Authors: Michael W. Cuneo
Check it out: The pope is scheduled to visit St. Louis at the invitation of Archbishop Rigali. The state supreme court messes up on its initial execution date for Darrell Mease and then, anxious to avert a public relations disaster, tries sneaking through a new date. Patricia Rice knows Archbishop Rigali from covering the local religion beat. She knows that he’s strongly opposed to capital punishment, and that he’s well connected in Rome. What’s more, she’s been tailing the pope closely for the past few years, reporting on his travels, living and breathing his every public utterance. She knows where the pope stands on the death penalty, one of the great evils of our time, he’s been saying. He spoke out powerfully on the subject the previous Christmas in Rome, again just this past Saturday in Mexico City, and he’s taken to intervening personally in specific cases involving capital punishment in the United States, most famously the Karla Faye Tucker case in Texas. All of which means that the pope is tuned in to the Darrell Mease case, the snafu with the date, everything. Archbishop Rigali would have contacted him about it. A case involving capital punishment, directly impinging on the visit to St. Louis—of course Rigali would have contacted him.
Navarro-Valls was right beside her now, looking down, registering recognition. They’d spoken several times in the past.
“Hello, Dr. Navarro-Valls.”
“Hello. You’re enjoying the flight, I hope?”
“Very nice, thanks. I have a question. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
“Why is the pope coming to St. Louis?”
“I’m sure you’re aware of the historic importance of the St. Louis archdiocese to Catholicism in America.”
“Yes, of course, but could the visit also have something to do with Missouri having the highest per capita rate of execution in the United States?”
“
You
can say that.” Confidingly, putting his hand on Rice’s forearm.
“And something also to do with Darrell Mease?”
“We’re aware of the situation involving Mr. Mease. The pope is quite disturbed about it. The postponement of his execution is a mockery. Postponement is not good enough.”
Other reporters were leaning in at this point, as Navarro-Valls poured on the indignation.
“What do you do? First you are going to kill him, but then you give him a Valium and say, ‘Wait.’ And then after the pope is gone, you kill after. No! Whenever he is executed, the state must know that what it is doing is morally wrong.”
An hour later, at an airport arrival ceremony attended by Bill and Hillary Clinton and Governor Carnahan, the pope delivered a short speech, focusing his remarks primarily on abortion and euthanasia. Not a word on the death penalty or Darrell Mease. It was the same thing later that evening during a Catholic youth rally at the Kiel Center downtown. Inspiring words from the pope on prayer and family life and other matters; silence on capital punishment.
S
EVEN THE NEXT
morning, January 27: it was shaping up as a bright clear sunny day in eastern Missouri.
Darrell would have been dead already, lethally injected hours ago, if the initial execution date had stood. Instead he was lying back after breakfast, the iron-willed man of Potosi, waiting on a miracle. He realized the pope was visiting St. Louis today, and he was vaguely aware by now that this was why his date had been put off. Beyond this, however, the papal visit meant nothing to him. Nothing, that is, in a positive vein. In his wild ride of a life, one of the few constants had been anti-Catholicism. He’d been raised to think of Catholicism as a wayward cult, a sham religion, and the pope as its master manipulator. Most kids of his generation in the Ozarks had been raised to think likewise. Anti-Catholicism was a cultural orthodoxy from which he’d never deviated.
Once or twice in recent months, guys on the row had suggested he write the pope asking for help. The very idea had seemed astonishing—and repugnant—to Darrell. He’d no more dream of asking
the pope for help than he would some fly-by-night swami. There was authentic Christianity, of which Darrell was a part, and then there was fakery and falsehood, with Roman Catholicism at the head of the class. Darrell would be receiving his help from God, and God alone. There was no sense in getting anyone else involved, the pope least of all.
Sixty-five miles up the road from Potosi, the pope and his entourage were preparing to leave Archbishop Rigali’s residence on Lindell Boulevard for a papal mass at the Trans World Dome in downtown St. Louis. Hats and coats were still being sorted out when Joaquín Navarro-Valls approached Monsignor Richard Stika, a high-ranking aide to Archbishop Rigali, with a special assignment: contact Governor Carnahan and arrange for him to come by Rigali’s residence sometime around noon. Why? The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, was interested in meeting personally with the governor on a matter of utmost importance. A couple of moments later, lest there be any doubt, Cardinal Sodano himself spoke with Monsignor Stika and urged him to take care of it as soon as possible.
A
T HALF PAST
nine, Joe Bednar dropped by his office at the capitol building in Jefferson City, planning on picking up some files and then whisking out to the airport. He had business late that afternoon in Washington, D.C. But before he could get to the files, Bednar was corralled by Governor Carnahan’s press secretary, the smart and affable Chris Sifford.
“Glad you’re here, Joe,” Sifford said. “The governor’s been looking for you. Something’s come up.”
“What is it, Chris?”
“We got a call from Archbishop Rigali’s office. They want the governor over there for a sit-down with some of the pope’s people.”
Capital punishment, Bednar immediately thought, maybe even some fallout from the Mease affair. As the governor’s chief legal counsel, he knew this could be tricky business.
He grabbed his files and went directly to the governor’s office.
“The request came first thing this morning,” Carnahan said, appearing just a tad ruffled. “We’re not talking a social call here, Joe. It looks serious. They really want me over there.”
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
“What do you think, Joe? Should I go?”
“Yes. I think you should.”
“Will you come with me?”
“Absolutely.”
“Join me on the state plane then?”
“No, thanks. I’ll drive over and we can hook up before the meeting.”
“Okay. I’ll have Chris tell them we’ll be there around one.”
An hour later, driving eastbound on I-70, Bednar was feeling an excitement that likely would have taken some people by surprise. Around Jefferson City he was widely considered shrewd and unflappable. If you were on his side, he could be the sweetest guy in town, but line up against him on some legal issue or another and he’d calmly skin you alive. When it came to the law, nobody in Jefferson City was sharper than Joe Bednar. But this meeting at one o’clock had the makings of something bigger than the law, bigger than politics. Though he wasn’t much for advertising it, Bednar was a practicing Catholic. His younger brother, Tom, was a Holy Cross priest at Notre Dame, and Bednar had once thought of becoming a priest himself, spending summers during his teens at a Benedictine monastery in north-central Missouri. So this meeting at Archbishop Rigali’s really was something to be excited about. Who knew? Maybe even the pope would be there.
A few miles east of Wright City, Bednar got stopped for speeding. He played it straight, not mentioning his connections to the governor. The trooper let him off with a warning, telling him to take it easy.
At twelve-fifteen he met up with Governor Carnahan and another of Carnahan’s legal advisers, a young woman named Angie Heffner, at a restaurant in Clayton.
Bednar left his car at the restaurant and joined Carnahan and
Heffner in a black Chevy Suburban driven by a St. Louis cop, Tom Malacek, who sometimes did security for the governor. On the way over to Archbishop Rigali’s, it was all nervous speculation. Would the pope be making an appearance? Would the conversation be limited to capital punishment? Or might abortion also enter into it? Not exactly ice-breaking topics, either one. Since becoming governor in 1992, Carnahan had presided over twenty-six lethal injections, making Missouri one of the most execution-intensive states in the country. There’d been no indication this trend was about to change. Only once, in the case of two-time killer Bobby Shaw, had the governor commuted a death sentence—on the grounds that jurors hadn’t been properly apprised of Shaw’s mental retardation. If the governor had been having moral qualms lately about the death penalty, he’d done a good job of keeping them to himself. And it was tough imagining the subject of abortion going over any better. Carnahan was a strong supporter of reproductive rights, and he’d recently run afoul of Archbishop Rigali and other leading Catholics in Missouri by vetoing a measure that would have outlawed the mid- to late-term procedure known as “partial-birth abortion.” One way or another, the governor and his crew suspected they were in for some tense moments.
Here they were—the big stone house at the southwest corner of Lindell and Taylor, a block from the Cathedral Basilica, both sides of the street lined with motorcycle cops, Secret Service lurking in the shadows. They rang the front doorbell and Joaquín Navarro-Valls ushered them into the vestibule, a framed photograph of Pope John Paul II on the far wall, another of the pope with Archbishop Rigali on the wall by the front door. Off to the left, a parlor opening onto a large dining room, a swirl of red and white, bishops and cardinals seated at three round tables finishing their pasta lunch. The smell of Polish sausage from breakfast six hours earlier was still lingering in the air. Navarro-Valls led them through a sliding door into the Glennon library, an oak-paneled room to the right of the vestibule, and invited them to sit on a plush sofa with flowered upholstery beneath the front window.
He thanked them for coming and apologized for the short notice. The pope was resting, he said—it had been a big morning, with the mass at the Trans World Dome, and another event coming up later that afternoon. He said that he’d be back with Cardinal Sodano and Archbishop Rigali in just a moment.
It had indeed been a big morning for the pope, who was now taking a nap in an upstairs bedroom, his personal nurse, a valet, and two Swiss Guards near at hand. At the papal mass, he’d given a vibrant homily highlighted by some of his strongest comments yet on capital punishment.
“[The] dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil,” he’d said. “Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”
Joe Bednar hadn’t attended the papal mass. Neither had Angie Heffner or the governor. They’d have to wait until later for word on the pope’s homily. For now there was nothing to do but take in their surroundings. Bednar couldn’t help but be impressed by the elegance of the room. Crystal chandelier, pale beige carpet, white drapes. Oak bookshelves—along the far wall and next to the side window—crammed with creaking hardbacks: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tennyson, Bonaventure, Chesterton, Belloc, Aquinas. Alabaster marble fireplace to the right, matching alabaster clock atop the mantel sounding out the seconds like time entranced.
Navarro-Valls came back, Cardinal Sodano and Archbishop Rigali with him. After a round of handshakes, Sodano thanked the governor for taking time out from his busy schedule. The churchmen sat opposite the sofa in three white-cushioned chairs, Rigali in the middle, Sodano to his left directly across from the governor. They engaged in some banter to get things started. Sodano praised the wonderful hospitality of St. Louis and the state of Missouri. The governor pointed out that while he himself was Southern Baptist, both Angie and Joe were Catholics, and Joe’s brother, Tom,
was a priest. Both men remarked on the fine January weather, crisp, sparkling, made to order for a papal visit.
Bednar, sitting beside Angie Heffner, and across from Navarro-Valls, was struck by the respect the two men were showing one another. Their exchange was so polite and so honorable—what was referred to locally as Missouri Proper.
Then, three or four minutes into the conversation, Cardinal Sodano got down to business.
“The case of Mr. Darrell Mease has been brought to our attention,” he said.
Patricia Rice had been right all along—though Sodano didn’t mention it here, Archbishop Rigali had personally contacted the Vatican about the Mease case shortly after the execution date was changed.
“We understand that Mr. Mease was scheduled to be executed today,” Sodano went on. “We also understand that the date was changed because of the pope’s visit. The pope is very concerned. He doesn’t want to be in a position where he flies out of St. Louis, then a week or so later Mr. Mease is executed.”
Carnahan, attentive, hands folded in his lap, looked the cardinal straight in the eye. He’d been dreading this meeting all morning. He displayed no sign of discomfort now, though—just executive composure through and through.
“Governor,” Sodano continued, “we’ve invited you here today in a spirit of friendship and goodwill, not confrontation. We’re not asking you to change your personal views on capital punishment. We’re not asking you to change the laws of your state.”
Bednar was impressed. This tall, bespectacled cardinal—the Church’s top-ranking diplomat—was hitting all the right notes.
“We’re asking one thing, and one thing only. On behalf of the pope, on the occasion of his historic visit to St. Louis, we’re asking that you exercise your mercy and authority in regard to Mr. Darrell Mease.”
Carnahan remained impassive, giving nothing away.
“Our appeal, on behalf of the pope, is that you permit Mr. Mease
to live. We’re sure you’re aware, Governor, that throughout history pardons have sometimes been given on exceptional occasions. On this exceptional occasion, we ask that you pardon Mr. Mease.”