The Sect of Angels

by Andrea Camilleri

  Upon learning that the secretary of His Excellency the Bishop was in Palizzolo, Captain Montagnet held a meeting with the emissary in the course of which he informed him that he intended to request the authorization of the Court of Camporeale to institute legal action against the six priests for theft of materials placed under restriction by the authority of the judiciary.

  We will keep our readers informed as this case develops.

  A few questions remain, however. What were the reverend fathers looking for in their confrère’s home? Were they perhaps afraid that Don Filiberto had left behind some compromising materials? And, if so, compromising for whom?

  *

  “What a fine-looking bunch you are, all six of you! Young, healthy, strong, vivacious, full of fire, initiative, and will to live . . . Real soldiers of Christ! Good for you! The problem is you haven’t got a goddamn thing in your heads! Now, I’ve summoned you here to tell you something really quick. But let me preface by saying that, though my family name may be Martire, I have no desire whatsoever to become a martyr for your sakes. Got that? I have to tell you that this morning I got a phone call from the Presiding Judge of the Court, the eminent Commendatore Onorio Laberbera, who is such a pants-shitting coward4 . . . Anyway, he says to me: You must understand my position, your excellency, I cannot ignore Captain Montagnet’s request . . . I have no choice but to grant him authorization and so on and so forth . . . And so, in the end I said to him: Who’s asking you for anything? The law must take its course, says he. So I says: Then let it take this famous course! Do you understand what that means? If they have to arrest you, they’re gonna arrest you. All of you. An’ I won’t lift a finger. I don’t want any trouble. You break something, you fix it yourselves. What need was there for all six of you to trudge over there to that wretch’s home? One of you woulda been enough. You have a look at whatever there is to look at, you take whatever there is to take, and you leave everything just the way it was. Nice and neat. But since you’re all stupid young shits, you broke all the eggs. You even took the parish registers! What the hell were you looking for? Wait! Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! That’s your goddamn business, not mine. You’ve all got pumpkins for heads! For now, all I’m gonna say is that, starting tomorrow, you’ll all be replaced by other priests from the diocese, at least until this whole story blows over. Only Don Dalli Cardillo will keep his position. No! Not a word! Cuz if you start talking I’ll kick your asses from here to kingdom come! Now, get the hell outta here, all of you! Hop to it!”

  *

  Two days after the first article, Teresi wrote another, which he published in a special one-page edition of his newsheet.

  The article was entitled Let’s Venture an Hypothesis.

  It went as follows:

  We know from an unimpeachable source that His Excellency, the Most Reverend Egilberto Martire, bishop of Camporeale, when faced with the request to institute legal proceedings against six Palizzolo parish priests for removing and absconding with documents under legal sequester (a crime calling for the arrest of the culprit(s)), declared his willingness not to obstruct the pursuit of Justice, adding that he has relieved the six priests temporarily of their duties, replacing them with six other priests from the diocese who will lead their respective parishes. Such a gesture once again underscores the great wisdom of His Excellency the Bishop, which we have seen at work on other occasions of considerably less gravity.

  What the bishop refrained from doing was instead done by the Camporeale correspondent for the main newspaper of Sicily, who fiercely defended the actions of the six priests, asserting that it was fully within their rights to remove the parish documents so that the activities of the parish might not suffer any interruptions or slowdowns due to the tragic death of their spiritual leader.

  But, if this were really the case, what need was there to deceive the carabiniere on duty? Perhaps all the six priests had to do was to say this, in order to persuade the officer of the law, who then would no doubt have gladly accompanied them into the late Don Filiberto’s apartment and requested and obtained a proper receipt for any registers taken away.

  Or else they could have addressed the Court (as indeed the bishop’s secretary, Don Marcantonio Panza, had done) to request and obtain the necessary authorization.

  But the six priests did not proceed in this fashion, my distinguished colleague in journalism. They didn’t want any prying eyes to see them as they ransacked the apartment.

  And even if they now are anxiously declaring that they have turned over to Captain Montagnet everything they spirited away, hidden under their robes, what guarantee do we have that this is true? And if it happens that they have not returned absolutely everything, what might these priests have wanted to keep for themselves?

  In my capacity as a journalist, I have conducted a modest investigation that has yielded an interesting result. I requested from the Court, and obtained, permission to enter the late priest’s domicile. Nothing had been touched since the ransacking. The apartment was still in a state of indescribable disarray, such as the the six priests left it after their visit. In one corner of the dining room stood a painter’s easel, beside a small overturned table that had once held the paints and brushes now scattered across the floor. Don Filiberto was indeed known as an amateur painter, and a number of paintings of religious subjects were hanging on the walls of his apartment.

  This triggered a suspicion in me. During a conversation with the sacristan, Virgilio Bellofiore, I found my suspicion confirmed. Signor Bellofiore told me that Don Filiberto used to carry around some notebook pages on which he would sketch in pencil the things that struck him most over the course of the day, and he usually would store these drawings in the drawers of his desk. The priest’s daytime housekeeper, Signora Amelia Putifarro, also confirmed this fact.

  Let’s venture a hypothesis: Is it possible that the six priests were not looking for documents at all, but for compromising drawings? Perhaps the drawings he kept in his drawers were not compromising, but Don Filiberto may have hidden other more salacious ones in more secret places in his apartment. This would explain the need to search everywhere in his home.

  I have dutifully brought this hypothesis to the attention of Captain Montagnet. So far, however, the captain has not deemed it necessary to arrest the six priests.

  It is therefore with some regret that I must conclude that our hypothesis is henceforth almost certainly destined to remain nothing more than that, since by now it is unlikely any trace remains of such drawings.

  *

  “This is the first time I’ve come to confess to you, Patre Dalli Cardillo. I used to always go to the Church of the Heart of Jesus and confess to Patre Alighiero Scurria, but I don’t want to do that anymore. I need more than just an absolution, Don Mariano. I need some advice. I haven’t been able to sleep for the past few nights, ever since I read in the paper that Rosalia Pampina killed herself over what Don Filiberto did to her. I met Rosalia a little more than a couple of months ago, when the priests took us out to the Benedictine convent, which was empty, for a day of retreat and spiritual exercises. There was me, Rosalia, Baron Lo Mascolo’s daughter Antonietta, the daughter of don Anselmo Buttafava’s overseer, Totina, Marquis Cammarata’s daughter Paolina, Lorenza Spagna, who was the youngest of all of us, since she’s only fifteen and a half, and Filippa Lanza, who’s the daughter of the bank president. There was one of us from each church, chosen by her own parish priest. I’m a widow, and I’m twenty-four years old and have no children. Ever since my husband died I’ve really been missing him and suffering a lot, and I confessed to Patre Scurria that I often have naughty dreams, and sometimes I touch myself . . . And he told me he would do an exorcism on me, which we would have to renew once a week, and that would keep me pure.

  “He had me look at an ancient book, all written in Latin, with pictures. One showing a devil doing it with a naked lady . . .
An’ he explained that when I touch myself, though I think I’m alone, the devil is always there, taking me like he’s taking the woman in the picture. An’ he also said that it wasn’t the thing itself that was a sin, but the intention you do it with. An’ if the intention is right, it can change the sin into a purification. Anyway, he convinced me. An’ then there was the day of spiritual exercises. With all the consecrated wine we were drinking, we all got drunk. An’ two hours later we were all naked, men and women alike . . . An’ as soon as one priest was finished with one of us, another would pick her up . . . As for Rosalia, Patre Filiberto ordered everyone to preserve her virginity, but for all the rest of us . . . Anyway, so they got me pregnant, and a few other girls, too, I’m sure. An’ it’s true what the newspaper says: Don Filiberto was fucking and drawing pictures. I’m so mad, Don Mariano, so mad and desperate. They took advantage of me and my trust, my honesty, and my faith most of all. Now I’ve got a baby in my belly an’ I don’t even know who the father is, ’cause they all had a turn with me. I read in the paper today about the drawings . . . An’ I had an idea: I’m gonna go to the Carabinieri an’ tell ’em everything, I thought. An’ if they don’t believe me, I’ll tell ’em Patre Scurria’s got a red spot on his bum, Patre Raccuglia’s got a great big wart under his belly button, and Don Libertino— Wha’, Father? That’s enough, you say? Okay, I’ll stop. What are you doing, Don Mariano, are you crying? I know how you feel! You’re the only real priest in this town! But what do you think I should do? Should I go to the Carabinieri?”

  *

  Just two days after our special edition, we find ourselves again faced with the need to publish another, to inform our readers of the incredible developments emerging in Carabinieri Captain Montagnet’s investigation into the actions of the six Palizzolo priests, who are, by name: Don Alessio Terranova, Don Eriberto Raccuglia, Don Alighiero Scurria, Don Libertino Samonà, Don Angelo Marrafà, and Don Ernesto Pintacuda.

  They were all arrested yesterday evening, not only for removing documents under sequester and absconding with them, but for far more serious charges, including the sexual assault and rape of seven women belonging to their parishes (including no fewer than three minors!), whom they morally subjugated, through dubious “purification rites,” into consenting to their lusts. Indeed, so subjugated have these women been, that those who are now pregnant continue to claim that the infants in their wombs are the work of the Holy Spirit or the will of God. In short, our fine parish priests had created a veritable sect—which we’ll here call, ironically, “The Sect of Angels”—in which they passed off patently obscene acts as mystical religious rites.

  This all reached an apex of depravity a little more than two months ago in a group orgy (which the priests called a “spiritual retreat”), lasting an entire day, at the Benedictine Convent, which was reopened for the occasion. The profusion of spirituality yielded concrete results: four of the seven women participating in the retreat came away pregnant. And thus these Fathers became fathers! Except that none of the four women (including two of the three minors) will ever know which priest sired her child, since they were all subjected to abuse by more than one priest that day.

  Upon hearing the news that the six priests had admitted guilt to all of the crimes with which they were charged, and further explained that they had ransacked Don Cusa’s apartment to remove some sketches bearing witness to their orgy—as I had earlier conjectured—His Excellency the Bishop of Camporeale suspended them of their religious duties “a divinis.”

  What does my eminent journalistic colleague, who defended them with sword drawn in Sicily’s most important newspaper, think of all this?

  On the matter of these drawings, a clarification is in order.

  The priests did not find them in their search, despite turning the apartment upside down looking for them.

  They were located by Captain Montagnet in a hollow carved into the hearth of Don Filiberto’s kitchen and then covered up with an earthenware tile.

  And in the detailed, meticulous rendering of the faces, they drawings serve as incontrovertible evidence of the priests’ guilt.

  Matteo Teresi then published a fourth article on the matter in the regular edition, rather than a special one, of his newssheet, which went by the name of The Battle.

  By this point there was no longer anything so special about any of it. Or so, at least, he believed.

  On more than one occasion, I, and those associated with this journal, have been accused of being instigators, subversives, and prejudiced anticlerics.

  I would like to point out to our readers that on the occasion of the ridiculous cholera outbreak, which proved nonexistent, I was fingered by seven of the eight pulpits of Palizzolo as the sole person responsible for the supposed epidemic.

  I was guilty, said the priests, of having brought the wrath of God upon our town.

  There was even a priest who organized and personally led an attack upon my home, which was fortunately aborted. Yet their declared purpose was to kill the devil, whom I had supposedly come to incarnate.

  Even now, after the priests have fully admitted to committing their odious acts, malicious rumors about me persist, insinuating that the whole affair was an underhanded maneuver motivated by my insatiable hatred of the Church!

  And that is not all.

  There is even one person who has dared write that an “accursèd alliance” [sic!] has been created in Palizzolo between a freebooting lawyer who disparages all that is sacred in his quest for notoriety and an officer of the Carabinieri who has been granted too much freedom of action and has exploited this fact to take measures well beyond the limits of his legitimate duties.

  In other words, Captain Montagnet and the present writer are engaged in an iniquitous conspiracy.

  Another has claimed that the captain’s manner of proceeding has actually been dictated by the disdain the Piedmontese feel towards Sicilians.

  Pure humbug.

  What is, in essence, being absurdly and blindly maintained in such accusations is the premise that the lawyer and the officer of the law are in cahoots to deliver a mortal blow to the summit of our social system, as represented by the Aristocracy and the Church.

  The supposed attack upon the Aristocracy—let us not forget—is represented by the “unjust” (!) arrest of the Marquis Cammarata and the public outcry said to have been purposely created by the very manner in which the marquis was arrested.

  What the rumormongers omit from their story, however, is that the clamor arose directly from the actions of the marquis’s own family, who began shouting obscenities at the carabinieri carrying out the arrest, and from the behavior of Marquis Cammarata himself, who, though handcuffed, managed, in a surge of bestial rage, to bite the ear of the carabiniere marshal and draw blood.

  And they omitted one scarcely negligible detail above all, which is that the marquis himself has confessed to the crime of attempted murder with the complicity of a noted local Mafia chieftain still at large.

  Captain Montagnet has therefore done nothing more than fulfill his duty. Conscientiously, I would add. With little fear of anyone. As is the custom for those who have the honor of belonging to the Royal Order of Carabinieri.

  As for the accusation of an attack on the Church, let us say, once and for all: Enough!

  To this end, I present below, verbatim, the indignant words an illustrious priest, Don Luigi Sturzo, has written for Il Sole del Mezzogiorno, the newspaper published in Palermo, in its July 15–16, 1901, edition:

  Readers may not know that in the town of Palizzolo, there exists a sect, derisively said to be “of angels,” composed of a number of degenerate priests unworthy of their holy ministry, unworthy even to be called men. These sectarians, resorting to mystical Gnostic precepts and abusing the Holy Sacrament of Confession, have taken to misleading a number of their female penitents into believing that the ignominious acts into wh
ich they’ve been initiated are conduits of divine grace and paths to the highest degrees of perfection. This sect is enveloped in a veil of extreme mystery; the sectarian priests pretend to be men of prayer, while the most sanctimonious of their female parishioners are the most assiduous participants in the long, all-too-long, rituals of piety practiced right there in church.

  The delivery of these priests into the hands of justice for corruption of minors has shed light on the shameful sect of Palizzolo and revealed to all its secret purpose.

  I have only one thing to add to Don Luigi Sturzo’s statement. At a certain point he writes that the priests were acting in accordance with “mystical Gnostic precepts.” In so doing, Don Luigi to some degree ennobles them. Whereas they haven’t acted in accordance with any precepts, or even basic human decency!

  The Palizzolo scandal is beginning to resonate across the entire country. A number of high-ranking politicians, such as Turani, Tasca, and others, have even weighed in on the question. We, however, prefer to bring to your attention only the words of a priest of Don Luigi Sturzo’s stature, as we believe that such words, coming from such a source, vindicate us against all malicious gossip and base insinuations.

  There is, therefore, no conspiracy. Only a love of Truth and Justice.

  *

  “I was told you’re going back to Camporeale this evening, so I’ve come to say goodbye.”

  “Thank you, Signor Teresi.”

  “Captain, if I may: Since I go rather often to Camporeale, I would like to call on you every now and then. Why are you laughing?”