The Third Revelation

by Ralph McInerny

  Brendan Crowe had disappointed him there. Catena admitted that to himself, not wanting to encourage the impatience with which Harris reacted.

  “There’s more information in the newspapers than in these!” Harris said, shaking the e-mail printouts from Crowe.

  That, of course, was false. The newspapers might tell them that the cardinal secretary of state had died and that Cardinal Maguire had suffered a fatal heart attack. If that had been all they had to go on, what would they be permitted to think? Crowe had come through. The two cardinals had been murdered.

  “But how?” Harris demanded.

  What difference did it make? The two men, and God rest their souls, were dead. The ranks of the enemy were thinning. Besides, something was afoot. Catena was sure of it. Events of this sensational magnitude could not be swept under the rug. At any moment he expected the media to explode. The Sunday Gospels brought the comforting message that the end was drawing near.

  It was true that the Fatima messages suggested that after bloody persecution, the Church would know a period of peace and prosperity, having regained Her bearings. Very much like John in the Apocalypse. And then?

  It was the bloody scourge that Catena thought might finally be beginning.

  Of course, believers were being persecuted all over the globe. It was argued in a book by Robert Royal that there had been more martyrs in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined. That was doubtless true. And there was the neo-pagan abomination of abortion, millions of unborn babes murdered every year, a slaughter of the innocents that made King Herod seem an amateur. But the scourge had to strike at the center of the trouble. In his office, he closed the door and stood, thinking of the hope, and dread, of course, that he had known when John Paul II was shot in Saint Peter’s Square. It was beginning. But the pope had survived. The assassin was caught and tried and imprisoned. How cloaked in mystery the whole thing had been, but the mystery seemed to enclose a political motive. Bah.

  And to think that all along they had known it was coming! Ratzinger’s coy remarks to Vittorio Messori in 1985 about the secret Sister Lucia had entrusted to the pope had given no indication that the attempted assassination had been part of it, predicted, prophesied by the Mother of God. And they had gone on as if all was well. The task of the Church was to fulfill the promises of Vatican II, to recover its true spirit! That spirit was killing the Church.

  And then five years later came the cynical pretense that the third secret was being made public. There had been photocopies of Sister Lucia’s letter, authentic, no doubt, but not the whole letter. Anyone with the least knowledge of Fatima knew that what had been made public could not be all. The time since had been one of unrelieved anguish for Catena. He all but instructed Crowe to steal the original. But the thought of having that document put in his hands filled Catena with fear and trembling. A message from Mary written in the hand of Sister Lucia. To hold that, to read that. It would be like holding in his mortal hands the original of John’s Gospel. His messages to Crowe had been accordingly ambiguous, as if he hoped the assistant prefect would make the decision and incur the responsibility.

  Tarcisio Bertone’s recent book on Sister Lucia did not deceive Catena.

  A tap on his door.

  Catena straightened, then moved swiftly to his desk and sat. “Come.”

  Harris shuffled in, wheezing, closing the door behind him, and stood before Catena, his eyes bright.

  “It’s gone.”

  “What is gone?”

  “The third secret has been removed from the archives.”

  “You’ve heard from Crowe!”

  Harris sat. The man seemed to be enjoying this. “He is missing, too.”

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  “He has left the country.” Harris allowed his voice to drop. “He has flown off to America.”

  Harris would have liked to parcel out what he had learned, he would have liked to expand on his contacts in the office of Vatican security, but he was too excited for that. Stunned, Catena listened. He felt betrayed. What terrible game was Crowe playing?

  Rodriguez had gone to the archives with an authorization from Cardinal Piacere and asked to see the third secret. The box was brought and opened.

  “It was empty.”

  “Did Ratzinger keep it?” A worse thought. “Did he destroy it?”

  Harris shook his head. “Oh no. It was returned to the archives.”

  Harris spelled out what he had learned. Crowe had flown to the States in a private plane owned by a fabulous rich man who could buy anything he wanted.

  “Apparently he bought Crowe.”

  Harris had done research on Ignatius Hannan. He put the results before his superior. Catena read the sheets as if they were a document of Vatican II. Hannan was eccentric, granted, but his interest seemed to be to acquire paintings depicting the mysteries of the rosary. The replica of the grotto of Lourdes that had been erected on the grounds of the man’s company was an item that in other circumstances would have charmed Catena. But if Lourdes, then Fatima, and if Fatima . . .

  “There is another possibility,” Harris said.

  Is there anything more corrupting to the human spirit than having surprising information to divulge? Harris was not a better man because of what he had discovered. He was impossible.

  “Trepanier,” Harris whispered. He had leaned toward Catena to say this, then sat back, awaiting his reaction.

  “My God in heaven.”

  To think it was to believe it. Jean-Jacques Trepanier was in an unsettling way the distorted mirror image of himself, his Fatima magazine and “Our Lady’s Crusade” deriving full benefit from its American setting. What seemed zeal in the confraternity seemed fanaticism in Trepanier’s efforts. His public and insolent remarks about the Curia, his all but accusation of the pope himself as the chief conspirator, were all the more appalling because they seemed simply to draw out the implications of the convictions that sustained the confraternity. If Catena had imagined himself holding the original of the third secret with fear and trembling, he could imagine Trepanier flourishing it with glee. In his hands, the letter would be a weapon with which to strike down his foes. A means of triumphing over his enemies.

  “We must join forces,” Harris said.

  “Never.”

  “We must form a united front. How else can we control what that man might do?”

  What had seemed a counsel of despair now seemed an instance of prudent caution. Of course. If Trepanier managed to get hold of that document, he did indeed require the moderating influence of the Confraternity of Pius IX.

  “But Crowe?” the bishop bleated.

  “He is a Judas.”

  VI

  Instead he got drunk.

  Hannibald, Vatican correspondent for the largest national Catholic weekly in the States, asked Neal Admirari to a little reception he was giving for Bishop Francis Ascue. Neal couldn’t remember the name from the roster of Americans employed in various posts in the Vatican.

  “Bishop of Fort Elbow,” Hannibald said, as if the identification were not necessary, but he added, “Ohio.”

  “Ah.”

  “This is my first real shot at him, and I don’t want it to look as if I’m sandbagging him.”

  It was Hannibald’s plan to lure Ascue to a reception with a number of American notables in Rome and then to pounce on him.

  “He issues statements,” Hannibald said. “Minor encyclicals. But he has never given a one-on-one interview.”

  “Press conferences?”

  “Of course. You think Ferdinand the Bull is good?” This was a reference to the Spaniard who was the spokesman for the Holy See. “Ascue is the master of non-responsiveness.”

  Meaning apparently that he rejected the premises of questions and discussed other matters he considered relevant.

  “What’s he doing in Rome?”

  “He missed the ad limina. He’ll see the Holy Father personally.”

/>   Ascue had been appointed bishop of his home diocese by John Paul II in what Hannibald called Act III of the Polish papacy. The sort of appointment that would not have been made if only John Paul had had the decency to die, or retire. During the long Babylonian captivity—another of Hannibald’s much used phrases—the journalist had lived in agony. The foes of progress held the levers of power, and all one could do was wait in the certainty that the pendulum had to swing the other way with a new pope. And then, as if to prove that there are always worse dreams than those that plague us, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope. Just like that, bingo, without anything like a last-ditch stand on the part of those Hannibald favored.

  Since the election, Hannibald had been predicting disaster. The Panzerkardinal would not change just because the cassock he now wore was white. There would be some gaffe, some diplomatic indiscretion, perhaps a suppression that would rouse the dormant body of liberal Catholics. Instead, infuriatingly, the new pope seemed to be as popular as the old. He went home to Germany, where most of the sensible ideas rejected by Vatican II had been generated, and they poured into the streets to greet him. It might have been John Paul II and Warsaw. If ever Hannibald had come near despairing, it was then. If he were a praying man, he would have prayed. Instead he got drunk.

  And then, as if his unsaid prayers were answered, the event came, and irony of ironies it came during a later visit to Germany. At Regensburg. Benedict XVI, lecturing at the university, made an allusion to the debates between a Byzantine and a Muslim. By quoting the Byzantine’s objection, the pope made it seem that he was voicing his own opinion of Islam. To Hannibald, who had not gone on this papal junket but sat brooding in his Roman tent like Achilles, the first news of the gaffe seemed too good to be true. He had learned not to hope. But the reaction in the Muslim world was explosive. In the weeks that followed, clarifications of what the pope had meant were sought and issued, reactions to such explanations by the most radical of imams. Benedict had already lectured the European Union, chiding it for omitting from its proposed constitution any mention of the fact that Christianity had something to do with the making of Europe. But such clear indications that the man was a conservative had not struck a spark. Now Benedict was revealed as a medieval pope, ready to call a crusade. The difficulty was that the objects of the crusades now occupied Europe.

  Benedict had planned a trip to Istanbul. Istanbul! In the wake of the reaction to his Regensburg speech, he was urged to cancel. His life would be in danger. He refused. The trip would go on. Hannibald tried not to formulate the thoughts that came unbidden. Hannibald went on the Istanbul trip as witnesses accompany the condemned to the place of execution.

  Benedict had not been assassinated in Istanbul. He had been received civilly and then with warmth. He was a big hit with the patriarch. Hannibald went up the Bosporus on a little cruise and brooded. He almost thought he might become a Muslim, out of spite.

  There is a tide in the affairs of men, and Benedict’s rolled out once more with the publication of the complete third secret of Fatima, the accusation being that the Vatican (i.e., the then Cardinal Ratzinger) had withheld the significant part of it and claimed that the text released was the whole. If nothing else, Hannibald could appreciate the prudence of the suppression.

  Look at the storm Regensburg had caused.

  What if the Mother of God regarded them as marauding invaders who were destroying Christianity?

  Any devotion Hannibald had had to the Blessed Virgin had faded and died under the influence of Vatican II. He understood the Protestant charge of Mariology. What need is there for an ombudsman, or ombudswoman, if Christ is our sole mediator with the Father?

  Not that Hannibald found such theological niceties intrinsically important. They would be among the things jettisoned as religious belief moved toward full maturity. As for Marian apparitions, Lourdes, Fatima, allegedly all over the place, please hold Hannibald excused. But for anyone longing for the downfall of Benedict XVI, the third secret of Fatima promised to be a weapon of mass destruction.

  Oh, how he looked forward to forcing Bishop Ascue to comment on the present mess! Bertone’s book had stirred it all up again.

  Neal Admirari found Hannibald’s enthusiasm uninfectious.

  “What can he say?”

  “That’s the point! No matter what he says it will be the wrong thing.” If QED were a facial expression, it would have been all over Hannibald’s face. Neal looked toward the bar set up in a corner of the penthouse apartment overlooking the Forum.

  “Gore Vidal once lived here,” Hannibald whispered.

  “Did you have the place exorcised?”

  “Oh, that’s good,” Hannibald gushed, and went to greet other guests.

  Both Time and Newsweek came, and the New York Times, the Globe, the LA Times. Archbishop Foley was there, as was a baby-faced Dominican in his white habit whose name Neal did not catch. A real doll representing First Things made the other women seem a third sex, which might not have been all that misleading. Ascue was a surprise.

  Hannibald had made him expect a boy bishop, but Ascue was in his mid fifties, with gray hair and kind but wary eyes.

  “I recognized the name,” Ascue said when Neal was introduced to Ascue by Hannibald.

  “I’ve been around a long time,” he said, but the remark was flattering, not least because he felt Ascue wasn’t just saying that.

  “Whither the Priesthood,” Ascue said.

  “You read it?”

  “A compendium of bad arguments. Was that your point?”

  Was Ascue insulting him with praise? Neal had written the book, his only book, in the excited certainty that it would blow the lid off things when it was published. It didn’t. It sold five thousand copies. He never wrote another. Who reads books?

  “Tell me about Fort Elbow, Bishop.”

  “Do you want to buy a church?”

  Ascue was under pressure to unload church property, consolidate parishes.

  “Doesn’t getting rid of them make sense?” Neal asked.

  “Maybe. If you accept the present situation as final.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Hardly.”

  Hannibald joined them, and others gathered round. Ascue stole his host’s thunder. “What do you think of this Fatima business?” Hannibald asked.

  Ascue tucked in his chin. “Business?”

  “The suppression of the third secret,” Hannibald burst out.

  “The third secret was released in two thousand. All of it. You must read Cardinal Bertone’s book.”

  “But that begs the question.”

  “Which question is that?”

  Hannibald said in strangled tones, “Whether we can believe what was said in two thousand. Or in two thousand seven.”

  Ascue laughed. A merry laugh, unforced. “If you disbelieve the Church in two thousand, you must disbelieve Her in two thousand seven. I refer you to Mr. Admirari for the logic of the matter.”

  Neal found he didn’t mind being invoked as an authority on logic. Who would? It also seemed to ally him with Ascue. He listened to the midwestern bishop handle questions that got sharper and sharper by parry and thrust. A dazzling performance. He said as much to Ascue when he got him alone later.

  Ascue had a glass of orange juice; Neal, a glass of scotch undiluted by water or ice.

  “The press never changes, does it?” Bishop Ascue said.

  “How so?”

  “Why the hostility and skepticism?”

  “To get answers.”

  “It doesn’t work, does it?”

  “Not tonight.”

  Bishop Ascue nodded.

  “Maybe I will buy a church,” Neal said.

  “If I decide to sell any.”

  Somehow Neal thought he wouldn’t. The two of them went down in the elevator together. “You stayed out of it up there,” Ascue said.

  “I don’t like gang bangs.”

  Whoops. But the bishop either ignored or didn�
��t understand the phrase.

  “If you want to talk about it seriously, come around to the Domus Sanctae Marthae. It is a serious matter.”

  They settled on the day and time. As he watched Ascue go off in a taxi, Neal felt a little leap of hope. Would the bishop of Fort Elbow be the means of realizing his hope for a scoop?

  VII

  “Gabriel Faust is an art historian.”

  “Tell him we’re engaged,” Ray Sinclair said when Laura warned him that her brother John must not be allowed to suspect them.

  “Are we engaged, Ray?”

  “Paris is worth a Mass.”

  “Paris wanted Helen of Troy.”

  Not long before, after they had watched the movie From Here to Eternity on DVD, Ray had picked up Lorene’s reply to Prewitt when the soldier said that their arrangement was as good as being married. “It’s better,” Lorene had replied. It became a kind of motto, gathering all the fun and sadness of their relationship into it.

  “It’s not better,” he said now, and it needed no explanation.

  She wanted to feel happy, even flattered, but Ray’s suggestion had a note of cynicism in it. Would he ever have proposed such a thing if she had not recommended a truce while John was here? And of course she wondered what Nate would say if they went to him and told him they were going to marry. It was her boss’s remark about women and Chesterton that came back to her. As a married woman, she would of course no longer want to continue as his administrative assistant. Her place would be in the home; her mission, to have children. As a woman she could not be unaffected by that prospect, but after these exciting years as Nate’s administrative assistant, the role of wife and mother seemed a precipitous drop in status.

  “What do you say?” Ray had taken her in his arms. She stepped back.

  “Ray . . .” she began, but she did not know how to go on. His expression would have stopped her in any case. He had the look of a man who had made a great gamble and not lost. He knew her too well, knew how addictive working for Ignatius Hannan was, but his very knowing made her almost hate him.