by Morris West
“I’ve noted it.” Luca gave him a crooked grin. “Our friend Aquino is a master of the art of solicitation. He reminds me of the pick-pockets in Sri Lanka – the ones they call ‘finger dancers’ because they surround you and distract you by dancing their fingers all around your body without ever touching you. You never know where they’re coming from until your wallet’s gone and they’re away with it.”
“That’s our good diplomatic training!” The Secretary of State laughed. “At least you know the game … But to be serious, this election can be – in my view has to be – a new beginning for the Church. Our late Pontiff – God rest him! – has tried to pack the College and the episcopate with men who, he thought, would continue his own policies like faithful disciples. If they vote that way, they’ll go for an interim candidate – one with a low life-expectancy but enough experience to hold the boat steady on course. Personally, I don’t think we can afford that time. We are losing congregations too fast. There are too many closed issues, too many undebated questions. Rome is losing relevance, because the people are not being heard. I was invited last night to a small dinner at the English college. The speaker was an elderly Benedictine. His text was a quotation from the English Puritan poet, Milton: ‘The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.’ His treatment of the text was surprisingly frank. ‘They are being fed,’ he said, ‘but we are feeding them paper instead of the bread of life!’”
“So,” said Rossini, quizzically, “you bring me here to feed me tea and English sandwiches. Come to the point, Turi.”
“The point is this: we won’t get the right candidate from wrangling and dissension among partisan groups. The dissension can arise, as it has done in the past. Even though the present system is designed to prevent a prolonged conclave, a point may come where a simple majority of voters will decide the election. That’s the danger: a divided College, a divided Church, run by a compromise candidate. Am I making myself clear, Luca?”
“Admirably, my friend, and the tea and sandwiches are excellent; but tell me what you expect of me.”
“Please! Be patient, Luca! It’s customary, as you know, at the beginning of the conclave, to offer the electors an overview of the whole Church: ‘Here we stand, who is the best man to lead us?’ By custom, the Secretary of State delivers a statement on the political situation as it affects the Church in every country. Then there is the key-note speech, a meditation on the Church as the City of God, witness of the Word to the World. That is supposed to set the mood of the electors, remind them of their duty to find the best Pontiff to lead the People of God. The Camerlengo offered a choice of speakers to a committee of the Sacred College. The committee has chosen you.”
“This is a joke, Turi!”
“On the contrary, it’s a heavy responsibility: to set the mood of a historic moment, to open the minds of the electors to the promptings of the Spirit.”
“Turi, my friend, you know I hate to be manipulated. You know I’ve had more than one dose of it in the last few days. So, please, not another!”
“Calm down, Luca! I’ll tell you what our friend Baldassare told me. Your request to have Monsignor Hallett attend you as a personal confessor during the conclave was not kindly received. Certain members of the Curia felt it smacked of privilege. Space in Saint Martha’s House is at a premium. There are already confessors rostered for duty in the conclave. However, Baldassare thought he could stretch a point if you were willing to preach. You know the way it goes, Luca.” The Secretary of State was savouring his own dry humour. “In the eyes of God, we’re all equal – but some have to work harder to stay equal!”
“You’re blackmailing me, Turi.”
“It’s called a nice balancing of interests. That’s what diplomacy is all about.”
“I have nothing to offer, Turi.” Rossini was seized with sudden passion. “I’m the wrong man at the wrong time. I’m flawed. You know that. I’m going through a crisis of belief, which I can only describe as a night journey under a storm cloud in a world from which God has removed himself. The woman I have loved all these years is being taken from me, and I can’t even blame God for it, because he isn’t there. This morning she asked me to hear her confession and give her absolution. I could not refuse; yet I went through the motions like a stage magician, knowing that the illusion would hold good for the audience, but that I couldn’t deceive myself. That’s why I want Hallett with me. He’s got problems of his own with which I am trying to help him, but he’s also a sceptic with whom I can talk without dissimulation, and perhaps – just perhaps, Turi – find myself in daylight again. And there’s one more thing. I have bled for this Church. It has nurtured me and promoted me far beyond my personal worth. I do not wish to divide it by anything I might say or do. There is much, very much that I disapprove in its politics and procedures. If I cannot in conscience accept to live in the house, I shall leave quietly after the conclave. In all the flurry of a new pontificate, no one will be interested in the early retirement of Luca Rossini. But this sermon you want me to make is another matter altogether. I cannot talk platitudes. I will not. I am prepared to be silent; but if you call me to speak, you must accept the risk of what I say, just as I must accept the risk of saying it.”
There was a long silence during which the Secretary of State poured himself another cup of coffee, sugared it, stirred it slowly and then with elaborate care inspected the meat in the last sandwich before he bit into it. Rossini watched and waited. He was tempted to offer applause for Pascarelli’s familiar but beautifully timed performance. One of the junior wits in the Secretariat had nicknamed him Fabius Cunctator – Fabius the Delayer – because of his talent for avoiding awkward confrontations. Finally he finished his sandwich, took a sip of coffee, dabbed at his lips and delivered judgment.
“Let us distinguish here, Luca. I am not your confessor. I do not wish to enter the forum of your private conscience. I pray for you in my Mass, that you may be given the light you need. For the rest, you are attached to the Secretariat. I am your legitimate senior in office. I could, if I chose, direct you to this service. I seek rather to persuade you that your speech may not be as divisive as you fear. If it raises contention, so much the better. A Papal election is no time for nuances and carefully edited proclamations. Your personal credit with your peers is much higher than you think. You were in the confidence of the late Pontiff, and you never betrayed it. On the contrary, you fought for colleagues whom you deemed to have suffered injustice, and for causes which were considered unpopular. Your personal character is another matter. There is a large black mark against you: your adultery with Señora Ortega. Your stoutest defender was the late Holy Father. But it makes no matter who is for you or against you. You speak always with your own voice, Luca, out of an understanding heart.”
“I speak out of a darkness of desolation, Turi. My heart is breaking, yet I cannot even weep. What do you expect me to say to my brothers in the conclave?”
“Just that, perhaps,” said the Secretary of State. “Just that: I am Luca, your brother. Let me talk to you about the news we are charged to deliver.” He made a small dismissive gesture and ended with a wry smile. “You do not need me or anyone else to write your sermon, Luca. It will be enough that you speak from the heart.”
Luca Rossini was not so easily moved.
“You’re a very persuasive fellow, Turi. Imagine what you could do with a rack and thumbscrews! But please, think a little further down the road. I make this eloquent appeal. Then, one fine day, while you are all basking in the light of a new Apostolic age, I am not there. I have found myself a retreat and become – whatever I have become. Then you, my dear Turi, are stuck with a whole line of new scandal about the hypocrite preacher, the traitor at the supper of the brethren. You’re offering me a poisoned cup. Why are you urging it on me so strongly?”
“Because what you call poison, Luca, may well be the physic that cures the sickness from which you are suffering so acutely. When you stand to speak, you will confront
your brethren from all over the world. You will read yourself in their faces. You will reason with yourself, as you are reasoning with them.”
“Turi, you still don’t understand! This is not a crisis of reason! If it were, I could argue Gottfried Gruber and his whole team of assessors and inquisitors into the ground, and myself into instant serenity. This is something else. I am imprisoned in darkness, the darkness of an empty house. One day, Turi, His Holiness asked me did I never regret my exile from my homeland. I told him, no, I carried the coals from my hearth-fire with me. I had only to blow on them and they would blaze again. He knew I was telling him only half the truth. He smiled and asked me what would happen when finally the coals burnt down to ashes. I couldn’t answer him. I can now. The house gets very, very cold.”
“So you have to build a new fire. You pray for the spark that will set it blazing again … But I have to know now, will you address the conclave?”
Now it was Rossini’s turn to play the delaying game. There was more to this situation than the presentation of a homily to open the hearts and minds of a hundred or more electors, all of whom were high men, settled in their opinions, each jealous of his own principality. He knew that he was being palmed off to them as a prophet of a new age, who could be as easily dismissed with contempt as welcomed with respect. Either way, one faction or another of the electors would be served; or all could be served at once by uniting in a single condemnation of an upstart. So he asked an apparently flippant question.
“When we call on the Holy Spirit to inspire us in conclave, does he endow us automatically with the gift of tongues?”
“Regrettably, he doesn’t, Luca. And a lot of our prelates have lost their skill in Latinity. Whatever language you use, you’ll lose some of the conclave. It’s rather like an opera. They’ll share the melody – and struggle with the words.”
“So what’s the point of the exercise?”
“The point is that we’ll provide a polyglot text. That’s one of the things we do well here, as you know. That way, they get the music and the words. You have six days, Luca, and I need three of those for our translating and printing.”
“Which gives me three days to prepare my text?”
“Two and a half. I need a morning to read and discuss your draft with you.”
It was then that the full light of revelation dawned. Already, the puppeteer was pulling the strings that moved the marionettes. Rossini leaned back in his chair and laughed.
“Turi, you are quite shameless. There will be no drafts, no discussions. There will be no interpolations, no nuances, no marginal comments. I’ve agreed to speak. This may be the last testimony I offer in the assembly of our brethren, I insist that it be my own utterance. If they accept it, good! If they reject it, then put it through the shredder. Simple. Either way, no one outside the conclave will ever know. We’re all under the oath of secrecy, are we not?”
“We are, of course,” said the Secretary of State, “which makes one wonder how so many columns of information leak out of the conclave. I concede the point. You give your own sermon.”
“And I get Piers Hallett, and my link with New York.”
“Now I think you’re blackmailing me, Luca!”
“On the contrary, I think we’ve just arrived at a nice balance of interests.”
“I’d feel a lot happier, Luca, if you would discuss your text with me. That way, I won’t feel quite such a fool when the roof falls in.”
At that moment, the telephone rang. The Secretary of State answered it. A moment later, Angel-Novalis was ushered into the room by a young cleric who carried out the remains of the meal. After a brief exchange of greetings, Angel-Novalis explained the reason for his visit. He laid on the desk facsimile clippings of two pieces from the New York Times.
“We’re six hours ahead of New York. These two items appeared in this morning’s edition. I’ve shown them to the Camerlengo, and he recommended that I discuss them immediately with you. The first one is the final instalment of the Pontiff’s diaries.”
Rossini leaned over the shoulder of the Secretary of State to read it.
I am not well tonight. I am plagued by a headache and by that strange malaise, which in the past has signalled the onset of a small cerebral incident. I try not to let myself exaggerate the possibilities, but I have been warned several times that this is how death may come for me. I carry a time-bomb in my head and one day it will burst and kill me. Still, I must work on “because the night cometh when no man can work”.
Living thus, in the shadow of judgment, I am forced to judge myself most stringently. I am still vested with authority, but the power to use it is slipping from my hands. For a long time now, I have been forced to delegate more and more to men whom I have appointed, yet, in the end, it is I who am responsible for what they do. What troubles me most in these grey hours is the use of my power over the consciences of men and women, the power of binding and loosing which, over the centuries, we have inflated too often into tyrannies.
What I, myself, have thought to justify as a rightful exercise of authority, I see now as a harsh and often an opportunistic intervention. I have acted more as a general deploying armies under command than as a pastor watching his scattered sheep grazing over vast hillsides, exposed to the incursions of predators. I have condemned brave minds to silence. I have chosen to crush, rather than persuade, rebellious spirits. I have refused the counsel of our Lord to let weeds and wheat grow together until harvest-time. Instead, I have sent rough gardeners to root out the weeds – and good grain has been torn out with them.
In all this, I have invoked the counsel of men whom I myself appointed, so it was always my own voice I heard. To justify my decisions, I have counted upon the tolerance of loyal Christians and upon the sheer ignorance of the vast flock grazing in the distant pastures. Why have I succumbed to this most subtle betrayal? Because I saw it as a means to continue my policies for the Church long after my reign is ended. There is an ingrained fear in all who govern, that to respect dissent is to foment rebellion. So, be our edicts good or bad, we let them hang upon the walls of the city until the rain of centuries washes them away. So long as they are there, they can be invoked against the incautious and the unwary.
It is easy to find collaborators in this continuance of power, because I am seen to be their guarantor, their justification against all attainder. More, their power will continue after mine has dropped from my hands. Custom will only confirm it. Challenge will only make its exercise more rigorous.
The terror that invades me now is this: I am too old to change anything. I count my life, like a child, by sleeping and waking, by bedtime prayers and thanks for each new day. What shall I answer to the God in whose name I govern, to the Lord Jesus Christ whose Vicar I claim to be …
There was a long quiet between the three men, as each finished his own silent reading of the text. Then Luca Rossini gave a long exhalation which ended in a whispered regret.
“Dear God! That is what he was trying to say to me for weeks, but he could never bring himself to utter the words. The poor, lonely man.”
“The cat is out of the bag,” said the Secretary of State baldly.
“I think you should read the editorial,” said Angel-Novalis respectfully. “There will be many others like it.”
They read it in silence, Rossini leaning over the shoulder of the Secretary of State.
Although the provenance of the Papal diaries is still clouded, there appears to be no serious challenge to their textual authenticity.
These passages, written the night before he collapsed into a final silence, constitute a document of singular importance. It is the confession of an old and powerful man at the end of a long reign. There is a great sadness in it: a sense of guilt, a recognition that the clocks are never turned back for any of us.
Too often, especially in this age of instant information, Vatican authorities make themselves ridiculous and bring the faith into disrepute by tardy reversals of decision
s that should have been scrapped centuries ago. The Galileo affair is one notorious example. Less evident, though perhaps more dangerous, are the exactions of new professions of faith from teachers in Catholic universities, professions which go far beyond the traditional propositions of the Nicene Creed. It is not enough to leave the cure of error or exaggeration to the simple lapse of time. The poignant record of the disquiet of the late Pontiff under the threat of death acknowledges that souls must be served in the here and now, because for them, too, time runs out swiftly.
One hopes, however, that the electors, assembling now in Rome, will read this final document and reflect on it while they consider their candidate. Their decision, too, will soon become irreversible.
The Secretary of State leaned back in his chair, locked his hands behind his head and surveyed his visitors in silence. Angel-Novalis was the first to speak.
“I shall be asked for comment. Do you gentlemen have any?”
“None from me,” said the Secretary of State. “The man is dead and buried. Comments are yesterday’s snowflakes on the grave.”
“Requiescat,” said Luca Rossini. “Let him rest in peace.”
“With great respect,” said Angel-Novalis, “I need more help than you seem prepared to give me.”
“Perhaps,” the Secretary of State was deceptively mild, “perhaps we have missed a point here.”
“Then permit me to clarify it, Eminence. In a private diary entry, written just before his death, the Pontiff has recanted – or at least cast grave doubts upon – policies which have taken him two decades to set in place. We understand his state of mind as he wrote. He was an aged and over-worked man trying to cast up the accounts of his life before the final audit. You will remember that I addressed this question in a public statement at the Foreign Press Club. I voiced my personal opinion that the diaries were, in fact, stolen property. I did that, if you remember, at your formal request. This final extract is the strongest piece of internal evidence to support that contention. I, for one, cannot believe His Holiness would have conspired with his valet to destroy his own life’s work. I think that comment has to be made and made strongly, otherwise those who, in good faith, have executed the policies of the Pontiff will be left without recourse in their congregations. More, there will be a tolerable suspicion that the publication is condoned. That is a gift in hand to the liberals, a weapon against those of more conservative views. To let it pass without Vatican comment smacks of opportunism. A crime is left without constant challenge because it conduces to a change of policy.”
