voice joined in.
“And I!”
“Who said that?” Friar Esteban, his eyes mere slits, tried to locate where the shouts were coming from. The roaring noise of the storm made them seem far away, at the other end of the world.
“I did! Friar Bartolomé! Can you not hear it, Friar Esteban? It is sacred music!”
The Inquisitor in charge of the group concentrated again, trying to make out the silhouette of Bartolomé’s figure.
“Where is it coming from, Brother?” he shouted.
“From the south! It’s coming from the south!”
Although they could barely hear his words, all the friars without exception were listening intently.
“You still cannot hear it? Come here, at the end of the line!” Friar Bartolomé insisted at the top of his voice.
The melody was at last heard by all the missionaries. It was the faintest wisp of a song, almost imperceptible, as if it were coming from a small, fragile music box. If they had been somewhere else than in the middle of the desert, some five days on foot from Santa Fe, they would have taken it to be a choir intoning the Alleluia. But that was impossible.
The phenomenon vanished as quickly as it had come.
Before they could distinguish an intelligible phrase of music in that commotion of gusting wind, sand, and snatches of singing, the storm changed direction, taking everything along with it. A heavy silence then descended upon the caravan of friars.
Friar Bartolomé lifted up his deeply tanned face and let his shoulders relax.
“Is it not a sign?”
Disturbed by the interruption, Friar Esteban de Perea preferred to ignore the subject. The friars decided not to tempt the Devil, or their leader, for that matter, into ridiculing them. They cautiously poked their heads out of their hoods as if they had just seen a mirage, then threw their personal possessions over their shoulders and resumed walking.
They were headed for the mission at San Antonio de Padua, one of the oldest religious centers in the region, where they planned to stay for several days. Friar Esteban needed to learn about a perplexing phenomenon that had come to his attention while he was in Mexico: in just this one settlement, over the course of the last twenty years, according to trustworthy accounts confirmed by the Archbishop, close to eighty thousand Indians had been baptized. In other words, nearly all the inhabitants.
It was a unique case in America. Neither in Mexico nor in the royal territory of Peru nor in Brazil had there been such a rapid, bloodless conversion to Christianity. No mundane rationale could explain the Indians’ receptiveness. Quite the opposite, in fact: along with the great numbers of the converted came the persistent rumor that a “supernatural force” had convinced the natives to put their faith in Jesus Christ.
Such stories gave Perea no pleasure whatsoever. His allegiance was to the Sant’Uffizio, the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and he cringed at any mention of the miraculous. Born in Villanueva del Fresno in a region of Spain near the Portuguese border, he had a frontier mentality wedded to dogma. To understand the world required a set of rules, and it was faith that supplied this consolation to the young child. Tall and thin, with a huge head propped upon a gangly body, his presence alone was enough to intimidate people. His father, a soldier of fortune, had prepared him for struggle, and the son proved equally strong and unyielding. His mother had pushed him toward faith early on. And like her, he detested any sort of trickery.
“Listen to me!” he shouted, keeping up the pace and waving a piece of goatskin parchment over his head. “If this map is right, we should be arriving at the San Antonio mission shortly.”
The men broke into shouts of joy and relief.
“From this moment on, I want you all to be very attentive to anything you hear the natives say, no matter how strange it may seem to you. I want to find out why they became Christians, if anyone forced them or told them to do it, or if they saw anything extraordinary that led them to convert to our faith.”
“What do you mean by extraordinary, Friar Esteban?”
The question was posed by Friar Tomás de San Diego, a brilliant student of theology at the University of Salamanca. The other friars were relieved to hear him speak. The Inquisitor did not hesitate in his reply.
“I would just as soon not explain it, Friar Tomás. During my visit to the archbishopric of Mexico, I heard many absurd things. The men working for the Archbishop were fond of saying that the spirits of the deserts had encouraged the Indian t
ribes to ask us to baptize them . . .”
“What sort of spirits?”
“Man of God!” Friar Esteban was displeased with this young friar’s persistence. “You ought to know that the savages who abound in these parts have not received even the slightest education. They will explain to you in the barest language what they saw, but it will be you who interprets it.”
“I understand. When they speak to us of spirits, we are to explain to them that what they saw were our angels. Is that not so?”
The young friar’s tone greatly irritated the Inquisitor.
“Tell me, Brother Tomás, what would you say just happened here?”
Friar Tomás de San Diego looked as if he had shrunk several sizes when Esteban de Perea laid his powerful arms on him.
“Here?” he vacillated. “Are you referring to the singing that we heard?”
The Inquisitor nodded his head, waiting for a response.
“Celestial music? A gift from the Virgin to help us persevere in our mission and to strengthen our faith?”
Friar Esteban took a deep breath. He shook Brother Tomás’s bony shoulders and shouted so that everyone could hear him.
“No! No, my brothers!”
Every last one of the friars looked fearful.
“You are passing through the desert! In the very same place where Satan tempted Christ for forty days and forty nights! Beware of vain excitements, of mirages and strange shadows! Show the Indians whom we encounter the light! That is why we are here!”
TWENTY-FOUR
ROME
Stanislaw Zsidiv walked over to the windows that dominated his office and, his back turned to Giuseppe Baldi, began to relate a remarkable story.
Earlier that evening, Luigi Corso had informed Zsidiv that for the past forty years the Vatican had collaborated with American intelligence services through the offices of a highly placed organization inside the CIA known as “the Committee.” Or, to be more precise, the American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE). According to Corso, this organization was founded in 1949 in the United States and directed by officials from the old Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA, with the intention of consolidating a United States of Europe after the war.
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