I asked if they were laicised – what the media called ‘defrocked’ – and discovered that a handful were, and had left the Church’s direct supervision.
But most had simply vanished, from their parishes and from the Church records.
I had hoped that the voluminous records kept at the Vatican would help me, but they didn’t help me find individuals.
They helped me find the island.
*
My discovery wasn’t simple or linear. In fact, if I hadn’t had that skill at taking disparate pieces and turning them into a whole and complete idea, I would never have found the island at all.
The first reference I found was in a series of documents from World War II. The Italian government wanted the Church to allow it to use various islands in the Church’s possession as bomb sites to take out Allied vessels.
The Church refused.
It seemed like a straightforward enough interaction, and I had no idea why that document had been hidden along with other papers to do with the Church’s dark history during the war – especially considering that in this instance, the Church had chosen the correct side.
It wasn’t until I had moved on, looking at some other documents for the research that I had a realisation: Perhaps the document wasn’t there because of the World War II reference. Perhaps it was there because of the reference to the islands.
That took me to the documents on the Church’s property holdings around the world. Two years of painstaking research later, I finally found what I was looking for: an eighteenth-century purchase of five chains of islands located around the world. The islands had no names, just longitude and latitude designations.
What stunned me was that the islands do not exist on most contemporary maps. If they are listed, they’re marked as ‘one of many unoccupied islands found in the world’s oceans’, as if that’s normal.
They’re outside the normal shipping channels. Maps claim that the currents do not allow anyone to even get close to the islands. I searched for current charts that actually showed how the currents affected the islands, but found nothing.
Amazing how even in the modern era, maps could be so very inaccurate.
I had found a chain of islands, but there was no way to prove that one of those islands was the Island of Lost Priests.
Until I found a document that used the island’s real name and its nickname listed parenthetically beside it. The island’s official name? Insulam Inferno – Hell Island.
*
Rather than explain all of the permutations of my research – how I located the island in the library’s financial records, and then how I took that mention and found the budget for the island buried in the Church’s official books – I’ll, as the movie people say, cut to the chase.
Because there was a chase, if you want to call hunting for permission to go to the island a chase. It was more like a slog. First, I had to find the records of the priests sent there, then I had to figure out who would grant me such permission, and then I had to cite a reason that someone higher up than me in the investigative services would believe.
At first, I even offered to charter my own transportation, but that would require that dozens of other people be let in on the secret, so that request was denied.
And all the while, I had no official confirmation that the Joseph O’Malley listed in the records was the man I had known.
I could only guess, based on the date of his arrival on the island, and the fact that no other Joseph O’Malley arrived for another five years.
Through it all, I never questioned my resolve. Once I knew that Father Donnelly’s statement wasn’t a fantasy from a dying man, once I knew that the Island of Lost Priests actually existed, and, more importantly, why it existed, once I tracked down its location, the vast expenditures the Church made on the island in upkeep and in care, I had to go.
I had to.
I liked to think it wasn’t about Father Joe, but about my own intellectual curiosity.
I liked to think I was putting the last piece of the puzzle into place.
I didn’t realise that I was, in fact, putting together a different puzzle altogether, one I hadn’t even realised I was assembling.
*
The information about the Island of Lost Priests was right about one thing: it was impossible to reach by ship. Not because of the currents, which is what everyone says, but because of the shoreline.
The chain of islands that contains Insulam Inferno came from an active underground volcano. Occasionally a new island appears near the edge of the chain.
Insulam Inferno is in the very middle; geologists say it’s one of those volcanic islands that swallowed a lot of other smaller islands nearby.
It looks that way. Its shoreline has no beaches, only rocky crags that tower over the water line. The crags slide down into a series of bowls separated by more crags. The largest bowl is where the settlement exists.
I went in by helicopter, along with members of some shadowy Vatican security team. This wasn’t the Papal Swiss Guard or any security organisation that I had known about previously.
This was an organisation that did all sorts of things the Church theoretically frowned upon. They looked more like Green Berets than the comically dressed Swiss Guard, and they were better armed. The weaponry these men carried could start a small war.
The helicopter was armed too. And so was the other helicopter that came along with us. It waited on top of the landing strip – a flat surface, clearly carved out of one of those crags.
I had been assured that there was a simple path down into the settlement, and that was when I learned that these men’s definition of simple and mine differed greatly.
I did not think that my choices – an uneven staircase carved a long time ago into the cliff face or a steep goat path that hugged a matching cliff face, both without barriers and handrails – constituted simple at all.
I had kept in relatively good shape for a retired Chicago police officer pushing fifty, but I wasn’t in Green-Beret shape, and I had a terrible sense of balance.
The five men who accompanied me down that staircase – which they said was easier than the path (I took their word for it) – let me set the pace, and I was glad they did. One of the men on this trip went ahead of us, scouting for trouble, and judging by his radio communication, he arrived at the bottom almost an hour before we did.
The weather was temperate for this part of the Mediterranean – eighty degrees and humid – but I was still sweating by the time I’d finished the first twist of the staircase. The rocks were broken, and I kept one sweaty palm against the white stone along the side. Every time my hand slipped even slightly, my heart slipped too. I was half convinced that the world was tilting sideways and I would fall into the abyss.
Below me, I could see the twinkle of buildings in the hot sun, and lush greenery, as well as a waterfall coming out of one of the rocks across the way. There was a lagoon the colour of the sky, and I considered more than once that leaping off the steps and landing in the water was a better choice than climbing ever would be.
I’m not normally a whiner, and I didn’t complain out loud – you don’t complain to men wearing 30 pounds of gear and carrying another 20 pounds of weaponry that you, the unarmed guy in khaki pants, cotton shirt and boots, with nothing strapped to him, are getting tired – but the chorus in my mind was fierce.
I had been a fool to want this mission, and I knew it. I hadn’t planned for an adventure; I had planned for a conversation.
And no one had warned me about how hard our trek would be once we arrived.
In fact, no one had told me anything about the island. I had half expected a Father Damien kind of leper colony – a place where men who were pariahs huddled in barely functional shacks with no running water, and no accoutrements of modern life.
But I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had encountered one of the Church’s excesses either. Palatial cathedrals with matching quarters, the gold domes putt
ing the famous minarets of Istanbul to shame. After all, these men had been convicted of nothing, at least according to the laws that I had once taken an oath to protect and defend. No grand jury had even heard an individual case.
The jury that judged them was a jury of their peers, and they had been sentenced to life here, which, I saw as I went down the last of the steps, almost looked like an island paradise out of some Robert Louis Stevenson novel.
The valley spread before me, with fruit trees lining paths, cultivated orchards pointing towards the settlement about a mile away. On two hillsides to the north, grapes grew, and rows farther on suggested a massive garden.
The buildings weren’t shacks and they weren’t palaces either. They were made of the same white rock I had just braced myself with (leaving my palm and arm white). Some kind of utility shed stood on this side of the path, and farther along was another. I later learned that one building somehow converted sunlight into electricity for the entire settlement, and the other was some kind of plant that used the water from the lagoon to give each building running water.
There was a modern sewage system as well.
I couldn’t say it had all of the accoutrements of modern life, because there was no television, no radio, no telephones. But there was a large library that was the very centre of town. Twice a month, planes flew over the settlement and dropped supplies, and those supplies included donated reading material, censored, I later learned, to make sure these men did not get Ideas (sexual or otherwise).
The men knew we were coming. We were hard to miss.
Besides, landings on that flat area occurred maybe three times per year, never on a schedule, usually when someone needed to meet with the group face to face. No new men were delivered until one of the settlers died, and often not right away. The men who lived in this forgotten place didn’t want newcomers to join them, so they wouldn’t set out a message flag for the supply planes. Generally, the Church had no idea about the lost members of the settlement until someone visited.
One of the men I was travelling with gave me a container filled with water, and told me to drink it. Then he gave me another, along with a cloth, so that I could clean off my hands and face.
The walk to the village took maybe fifteen minutes, and we completed it in silence. To this day, I have no idea who the men I was travelling with were, not just what their jobs were exactly, but their names or where they lived. We had very little idle conversation, and what little we did have concerned the island.
As we approached the village, men came out of buildings. Most of the men wore woven shirts, shorts, and no shoes. A few wore a traditional priest’s work cassock. Many of them had straw hats.
They watched us as we walked in. As we reached the nearest building, a white adobe-like structure with a thatched roof, one of the men told the priest (former priest? I’m still not certain) at the door that we needed to see Joseph O’Malley at the church.
The priest took off at a run. We continued our little march through what had to be the main part of the village. Only it seemed like we had gone back in time. Chickens crossed our path, and a lot of the buildings had fenced-in pens for goats. The path was dirt, of course, and most of the signs were scratched into bits of wood. There were outdoor workspaces, hand-built, like everything else on this island.
The structures that had been professionally constructed stood in the very centre of the village. I didn’t have to be told (although I was) that the Church had built them when it decided to permanently inhabit this place.
They were one- and two-storey buildings, and they looked much more solid than the buildings around it. They also had names with official signs. One was a hospital. One was a commissary. One was a local government building.
And the most impressive one, the one that looked like it could have been pulled out of Rome’s streets and planted here without much effort, was the church itself.
A miniature version of Notre Dame in Paris, this church stood out. It had been made of different materials and it had stunning stained glass windows. It could probably hold five hundred men for a service, although I doubted it ever had.
It had marble steps and wooden doors that might have been made of mahogany. They opened inwards.
And as I contemplated the church’s size, I realised that the few hundred men I saw here were not enough to deal with all of the names I had seen just on the most recent North American list of priests named in the settlements against the Church. I had no idea where everyone else was; only that a handful – and a truly small handful – had come here.
I had a terrifying hunch that some of the others were on the remaining islands in the chain.
We mounted the steps and went inside. It was cooler, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust.
Light poured through the stained glass, colouring the pews in blue, red and yellow. Pure yellow light covered the altar and a hint of pink coated the baptismal font. Someone had paid a lot of attention to design here, making this one of the most beautiful sanctuaries I had ever seen.
It felt like a holy place, and I suppose that was good. I suppose it was needed.
‘Who runs the church?’ I asked one of the men with me.
‘Father Malcolm,’ he said.
‘Is he . . . ?’ I didn’t know how to classify the men here. One of the prisoners seemed too harsh, even if it was accurate. ‘Was he sent here to run the church or was he sent here—’
‘Because he violated Church law?’ The voice that spoke echoed throughout the sanctuary. A familiar voice, with a Brooklyn accent.
A chill ran down my spine.
Father Joe.
I turned, but couldn’t see him. The shadows were dark near the entrance he had come through.
‘No, he didn’t violate anything,’ Father Joe said. ‘He volunteered.’
I wasn’t sure – I hadn’t heard the voice in more than twenty years – but I thought I detected bitterness. Or at least disapproval.
He stepped into the plain light that came through our door. He was just as tall as I remembered, and just as broad. He hadn’t gained an ounce of fat, although I didn’t know how he could have, living here.
His face wasn’t a young man’s face any more, but it still had suggestions of the man he had been. Time had given it lines, and the sunshine had permanently baked it brown.
His eyes were still a bright blue, but they didn’t twinkle.
He tilted his head when he saw me.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you look older. Last I heard, you were in Chicago.’
‘Yes, Father.’ I wasn’t sure if that was how I was to address him, and I found I didn’t care. I couldn’t call him anything other than Father or Father Joe if I tried. ‘I moved back to Brooklyn a few years ago.’
He grunted and turned away. As he walked, he said, ‘If we’re going to talk, we aren’t going to do it here.’
Still in command, still in charge.
The men with me glanced at me, as if asking if that was all right. I ignored them and followed Father Joe.
He took me to a flight of stairs that led down to some of the offices. There were no doors on any of the rooms down here, the one concession I’d seen to the strangeness of this island.
The nearest office had no desk. Just some reading chairs and excellent lighting. The books lining the walls seemed to be about the nature of sin, at least those whose titles I could read.
He took a leather chair that looked old and worn. It must’ve been brought in along with the other church furnishings.
I took the chair across from him. Its upholstery was made from a patchwork of fabrics, and it was surprisingly comfortable.
I glanced at the men who stood near the door, as if they were afraid to leave me alone with him.
‘We’re going to have a private conversation,’ I said.
They understood the implication. I have no idea how far away they moved, only that they were no longer in my line of sight and their shadows no longer covered the
walls.
Father Joe was watching me. Here, in the artificial light, I saw the silver in his hair, and the frown lines around his mouth.
Faced with him, I wasn’t quite sure what to say.
We stared at each other in silence, my heart pounding. I had imagined finding him for years; I hadn’t imagined talking with him.
Finally, he said, ‘I don’t suppose you came from the Diocese of Brooklyn.’
They were the ones who recommended he come here after the investigations. They were the ones who could initiate a review of his file, and seek his release.
If I really wanted to, I could tell him I was from the diocese. After all, I worked for them. But even now, I couldn’t tell a priest – even a disgraced priest – a lie.
‘No, I didn’t.’ I folded my hands. Blisters had raised on my left palm from that hike down the mountain staircase. ‘I came because . . .’
Because of all those ruined men, those men who couldn’t face existing, the men who chose to abandon their God by committing a mortal sin, the men who couldn’t look in the mirror or touch a woman in love or have anything resembling a normal life.
For a moment, they crowded the room with us.
I had no right to speak for them. Even if I had the right, I doubted I could communicate the depth of the despair that Father Joe had caused them.
I felt momentarily speechless. If I hadn’t come for them, why . . . ?
And then I realised why I had searched for him so hard.
‘Do you remember what you said to me the first day you saw me?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I suppose I said to you what I always say to people who look lost. I probably told you that salvation was only a few blocks away.’
I shook my head. I felt oddly disappointed. He didn’t remember at all.
‘You told me there was a barbecue. You offered me lunch. I asked what the catch was, and you said, I had to be quiet when you said grace.’
He leaned back just a little. I had surprised him. ‘I did?’
I nodded.
‘And you came?’
‘I hadn’t had a good meal all month,’ I said.
Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more Page 54
